Britain carried out many amphibious operations during the long-eighteenth century, ranging from raids to the landing of whole armies. British Amphibious Warfare 1739-1815 provides case-studies of some of these operations, and explores why their outcomes ranged from great successes to major disasters, with no obvious long-term learning curve. Many of the mistakes at Cartagena in 1741 were replicated at Walcheren in 1809, condemning soldiers in both campaigns to lingering deaths from fever. Between the two we find successes including Louisbourg (twice), Quebec, Belleisle, and Charleston, and the textbook landings at Aboukir Bay in 1801 that delivered Abercromby’s army to Egypt, but also failures at Lorient, St Cast, Ostend, New Orleans and elsewhere. What factors ensured that some expeditions succeeded where others failed? What lessons were learned along the way, and why were they not consistently applied thereafter?
British Amphibious Warfare 1739-1815, built on papers presented at the 2023 From Reason to Revolution conference but also bringing in additional contributors and material, provides an overview of Britain’s amphibious operations from the early part of the eighteenth century to the close of the Napoleonic era, an examination of the earliest attempts to develop amphibious doctrine by Thomas More Molyneux, and a series of case-studies that examine both successes and failures. Case studies include: Cartegena 1741, Louisbourg 1745, Lorient 1746, Belleisle 1761, the Delaware River 1777, Charleston 1780, Ceylon 1795-1796, Aboukir Bay 1801, Walcheren 1809, and amphibious raiding in the Adriatic during the Napoleonic Wars.
