The Challenges of Operating at Sea

The plan was audacious, but logical and strategically clever. But napoleon was not a natural at naval strategy. He often failed to grasp the difficulties of operating at sea. It took tremendous skill and decades of training just to keep a ship of the line moving roughly in the right direction. And that's not taking into account the weather and currents, or the enemy. Communication between ships further than a few miles apart was tremendously difficult and often proved impossible.