Command at Sea: Naval Command and Control since the Sixteenth Century (review)

In Command at Sea Michael Palmer has produced one of the most insightful, comprehensive, and useful monographs to appear in recent naval historiography. He observes, correctly, that "naval history is rich in the study of commanders, but poor in the study of command" (p. 14). Palmer's history of command is a study of processes: "organization, administration, technology, and individual and corporate decisionmaking" in which the "strategic and operational use of the telegraph is more significant than the advent of steam power, and the use of ship-to-shore radio more important than the naval use of aircraft" (p. 15). Throughout modern history, according to Palmer, naval officers have viewed new communications technologies, from signal flags to digital technologies, as answers to the dilemma of command and control. Yet even with new communications technologies, naval commanders regularly became "discomfited" because a corresponding change in the tempo of naval operations erased any advantages in command. The irony has been that "scientific and technological advances do not so much fix reality as allow us to explore it, to extend the horizon of our knowledge" (p. 320). Uncertainty and lack of control still exist beyond that horizon.

Command at Sea is thoroughly researched, well written, and an essential addition to any serious library in military history. Six of Palmer's nine chapters deal with the Age of Sail because of the "relative absence of naval battles in later periods" (p. 17). He discusses the Anglo-Dutch wars in detail, the role of the Enlightenment in naval thinking, the "conundrum" of the line ahead formation, and the development and use of numerary signaling systems. Palmer covers command and control in the post-sail period by allocating one chapter to the period of the age of steam through the Great War, one to 1918–1945, and one to the Cold War and beyond. His conclusion, "Crucial Paradox of Knowledge," is thoughtful and pertinent to present and future naval command and control.

What sets Command at Sea above other works is Palmer's placement of the evolution of command within larger societal, cultural, and intellectual frameworks ranging from the scientific underpinnings of Enlightenment thought to contemporary chaos theory. The lessons of the last four centuries of naval command are clear to Palmer: doctrine is important but it must be coupled with decentralized command and control. That has run contrary to the natural desire of commanders, using the latest in communications technology, to control what is often uncontrollable. What often resulted was an illusory sense of control that evaporated in combat. Palmer believes that, in the twenty-first century, any push toward decentralized command at sea "will be challenged and undermined by civilian authorities [a legacy of the need to control nuclear weapons], the demands of 'jointness,' or the advent of new technology" (p. 318).

Palmer is sensitive to the fact that decentralized command has often not worked well, good examples being Pierre-André de Suffren's efforts in the Indian Ocean (1781–83) and those of the Japanese during the Second World War. However, the historical record generally supports the superiority of a capable, well-trained, and well-indoctrinated force in which commanders rely, not upon the "latest in communicative technology to ensure triumph, but . . . on the talents, judgement, and initiative of their subordinates" (p. 322). The history that Palmer presents has Arleigh Burke joining Horatio Nelson in realizing that "there was 'no time in battle to give orders' and chose instead to rely on personal doctrine and the initiative of his subordinates" (p. 320). The balance between command and control, and providing competent subordinates freedom to operate within a common doctrine, has proven difficult to...