Foreword

by Antony Preston

C

OAST DEFENCE MUST SURELY

be the most misunderstood

subject in military history. Myths abound, the most famous
being the guns facing the wrong way at Singapore, a fiction
which, despite having been exposed repeatedly, is widely
believed by that well-known military specialist, the 'man in
the street'.

Coast defence also conforms to that time-honoured rule

which ensures that military engagements lead to incorrect
analysis. As the author shows, the leading navies of the
second half of the nineteenth century were inordinately
influenced by two very atypical actions, the Battle of
Hampton Roads in the American Civil War and the Battle
of Lissa, fought only four years later in the Adriatic. At
Hampton Roads, the turret ironclad USS Monitor fought the
converted broadside ironclad CSS Virginia to an inconclu-
sive draw, leading to a spate of orders for 'monitors' around
the world. At Lissa, the Austrian fleet vanquished the Ital-
ians in a thoroughly decisive manner, with the result that
the navies of the world spent the next 30 years trying to
perfect the ram as a tactical concept in its own right.

In fact, the obsession with coast defence is almost as old

as naval warfare itself. When the Sibyl told the Athenians
that their city-state would be saved by its 'wooden walls',
that could be said to mark the beginning of an argument
between the disciples of fixed land defences and those who
favoured the security offered by command of the sea.
Hence, in the reign of Henry VIII large sums were ex-
pended on small coastal castles such as Southsea.

In modern times the argument became acrimonious and

costly, particularly in the aftermath of the Crimean War.
Because French ironclad floating batteries had helped to
subdue the Russian fortress at Kinburn in the Black Sea and
British light forces had waged successful hit-and-run war-
fare against Russian defences in the Baltic, it was widely
held that all future naval conflict would be conducted in
coastal waters. A visible reminder of that sterile debate is
still visible in the fortifications around Portsmouth and the
massive Spithead forts, all stigmatised together as 'Palmer-
ston's Follies'. Two decades later, the threat from steam
torpedo boats led to numerous harbours being enclosed by
breakwaters on both sides of the English Channel.

The reaction to the low-key naval operations in the

Crimean War is now universally described as a strategic
aberration. That incorrect conclusion is echoed by current
thinking in the wake of the Gulf War in 1991, but the

buzzword is now 'littoral' rather than 'coastal'. Forecasting
is a risky pastime, and particularly so in the field of warfare,
which has an unpleasant habit of confounding soothsayers
and pundits.

Coast defence ships have always been of interest to

students of naval technical history. Because they were ultra-
specialised they embodied unusual features, and because
they were heavily armed ships on small dimensions they
required a high level of design skill. They were the true
'pocket battleships' before that term was misused by the
British press to describe the German 'Panzerschiffe' of the
1930s, in reality armoured cruisers which had only a modest
speed but sufficient armament to deter any cruiser or
smaller warship. In their proper environment coast defence
ships were by no means powerless to influence events.
Used correctly in conjunction with fixed defences ashore
they could provide a measure of flexibility which might be
decisive.

The coast defence ship was a creation of the steam age. It

is no coincidence that the Royal Navy's first steam-powered
ships-of-the-line, the two-deckers Ajax and Blenheim, were
designated 'blockships' or floating batteries when their con-
version was completed in 1846. They and their successors
were designed to frustrate the feared French invasion of the
British Isles. With hindsight we can now see that the logistic
problems of landing 30,000 soldiers in a single night were
much greater than any military theorist of the day could
comprehend. Indeed, they were beyond the Wehrmacht
and the Kriegsmarine, and would tax the amphibious war-
fare capability of, say, the modern French Navy.

Steam gave manoeuvrability but it was iron that made the

coast defence ship practicable. When iron gave way to steel,
designers could keep the weight of armour down and in-
crease the power of guns without allowing displacement to
grow too much. Shallow water was always the limiting fac-
tor, yet providing coast defence ships with protection
against more powerful warships.

As the author shows, coast defence is a complex business,

varying according to needs and circumstances. A 'blue
water' navy such as the US Navy can use selected coast
defence measures, but these will not include coast defence
ships because the main fleet is the striking force which will
(it is hoped) beat off any enemy seaborne threat. In such a
case, fixed coast defences on land are useful to protect spe-
cific assets against a land threat. But they cannot be a

substitute for a fleet, as the British found at Singapore in
1942. When Admiral Jellicoe advised the home government
on the sea defences of the Empire in 1919, he advocated
the creation of the Singapore fortress, but only to provide a
secure base for a Far Eastern fleet. Had the Royal Navy and
the Royal Air Force been able to dominate the sea and the
skies over northern Malaya it is hard to see how the Jap-
anese land invasion of Malaya could have succeeded.

This is much more than a fond memoir of an extinct type

of warship. The author traces the connection between older
forms of coast defence and modern methods, showing how
the principles of coast defence are enshrined in today's
missile-armed fast attack craft, land-mobile missiles and

even submarines. Coastal submarines have been called
'mobile minefields' and by a similar analogy fast attack craft
can be described as 'mobile coast defence batteries'. The
anti-ship missile, with no recoil, is much easier to mount on
a road vehicle than any gun. Both fast attack craft and
coastal submarines conform to a pattern established by the
coast defence ship: ill-suited to distant 'blue water' oper-
ations but very potent in defence.

George Paloczi-Horvath is to be congratulated for docu-

menting the history of coast defence ships and putting them
in a historical context. The traditional coast defence ship
has gone the way of its bigger sisters, but coast defence is
still in business.