Military success throughout time has been dependent on the orderly and safe supply of goods, food, fuel, ammunition, and personnel. Ancient mariners devised the convoy system to protect these vital supplies, and over the centuries little has fundamentally changed to the basic concept.
During the dozen years of the Napoleonic Wars, Britain fought, at various times, with France, Spain, Holland, Norway, Sweden, the North German states, Prussia, Denmark, Russia, and, after 1812, with the United States of America. The period from 1803 to 1815 was not an unusually warlike time, as over the preceding two centuries Britain was almost constantly waging war. What was different, however, was the way that the fighting at sea was undertaken.
A relatively modern misconception is that in the Napoleonic Wars, naval warfare was all about big naval battles pitting massed fleets of warships in broadside-filled slaughter. There were, of course, battles at the Nile and elsewhere but the majority of the Royal Navy’s time was spent protecting convoys and blockading enemy ports.
