Corbett, the war course, and a British maritime strategy

The available reading reveals no coherent Beresford vision for the Navy. Andrew Lambert's study instead depicts him chiefly as a disruptive political problem for other strategists to manage. Lambert describes Corbett's war course moving from Greenwich to Devonport and using war games to test conflict with France. Fisher resisted a formal naval staff that might restrict his freedom, but still needed an intellectual body able to study Germany, the North Sea, and the Army General Staff's continental assumptions. Corbett's lectures and histories helped articulate a British maritime way of war during this institutional transition. The contrast separates an argued maritime doctrine from opposition driven principally by personality and political position.