Faced with a clearly superior French fleet in the summer of 1690 during the War of the Grand Alliance, Torrington proposed avoiding battle, except under very favourable conditions, until the arrival of reinforcements. The British Admiral the Earl of Torrington allegedly originated the expression fleet in being. Origins Torrington and the fleet in being While an army can live off the land, a fleet must rely on whatever supplies it carries with it or can be brought to it. Apart from the fisheries and, more recently, offshore oilfields, there are no economic assets that can be denied to the enemy and no resources that a fleet can exploit. Naval strategy is fundamentally different from land-based military strategy.
A fleet that secures the freedom of its own communications from attack is said to have command of the sea.
The first and second of these aims can be attained by the successful achievement of the third – the destruction or paralysis of the hostile fleet. The great aims of a fleet in war must be to keep the coast of its own country free from attack, to secure the freedom of its trade, and to destroy the enemy's fleet or confine it to port.
Naval tactics deal with the execution of plans and manoeuvring of ships or fleets in battle. Naval strategy, and the related concept of maritime strategy, concerns the overall strategy for achieving victory at sea, including the planning and conduct of campaigns, the movement and disposition of naval forces by which a commander secures the advantage of fighting at a place convenient to themselves, and the deception of the enemy. Naval strategy is the planning and conduct of war at sea, the naval equivalent of military strategy on land.
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