Kempenfelt treated communication as essential command infrastructure. His system paired two of sixteen signal flags: the first directed an officer to a page and the second to an entry, allowing a compact hoist to select from 256 prepared messages. The method made an admiral's intent quicker to transmit and harder for subordinates to dismiss as ambiguous. Better signaling could therefore be a form of operational leadership in an expanding age-of-sail fleet.
Chapter · 0:00-1:39
Kempenfelt's leadership problem: communicating at sea
The opening frames Admiral Richard Kempenfelt as a leader whose importance came from making complex fleet orders easier to transmit and understand.