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Christopher J. Valin

One of the most revolutionary tactics in naval warfare was developed in the 18th Century, and was called “Breaking the Line.” The Royal Navy used it to win fleet engage-ments ranging from the Battle of the Saints, to Trafalgar. But, who developed it?

Years of controversy led to a war of words between sup-porters of John Clerk of Eldin, Admiral Lord Rodney, and Rodney's captain-of-the fleet, Sir Charles Douglas. In 1832, the latter's son, Sir Howard Douglas, set forth the arguments on behalf of his father in his book Naval Evolu-tions: A Memoir. He assumed it would be the final word on the matter. It was not.

Full of solid evidence, including eyewitness testimony, the book should have laid the issue to rest. Instead, it was largely ignored or dismissed as biased due to the rela-tionship of the author to his subject. But, dismissed or not, the book remains, and the arguments are overwhelming.

Fireship Press is proud to revisit this controversy with the release of a new edition of the book, with an introduction by Christopher Valin, perhaps the world’s leading expert on the life of Sir Charles Douglas.

It’s a book that any serious student of naval history will want to read.

INTRODUCTIONby Christopher J. Valin

The Breaking of the Line Controversy “…it may be said that the son of Sir Charles Douglas, Rodney’s chief-of-staff, brought forward an amount of positive evidence, the only kind that could be accepted to diminish the credit of the person wholly responsible for the results, which proves that the suggestion came from Douglas, and Rodney’s consent was with difficulty obtained.”

~Alfred Thayer Mahan1

The Battle of the Saints, 12 April 1782, was one of those events that changed the course of history. The direct outcomes of the battle were that the British prevented the French from seizing control of Jamaica, the French fleet was devastated and its admiral captured, and Britain was able to negotiate far better terms in the Treaty of Paris than it would have otherwise. The indirect outcomes are much more far-reaching. Because the great victory had been sealed by the success of the “breaking of the line” maneuver, admirals felt freed from the clutches of the infamous Fighting Instructions, eventually resulting in such important British naval victories as the Nile and Trafalgar, as well as playing a large part in British naval dominance throughout the nineteenth century.

After chasing the French fleet under the Comte de Grasse for days, British commander-in-chief, Admiral Sir George

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Brydges, better known by his subsequent title Lord Rodney, managed to draw them into battle. Having failed to gain the favored windward position, the British attacked the French line from the leeward. Due to a change in wind direction and some confusion among the French, a gap opened up between ships near Rodney’s flagship, the Formidable. Seeing this opportunity, Rodney’s captain-of-the-fleet (similar to an adjutant general), Sir Charles Douglas, hastened to his commander and suggested they break the enemy’s line by sailing through the gap, allowing them to rake the ships from both sides. Rodney refused to allow it, but according to witnesses, Douglas eventually got what he wanted, and much of the British fleet followed the Formidable through the line, leading to a great victory.

Shortly after the battle, talk began about whether Rodney deserved to be credited with the idea for breaking the line, as evidenced by a letter from Sir Charles Douglas to his sister (a copy of which is included within this volume) in which he insisted that someone named Clerk of Eldin had nothing to do with the maneuver, in response to rumors that were already circulating. John Clerk, Laird of Eldin, was a merchant with very little experience at sea, even as a passenger. He enjoyed learning and writing about naval tactics and printed up a pamphlet for his friends in 1782 called An Enquiry on Naval Tactics, which he published publicly as An Essay on Naval Tactics for the first time in 1790. In this published essay, Clerk discussed his ideas, including one for breaking the line from the windward in naval battles, although Sir Howard Douglas’ evidence that the breaking of the line maneuver from the leeward was not in the original pamphlet, as well as his proof against the possibility of Rodney or Douglas having any knowledge whatsoever of Clerk’s essay on the 12th of April, leaves little doubt that Clerk’s claims were false. Nonetheless, various rumors circulated after the battle that Clerk had somehow gotten a copy to one or both of them before they left, an assertion later repeated in a widely read biography of Clerk by Professor John Playfair.

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Still, most members of the public believed, as should be expected under the circumstances and without evidence to the contrary, that Rodney had simply achieved another in a string of great naval victories using his own devices. Although he had drifted in and out of favor with the public and the government over his long and tumultuous career in the Royal Navy, his recent victories in the West Indies had garnered him a great deal of fame and respect. However, the story being told among the members of the crew of the flagship Formidable, as well as the fleet, was that there had been a shouting match between Rodney and his captain-of- the-fleet, Sir Charles Douglas, over whether to break the enemies’ line at the Saints, and that Douglas had won. Certainly if this were true and the outcome of the battle had been the reverse, then Douglas would have faced a court martial for insubordination, (or even the more serious charge of attempted mutiny), as more than one of Rodney’s former underlings had before.

Seven years after the battle, in 1789, Lord Rodney made copious notes in a copy of An Essay on Naval Tactics after Clerk had requested his opinion on it. The Admiral never once mentioned in his notes anything regarding learning the maneuver from Clerk’s writings, and the section on breaking the line from the leeward did not even exist in the copy that Rodney annotated. As noted later by the author of the Quarterly Review article (in his attack on Clerk), “We venture to say no one will readily believe that Lord Rodney was capable of annotating thus deliberately on Clerk’s book in 1789, if he had been conscious of owing the great victory of 1782 to its suggestions, without manfully and distinctly expressing his sense of his obligations in some part of his comments.”1

In the late 1790s, Sir Charles’ son, Howard, began urging his eldest brother, Sir William Henry Douglas, to make the case for their father (who had died in 1789) to receive his due when Clerk’s claims began getting more notice, especially

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Christopher J. Valin is a writer, artist, historian, and teacher living in the Los Angeles area with his wife and two children. He received his Master’s Degree with Honors in Military History with a concentration in American Revolution Studies from American Mili-tary University, his Bachelor’s Degree in History from the Univer-sity of Colorado at Colorado Springs, and his teaching degree from Regis University. Christopher has been writing in many forms since he was a child, including short stories, screenplays, and comic books, for which he has also worked as an artist. His short stories have appeared in two anthologies: The Artifact: An Anthology and Keys: Unlocking the Universe. His reviews of television shows and movies have appeared on various websites, including PopSyndicate.com, Mediasharx.com, and ZENtertainment.com. Christopher was the winner of Part 9 of the Cowrite Screenwrit-ing Contest, Chapter 16 of the L.A. Times “Birds of Paradise” Col-laborative Novel Contest, and Week 3 of the FanLib.com Kirk vs. Picard Screenwriting Contest, and his other screenplays and tele-plays have won or placed in several other competitions, including the Scriptwriters’ Network Producers Outreach Program, the Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting, the Chesterfield Fellowship Screenwriting Competition, the Fade In Awards, the Screenwriting Expo Cyberspace Open, the Austin Film Festival Screenwriting Contest, Scriptapalooza, and Scriptapalooza TV. Christopher Valin is also the 5x great-grandson of the subject of this book— Sir Charles Douglas.

About the Author——-

ChristopherValin