Note 150 — Chapter IX · PROPELLING MACHINERY
Reading edition
The strategic value of steam power in warfare was first demonstrated by Lord John Hay in ’30. In the operations on the North Coast of Spain “the opportune arrival of a reinforcement of fifteen hundred fresh troops from Santander, by one steamer alone, despatched the previous day from San Sebastian, a distance of a hundred miles, for that express purpose, gave a decisive and important turn to the transactions of that day” (Otway: Steam Navigation).