ABSTRACT
Cherbourg Strategy concentrate strictly on what the British would have done, what they were preparing to do. Bombarding an enemy dockyard would facilitate the most complete application of maritime power to the problem of defeating a self-sufficient continental state. Royal Navy ships could engage in littoral or coastal operations. Whoever had the best weaponry, and the most of it, would surely win. The same went for thriving commercial targets, such as New York City during the American Civil War; holding them hostage to high-tech naval mass destruction was the key to victory. In 1858, Major-General Francis Rawdon Chesney’s confidential War Office report on Cherbourg’s combined defences concluded that of hearing the ideas of many talented naval men only two were halfway feasible. For some naval historians, the final proof of the existence and likely success of this so-called Cherbourg Strategy remains the British preparations for attacking Cronstadt during the Crimean War: the Great Armament.
