British naval guns were always more reliable, accurate and more standardized than their counterparts, meaning they could take more interchangeable ammo. Better range too. This dates back to Drake’s fleet at least. The Dutch kept up, but the Brits responded by befriending the Dutch whenever possible.
Very true. But capriciousness was a feature of life then. The Royal Navy however was based after Pepey’s reforms on merit. And while many men hanged themselves with it, many more were given the opportunity for great successes, which was palpably not the case elsewhere. One of the reasons that the British have so many great Naval leaders and so few great Military leaders (Churchill, Wellselley, Wolfe, Slim are the only ones that come to mind over nearly 300 years). is this. If you were in the army,such initiative and dash was discouraged. The exceptions were in India, where the distance between Horse Guards and the commanders on the ground created a situation where the commanders had to display such tendencies to succeed.
The English had great military leaders by the dozen during the Victorian era - guys like Sir Garnet Wolseley. They are lesser-known nowadays, in part because they were fighting in colonial wars rather than great-power wars, but their existence tends to explain in part how that small nation ended up with a massive empire.
I did say that India provided the exception. I actually think that Sir Henry Havelock was a better general than Viscount “always fighting inferior forces” Wolseley.
Sir Hugh Gough, the conqueror of the Punjab was probably the best of all.
Gough? Old “thank god we are out of amunition, we can have at them with the bayonet” Gough? 
He was widely considered by some in his own time a butcher of his own men, who was saved from disgrace by pure luck.
At Ferozeshah, his army was saved, quite literally, by a lunatic. He was facing a fresh Sikh army that outnumbered his own, after a hard-fought battle that exhausted his men and used up his ammunition. Suddenly, his cavalry and cannons moved off the battlefield. For some reason, the Sikhs took this as a sign that they were being outmaneuvered and withdrew … as it turns out, the move had been ordered by an officer who had gone completely insane.
After that fortuitous “victory”, his political superior moved to have the general replaced … only the orders did not arrive until the general had won the final victory at Sobraon.
Same thing happened in the Second Sikh War - Gough screwed up at the battle of Chillianwala, was recommended for replacement, but won the final battle of Gujrat before his replacement could arrive.
So a successful general, but not I think a real role model for military success.
Harry Flashman must have been involved in some fashion.
Flashman and the Mountain of Light is the relevant ‘history’.
Thanks, I’ll have to find a copy.
French ships were notably better sailors- faster, more maneuverable, and could sail closer to the wind. They may not have been quite so sturdily built, but were clearly better sailing vessels.
Also, British shipbuilders favored making a portion of the ship’s guns “carronades” – short-barreled but wide cannons that threw a heavier ball a shorter distance. These were advantageous for close-range fighting, but useless beyond that short range. French ships were more uniformly armed with long-range cannons.
The French preference for remaining at range both enabled them to leverage their all-long-range armament and to disengage and flee before too much damage was done (there’s more detail about the “weather gage” involved in the ease of flight from the position the French preferred, but it’s moot for my purposes).\
So in a sense the French ships had the desirable advantages of being somewhat faster, more uniformly armed, and better able to operate at long ranges.
Most sea battles of the era were indecisive. Nelson achieved some decisive results, however. The genius of Nelson was that he was able to calculate how much risk closing with the enemy would expose his ships to, and get in close and bring to bear the British advantages – superior officers and crews, superior gunnery.
Have you a cite for the carronades? I was not aware of that.
Did Calder deserve the flak he caught over Finisterre?
In other words, a general who won. Did what is the first duty of a General. He was fighting against an Army in their home turf, and one which outnumbered him and which had better artillery and cavalry.
We all cannot have Gulf War 1’s
Certainly he “won”. Though his victories relied rather unreasonably on luck and on his enemy acting rather strangely, for example breaking off the action when on the point of total victory.
Rumours have persisted that, in the 1st Sikh War, the Sikh high command was fighting to lose - being more afraid of its army, who had a habit of deposing its leaders, than of the British - and wishing to see that army humbled, if not destroyed.
Napoleon famously said that having luck was the most important quality for a general. Surely even better than luck is an eneny who wants to lose.
But as for myself, I’d rather not have to rely on it in a general.
Wolseley, on the other hand, never simply trusted to luck, or the toughness of British Bayonets - he was bigger on such modern “innovations” as preparation, deception and strategy. To my mind, that makes him the better general.
One anecdote that illustrates this: in his invasion of Egypt, he was bombarded with officers. One was a famous staff planner, who thought very highly of his strategic skills. Wolseley set the man to work on a plan of invasion of Akibour Bay. The man worked out a comprehensive plan, of which he was very proud; soon, everyone he knew, knew about his great plan; very soon, so did the enemy.
That was what Wolseley was counting on - he proceeded to attack in a completely different place, taking the enemy (and his planner) totally by surprise, and winning a major victory.
The planner never forgave him.
Better than whom, Napolean? You think Napolean didn’t rely on preparation, deception, and strategy? He didn’t get where he did by mere luck.
Wolseley may have been the better general; in any rate, he won. But I don’t think you can reduce it to anything as simple as this.
Here’s a general page on carronades.
Here’s a key excerpt:
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
The Royal Navy was initially reluctant to adopt the guns, mainly due to mistrust of the Carron Company, which had developed a reputation for incompetence and commercial sharp practice.[4] Carronades were not even counted in numbering the guns of a ship. It was Lord Sandwich who eventually started mounting them in place of the light guns on the forecastle and quarterdeck of ships. They soon proved their effectiveness in battle. French gun foundries were unable to produce equivalents for twenty years,[4] so carronades gave British warships a significant tactical advantage during the latter part of the 18th century — though French ships mounted another type of weapon in the same role, the obusier de vaisseau. HMS Victory used the two 68-pounder carronades which she carried on her forecastle to great effect at the Battle of Trafalgar, clearing the gun deck of the Bucentaure by firing a round shot and a keg of 500 musket balls through the Bucentaure’s stern windows.
The carronade was initially very successful and widely adopted, and a few experimental ships (for example, HMS Glatton and HMS Rainbow[4]) were fitted with a carronade-only armament. Glatton, a fourth-rate ship with 56 guns, had a more destructive broadside than HMS Victory, a first-rate ship with 100 guns. Although Glatton and Rainbow were both successful in battle, the carronade’s lack of range against an opponent who could keep well clear and still use his long guns was an arguable tactical disadvantage of this arrangement.
In the 1810s and 1820s tactics started to place a greater emphasis on the accuracy of long-range gunfire, and less on the weight of a broadside. Indeed, Captain David Porter of USS Essex complained when the Navy replaced his 12-pounder long guns with 32-pounder carronades. The carronade disappeared from the Royal Navy from the 1850s after the development of steel-jacketed cannon by William George Armstrong and Joseph Whitworth.
[/QUOTE]
The takeaway is, caronnades are more effective for some kinds of fights (at very close range and taking advantage of their ability to be more rapidly reloaded) and less effective at other kinds of fights (at long range and in the hands of less dedicated or poorly-drilled crews, or under dilatory commanders).
Although the French eventually had carronade equivalents, they were not as obsessed with them as the Royal Navy and never used as many.
Not as familiar with that, but from a brief perusal of some writeups on the 'Net, I’d say it’s mixed. I’m inclined to cut him a break for not pressing for a battle of annihilation – a LOT of battles in those days were similarly inconclusive – but the taint of prize money darkens the picture. Calder was very concerned to protect the two prizes (captured ships) and that was probably a factor in his not pressing for a more decisive victory.
While that’s debatable, supporting inferences can be drawn from his later behavior in the Trafalgar campaign:
from here
WTF? It is obvious who I was arguing he was “better than” - not Nappy, but Gough.
I am by no means arguing that Nappy relied only on luck. I would have thought it was clear that I was using the Nappy quote only in passing
Nor do I think that matters such as preparation, deception or strategy are actually modern innovations - please note the “scare quotes” around “innovations”. They are as old as warfare. Rather, I was poking fun at Gough, who famously relied on the pluck of the british and sepoy soldier to pull his nuts out the fire in spite of all deficiencies relating to preparation, deception or strategy. The fact that he won was due to the fact that the soldiers rarely let him down - albeit at horrible cost).