Page:Heresies of Sea Power (1906).djvu/44

28 Of sea tactics, few, if any, ideas seem to have prevailed before the Peloponnesian war. Salamis was not characterised by anything that could be dignified with the name of tactics as we understand them; in substance it was a land battle fought on shipboard. Incidentally as ship crashed into ship, there may have been born then ideas as to concerted tactical action with ramming as the objective, but these ideas bore no fruit till the Peloponnesian war.

'Cutting the line' existed as a battle object, just as indiscriminate ramming existed; but in both cases only because such things were the nearest analogy to land warfare.

At the same time tactical ideas were evidently being evolved, and in the Athenian navy concerted action—the first necessity of tactics—was fully recognised. In a battle between the Corinthians and Corcyreans which preceded the great war, the Athenian ships, hanging on the outskirts of the fight, acted together in their evolutions with the distinct object of affecting the Corinthian movements, and it goes without saying that this efficiency could not have been acquired without very considerable practice towards a definite end; and so, when, war having broken out, Phormio with his fleet of twenty ships was in the Gulf of Corinth off Naupaktis, it was but natural that, having the power to use his ships as one, he should think out a means of doing so in order to win a victory.

The Peloponnesian fleet consisted of forty-seven