Technology on Both Sides

Abstract

The relationship between technology and operational innovation is complex and obscure even in modern times. The type of information used by historians to explain the relationship in the twentieth century is largely unavailable for earlier centuries. Many records of the growing naval administration have survived, but contemporary records of the process of innovation are not clear or substantial. Even the battle, the centre piece of military activity, is difficult to understand clearly. Unlike land battles, which can be pieced together from circumstantial evidence provided by the prevailing topography, sometimes by civilian observers as well as by the participants, sea battles take place in a featureless environment, away from the eyes of observers and are riddled with a terminology and craft that did not translate well into diplomatic or political despatches. Even the basic information is sometimes missing, such as the line of bearing of a fleet in action or the wind direction at critical points. Consequently, in some of these battles crucial movements are guesswork or supposition. The less dramatic aspects of naval warfare are even more obscure.¹