Splintering the Wooden Wall: The British Blockade of the United States, 1812-1815 Review

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(More customer reviews)Wade G. Dudley's 'Splintering the Wooden Wall' may be the most perceptive book about the naval War of 1812 I have yet read, and it offers substantial insights about the Royal Navy's role in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars as well. This is not a vivid history of dramatic single-ship actions, nor does it study of great fleet actions. Its subtitle ' 'The British Blockade of the United States, 1812-1815' ' defines its central focus, but as background to this subject Dudley provides a study of the evolution of blockades as practiced by the Royal Navy, from the early, tentative efforts in the English Civil War and the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th Century through the Seven Years War in the mid-18th Century (during which Admiral Sir Edward Hawke carried out the first genuinely extended blockade, off Brest, for six months in 1759) to the vast complex operations off the French coast from 1793 to 1815. Dudley demonstrates that the Royal Navy's ability to conduct long-term blockades was end product of numerous technical and logistical developments, including the coppering of ships' hulls (allowing vessels to remain at sea for protracted periods), the discovery of how to prevent scurvy (likewise permitting lengthy deployments), and procedures for supply replenishment while remaining on station.
The traditional view, championed by Alfred Hart Mahan, has been that the British blockade of the American coast during the War of 1812, drawing from the Royal Navy's experience against France, proved to be highly effective in shutting down American naval and mercantile activities. Not so, Dudley contends. His detailed research into records on both sides of the Atlantic results in a persuasive case that the blockade of the American coast was badly flawed. From the very beginning, the Admiralty allocated entirely inadequate resources for the task, too few ships and too few men. And, as Dudley convincingly argues, even those inadequate resources were frequently poorly employed to further the aims of an effective blockade. American commercial shipping continued for much of the war at considerable strength, privateers readily slipped out of American ports to range the oceans to prey upon enemy merchantmen, and even US Navy warships were frequently able to evade the blockade to add their own threat against British interests. The wooden wall supposed to hem in American vessels, as Dudley states, did not collapse, but it was severely splintered.
Dudley's approach to his subject is decidedly scholarly, and he relies upon numerous tables of statistical data rather than colorful anecdotes to make his case, but in the end there seems little room to question his conclusions. At times his prose is perhaps a bit overly geared towards an academic audience rather than the general reader: '[American] naval officers knew the local sea-land interface intimately and avoided unfamiliar interfaces when at sea.' Sea-land interface? Oh, the impervious horrors of a leeward sea-land interface! And, unfortunately for such a book, the index and table of contents prove to be inadequate for easy reference. Still, such quibbles do not substantially diminish the genuine value of Dudley's book, not only for understanding the Royal Navy's operations during the War of 1812 but also for comprehending the theory and limitation of blockade strategy as practiced in the Age of Fighting Sail.

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