Early claims held that French steam power could deliver an invasion to Britain within hours. France possessed too little steam capacity for one shipload of a few hundred troops to conquer the country. The exchange captures the cognitive shock produced by propulsion that no longer depended on wind. It also separates a real strategic innovation from alarmist assumptions about the force actually available.
Notable Point · 2:52:41-2:53:11
Early steam power fuels invasion panic
Claims that a single French steamship could transform cross-Channel invasion reveal how new propulsion distorted strategic expectations before fleets existed to exploit it.