Marching order (navy)

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In historical seafaring, marching order describes a military tactical movement of sailing ships of a war fleet under wind to seek out the enemy and involve them in a battle or to escape them and thus avoid a battle.

history

With the keel line formation successfully used by the Portuguese for the first time in naval battles at the beginning of the 16th century , this naval war tactic spread to other nations, especially in the 17th century. In the naval battle of September 18, 1639 between the Dutch and Spaniards off Calais , the Dutch admirals Maarten Tromp and Witte Corneliszoon de With also used this tactic. Over time, it also found its way into relevant military publications and regulations of the respective naval armed forces. In 1653, Admiral Robert Blake published the corresponding specifications for the Royal Navy in the English Navy's Fighting Instructions for the first time , which then changed its naval warfare tactics accordingly. The French military tacticians Paul Hoste , Sébastien Bigot de Morogues and Bourde de Villehuet also wrote down national corresponding tactical specifications in the service regulations for the Navy . The Tactique navale , published by Bigot de Morogues in 1763 , was evidently of such excellent quality that it quickly found its way into the English and Dutch-speaking areas through appropriate translations and also influenced the naval tactics of other nations.

As a result, naval tacticians began not only to develop tactics for combat, but also to consider how fleets should sail when it came to entering a naval battle, leaving it or simply covering certain distances without any tactical advantages to lose. This "march order" called naval movements were standardized and also found their way into the naval tactics of the navies of different nations.

An advantageous tactical marching order must always be designed in such a way that a battle order can be sailed from it without any problems and any other sailing maneuver can be carried out without obstructions or even collisions within the own fleet.

The marching order is taken either from the anchor order or from the battle order .

In the vast majority of literature, five marching orders are named:

First marching order

First (Fig.6a) to fourth marching order (Fig.6d)

The ships are arranged in this order in an inclined line next to each other and travel parallel courses. The first ship of the formation moves ahead, the other ships follow at a certain distance. The disadvantage of this marching order is that communication between the avant-garde ( vanguard ) and the arrièregarde ( rear guard ) is not ensured and it is also relatively difficult to establish a battle order because the ships are quite far apart.

Second marching order

In this order, the ships sail side by side on a parallel course at the same height. Similar to the First Order of March, communication between the avant-garde and the Arrièregarde is difficult and the establishment of a battle order is therefore quite time-consuming and difficult to coordinate.

Third marching order

The fleet sails here in a V-formation, the legs of which are at an angle of 135 ° to each other. The flagship takes the apex position , the first ship of the vanguard leads the marching order - all ships sail a parallel course. Compared to the first and second order of march, this formation has the advantage that the ships are close together and can also be brought into a battle line very quickly.

Fourth order of the march

The fleet sails here as a whole in a large V-formation, the flagship leading the formation at the apex position . Each division (avant-garde, main fleet, arrièregarde) forms its own subordinate V-formation consisting of two columns, at the top of which is the ship of the respective division commander . The fleet is therefore divided into a total of 6 columns, which follow the flagship within the large V-formation as well as its own small V-formation on a parallel course. For an effective fourth order of march, the ships must sail close together in order to be able to quickly switch to the third order of march and from here to a battle line. This is also a disadvantage, since the change from the fourth order of marches to the battle formation leads to another order of marches and is therefore quite time-consuming.

Fifth order of the march

Fifth order of march using the example of a small formation (Fig. 6) sailing in three columns and a large fleet (Fig. 7) sailing in six columns

The fleet sails in three columns parallel to each other, each division forming one column. The ships at the head of each column are at the same height and are followed in the wake by the other ships in the respective column. The lead ship of the respective column must drive to the rearmost ship of the next windward column at an angle of 22 °, so the ships stay close enough to each other and there is automatically a suitable lateral distance to the next column. The distance between the individual ships in a column is one cable length as standard , but can be varied. The advantage of this marching order compared to the other marching orders is that a third of the entire fleet is always in battle order , the ships are close together and a battle order can be established very quickly from the marching order. If the fleet is very large and wants to move in the fifth order of march, the divisions are again divided into two columns sailing in parallel - the commander of the division then sails slightly offset at the head between the two columns of his own division.

Another marching order is mentioned in some literature:

Convoy marching order

In the event of a convoy escort, a convoy marching order stipulated that the warships form an enclosing square around the merchant ships and in the middle of this square there is another warship that repeats the signals of the flagship for all to see and thus for order among the war - and merchant ships.

Notes / evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g after Eduard Karl Edmanuel Jachmann : General principles of a fleet tactics: after the Dutch tactics of the Knight of Kingsbergen
  2. ↑ a b after HF Rumpf: General Real Encyclopedia of the Entire Art of War , Volume 2
  3. ↑ after Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800 , p. 94
  4. ↑ so quoted in Corbett
  5. ↑ after Wilhelm Gottlieb Korn: Explanations for understanding shipping and naval warfare , Volume 33, p. 86
  6. ↑ after Jachmann, after von der Groeben, after Rumpf
  7. ↑ According to Jachmann, the marching orders listed here relate specifically to Dutch maritime tactics. As already mentioned, the development led from Portuguese, Dutch and English to French maritime tactics, which were eventually adopted by other nations as well, as they were quite successful. Identical marching orders are therefore also given in von der Groeben and HF Rumpf, without any explicit reference to the Netherlands being made. There are also identical marching orders in Ozanne (Chapter Ordres de Marche ) for the French-speaking area.
  8. ↑ according to Jachmann: 22 °, according to HF torso: 22 ° 30 ″
  9. ↑ According to HF Rumpf, the fifth marching order was the most common at the time.

literature

  • Eduard Karl Edmanuel Jachmann : General principles of a fleet tactic: after the Dutch tactic of the Knight of Kingsbergen , Berlin, 1850.
  • Eduard Bobrik: General nautical dictionary with factual explanations , Leipzig, 1850.
  • Wilhelm Riistow: Military hand dictionary . From the standpoint of the latest literature and with the support of experts, Volume 1, Zurich, 1858.
  • Georg Dietrich von der Groeben: New War Library: or, Collected Contributions to War Science , Breslau, 1776.
  • HF Rumpf: General Real Encyclopedia of the Entire Art of War , Volume 2, Berlin, 1827.
  • Wilhelm Gottlieb Korn: Explanations for understanding shipping and naval warfare , reference work from 1774, Volume 33, p. 86, Historische Schifffahrt, 2009.
  • Nicolas Marie Ozanne: Marine militaire, ou Recueil des differens vaisseaux qui servent à la guerre
  • Geoffrey Parker: The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800 , p. 94, Press Syndicate Oxford University, Cambridge, 1996.
  • Sir Julian Stafford Corbett: Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 , Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX.
  • Pierre Bouguer: De la manoeuvre des vaisseaux, ou Traité de méchanique et de dynamique dans lequel on réduit à des solutions très simples lesproblemèmes de marine les plus difficiles, qui ont pour objet le mouvement du navire , Verlag H.-L. Guérin et L.-F. Delatour, Paris, 1757.