Background
Philip Howard Colomb was the son of General G. T. Colomb, was born in Scotland, on the 29th of May 1831.
critic historian inventor admiral
Philip Howard Colomb was the son of General G. T. Colomb, was born in Scotland, on the 29th of May 1831.
Philip Howard Colomb became what was known at that time as a " gunner's lieutenant " in 1837, and from 1839 to 1863 he served as flag-lieutenant to rear-admiral Sir Thomas Pasley at Devonport.
But the real work on which his title to remembrance rests is the influence he exercised on the thought and practice of the navy.
He was one of the first to perceive the vast changes which must ensue from the introduction of steam into the navy, which would necessitate a new system of signals and a new method of tactics.
He set himself to devise the former as far back as 1838, but his system of signals was not adopted by the navy until 1867.
What he had done for signals Colomb next did for tactics.
After his retirement Colomb devoted himself rather to the history of naval warfare, and to the large principles disclosed by its intelligent study, than to experimental inquiries having an immediate practical aim.
But he thoroughly grasped its conditions, and in his great work on naval warfare (first published in 1891) he enunciated its principles with great cogency and with keen historic insight.
The central idea of his teaching was that naval supremacy is the condition precedent of all vigorous military offensive across the seas, and, conversely, that no vigorous military offensive can be undertaken across the seas until the naval force of the enemy has been accounted for-either destroyed or defeated and compelled to withdraw to the shelter of its own ports, or at least driven from the seas by the menace of a force it dare not encounter in the open.
This broad and indefeasible principle he enunciated and defended in essay after essay, in lecture after lecture, until what at first was rejected as a paradox came in the end to be accepted as a commonplace.
He worked quite independently of Captain Mahan, and his chief conclusions were published before Captain Mahan's works appeared. He died quite suddenly and in the full swing of his literary activity on the 13th of October 1899, at Steeple Court, Botley, Hants.
In 1887 he was created C. M. G. , and in 1888 K. C. M. G.
In Kerry, Ireland, he was a large landowner, and became a member of the Irish privy council (1903), and in 1906 he sat on the Royal Commission dealing with congested districts.
Irish privy council