The Importance of Audience Perception in Communications from the Maritime Battlespace Environment of the Future

摘要

Only when the schooner Pickle reached Britain, bearing news of success at Trafalgar, was the effect of the battle realised. Perhaps half of the impact had already been seen: much of the French and Spanish navies' effective force lay smashed at the bottom of the sea.1 But the realisation of the new limits of Napoleon's Empire was contained in the other fifty percent of the equation: communication of the success. Now the trade lines of the French were limited; now her power was hemmed in by sea rather than advanced by it; now her global reach would be fully contained by those waters dominated by the Royal Navy. The importance of the victory lay in the news of the triumph. So from 1808 Wellingtons armies were able to operate in Spain, and be supplied from Britain; a course of action only allowable by the fruits of Trafalgar.