ABSTRACT
Late nineteenth-century naval pundits, schooled in contemporary “command-ofthe-sea” doctrines, were wont to complain that the “Navy was never called upon to perform its function of defence upon its proper element;” but that, on the contrary, naval deployments took chiefly the form of naval brigades operating on shore.1 There was some truth in this statement. But it was also something of an oversimplification, as the naval operations at sea and on land in northern China in 1900 demonstrated.
