The Celts could not. Eighteen hundred years after Caesar's
first landing in Britain, Wolfe, the victor of Quebec, noticed the same
immense advantage enjoyed by King George's army over Prince Charlie's,
owing to the same sort of difference in transport, King George's army
having a fleet to keep it well supplied, while Prince Charlie's had
nothing but slow and scanty land transport, sometimes more dead than
alive.
The only real fighting the Romans had to do afloat was against the
Norsemen, who sailed out of every harbour from Norway round to Flanders
and swooped down on every vessel or coast settlement they thought they
had a chance of taking. To keep these pirates in check Carausius was
made "Count of the Saxon Shore". It was a case of setting a thief to
catch a thief; for Carausius was a Fleming and a bit of a pirate
himself. He soon became so strong at sea that he not only kept the
other Norsemen off but began to set up as a king on his own account.
He seized Boulogne, harried the Roman shipping on the coasts of France,
and joined forces with those Franks whom the Romans had sent into the
Black Sea to check the Scythians and other wild tribes from the East.
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