Thread by @thehistoryguy

Today's wind neatly demonstrates why the French under Team Louis & Napoleon never really had a hope of invading Britain.

Their ports were the wrong shape and size, and in the wrong place.

Thread 🔽

At first glance it's perfect invasion weather. The wind is blowing from France to Britain. Royal Navy square rigged battleships can't maintain their blockade and are blown north under reefed topsails to torment the good people of Torbay and Plymouth.

The coast is, well, clear.

But the French have a huge problem.

By quirk of nature they do not have a big, all-weather, deep water natural harbour anywhere on their north coast.

The Brits opposite them have God-given, safe as houses Portsmouth and Plymouth for example.

Calais?! Come on. Ask His Grace the Duke of Medina Sidonia about that anchorage. Calais is simply unworthy of consideration as a major port. I'm sorry.

Dunkirk. Please be serious. That's not an anchorage, it's an anxiety dream. It's as well protected as, um, something not very well protected.

Le Harvre and Cherbourg just don't exist in anything like their modern form. In 1692 French ships simply had to beach themselves at cherbourg because they didn't fit in the harbour and the English promptly landed and burned them. It's neither safe nor a haven.

Sure William the Bastard sailed from St Valery in 1066 but look at that shambles.

A silty estuary. If you're William, or his son, or gr grandson you can use a port like this for your little fleet of shallow draft boats, but that's where big ocean going battleships go. To. Die.

Your only option is Brest. In the far west. Great natural harbour. But it's also facing west. And, as they are today, those Atlantic gales roar in from the south west so your ships are trapped in harbour by exactly the same gales that have chased off the British

Also. It's in the MIDDLE of nowhere. The furthest extremity of France. As if Britain's best port was at the tip of Cornwall or the top edge of Cumbria. It is physically impossible to sit thousands of sailors & tens of thousands of troops there for weeks waiting for a fair breeze

They're on the far end of a rocky peninsula with not enough food.

So. The French have to base their warships there, and then gather their soldiers in unarmed troop ships in Boulogne, Dunkirk wherever.

Time after time in the long 18th Century the French try & get their fleet out of Brest, sail round to pick up their troops ships, which don't know exactly when they will arrive, don't know when to cross their yards, embark their men & get to sea

At which point the weather changes. As it does. And the Royal Navy re-enters the chat.

1692. Barfleur La Hogue an Anglo Dutch fleet intercepted the French on their way to fetch their invading army.
1744. The French were battered by a storm as the two arms of the operation utterly failed to link up.

1745. French hardly even pass Go. Hopeless.

1759 the French fleet was annihilated by the British at the Battle of Quiberon Bay after leaving Brest on its way to pick up troopships for an invasion of England.

Most important defeat of the Anglo-French wars. Yup. Come at me.