CHAPTER XVI.

THE NAVY OF THE COMMONWEALTH AND THE FIRST DUTCH WAR.

 

To students of the seventeenth century it must always appear remarkable that the period of the Commonwealth should have witnessed, in a State already exhausted by civil war, a striking increase in naval power and a vast extension of the range of naval operations. The fundamental cause is to be found in that change in the political conditions of the time which substituted France and the United Provinces for the declining Power of Spain as England’s real foes. This change carries us back to the beginning of the Stewart period, but the historian of the Commonwealth navy need not look so far behind him. On the side of ship-building, his investigations should begin with ship-money, for it was in the ship-money fleets that the foundations of success in the First Dutch War were laid. But for naval administration he need only go back to 1642, when the winnowing fan of revolution purged the floor; and the history of naval action does not seriously begin for him until 1648, with the partial revolt of the Parliamentary fleet. Although the ship-money fleets achieved little in action, they mark an epoch of great importance in the development of the English navy. In the earlier expeditions of the century there had been a helpless dependence upon the mercantile marine; but the second and third ship-money fleets discarded merchantmen, and thus an important step was taken towards the establishment of a real professional navy. It is true that in the stress of the First Dutch War there was a reversion to armed merchantmen; but the Government now aimed at the permanent maintenance of a standing naval force. Charles I's revival of naval activity was fated to assist in working his political ruin; and this fact has invested ship-money with a sinister significance in the minds of constitutional historians, and has obscured its real importance in naval development. The ship-money fleets were, however, scarcely more than an experiment; the great development of the fighting strength of England at sea belongs to the period between 1649 and 1660. During the eleven years of the Commonwealth no less than 207 new ships were added to the royal navy a vast increase upon the modest accessions of earlier times.

The period of the Commonwealth undoubtedly saw a notable advance in the purity and efficiency of naval administration. The moral exaltation of the times, which raised the standard of duty, and created an atmosphere unfavorable to corruption, contributed to this result. But perhaps too much stress has been laid upon considerations of this kind, and too little upon the complete transformation of administrative methods accomplished by the Great Rebellion. Under Charles I the higher government of the navy had been in the main aristocratic. It was in the hands of great personages absorbed in other business and cut off by their want of professional knowledge from the effective supervision of naval affairs. But the Civil War tapped a new reservoir of administrative ability. Parliament was now learning the art of government and appropriating large territories hitherto outside its province. The supreme control of naval affairs passed to a parliamentary “Committee of the Navy”, whose members were frequently changed; and subordinate to this committee were the “Commissioners of the Navy” a body of experts charged with the management of executive detail. Under this system the activity of the Parliamentary Committee made effective supervision possible; and as most of the Admiralty staff, like the combatant members of the service, cast in their lot with the Parliament, the new Government could take over a going concern, while the old vicious traditions of Court influence and the sale of places came to an end.

In the year 1649 the work which the Civil War had begun was completed by a further reorganization, which has been described as the application to the navy of the principles of the New Model. The office of Lord High Admiral, hitherto held by the Earl of Warwick, was taken over by the Council of State, which proceeded to divide its functions. The distribution and movements of ships were determined by the advice of Popham, Deane, and Blake, who were appointed on February 7 “generals at sea”; while the other duties of the office were delegated to an “Admiralty Committee” of the Council of State. This Committee comprised a majority of soldiers, including three Puritan colonels as active members, and the younger Vane as chairman. Parliament was still represented by a “Committee of the Navy”, which claimed, and on occasion exercised, supreme authority; and five “Commissioners of the Navy”, appointed in February, 1649, attended to the building, repairing, cleaning, and victualing of ships, and to the difficult business of providing them with men. It was very probably the paramount importance of placing the command of the fleet in absolutely trustworthy hands, which led to this reorganization of 1649, and to the substitution for Warwick, who was neither an Independent nor a regicide, of a group of trusted army officers. But the results of the change, as they gradually unfolded themselves, proved to be of a far-reaching character. Since the close of the Civil War the Parliamentary Committee of the Navy had been losing influence, and it was now destined to be eclipsed by the Admiralty Committee of the Council of State; and, inasmuch as experience in war had already come to be experience in business, the administration of the navy was thereby improved at one of its weaker points. But at the same time the expert “Commissioners of the Navy” began to eclipse their own official superiors, the Admiralty Committee. These Navy Commissioners bore the brunt of the work of administration; and, although their proceedings in the matter of hiring merchantmen and private trading are not entirely above suspicion, they were on the whole remarkably efficient, and displayed great devotion to the service. The change which thrust corrupt parliamentary influences into the background, and brought forward experts of relative honesty, forms an important landmark in English naval history.

Under the Stewart monarchy the numerical growth of the navy had been associated with an almost incredible administrative inefficiency. The King’s service was “shunned as a serpent”; and there was always the greatest difficulty in obtaining men. Wages were lower than in the merchant service, and they were not punctually paid; the arrangements for supplying victuals were inconceivably bad; the want of proper clothing was a standing grievance; and there was no satisfactory organization for dealing with the great amount of sickness caused by the horrible conditions of life imposed upon the seamen. The revolutionary Governments went a long way towards setting these things right. Both the Long Parliament and the Commonwealth disposed of large resources; they were not, like Charles I, straitened for supplies and hampered by constitutional restrictions; and they had the strongest motives for contenting the seamen, and so retaining them in their due obedience to the authority of Parliament. Thus there was for a time, and especially during the Civil War, a great improvement in the punctuality of payment, although subsequently complaints about overdue pay became frequent again. The same motives which led to an improvement in pay led also to the provision of better victuals. But in this department also the Commonwealth failed to maintain the standard of the Long Parliament. Complaints began to be frequent about 1650; and in the years 1653 and 1654 the expressions used recall the palmiest days of maladministration. In 1655 a State victualing department was substituted for victualing by contract; but the new method had scarcely a fair chance. On the eve of the Restoration things were as bad as they could be.

The Commonwealth was the first English Government to make systematic provision for sick and wounded seamen, besides regarding the men as subjects for humane consideration in other ways. All this reacted favorably upon their attitude towards the service; and there was no serious difficulty in finding men until the outbreak of the Dutch War created an altogether unprecedented demand for them. The fleets of Charles I had been manned by 3000 or 4000 men; the estimates of 1653 provided for 16,000. Even now the seamen who volunteered came willingly; and the few cases of insubordination which occurred were due rather to delay in the payment of wages or prize-money than to Royalist sympathies or to dissatisfaction with the general conditions of service under the Commonwealth. When the war with Spain broke out a new kind of difficulty was experienced, for the men displayed a great fear of tropical climates. It was reported that they “are so afraid of being sent to the West Indies that they say they would as soon be hanged”.

Although much was done under the Commonwealth to improve the condition of the navy, the more serious evils could not be eradicated all at once. The administration could not be manned from top to bottom with new men; nor did the mere substitution of a parliamentary for a monarchical government kill the old abuses. John Hollond, writing in 1638, ascribes many of the disorders of Charles I’s reign to insufficient payment. Men had to buy their places in the first instance, and then, for want of sufficient means from the King, they were “necessitated...either to live knaves or die beggars and sometimes to both”. When pay was small, and still more when it was unpunctual, pursers, gunners, boatswains, and clerks were driven to “daily embezzlements, thefts, and purloinings”. But Hollond also attributes abuses in part to the laxity of discipline from above, for everyone was entangled in the same net. No man suffered as an officer “for any kind of delinquency in his place, though he hath been convicted of direct stealths, burglaries, etc.” because the higher officers knew that their inferiors, like themselves, could not live upon their pay; so that the whole service came to be engaged in a vast conspiracy to lower the standards of public duty. The Commonwealth abolished the sale of places, and within certain modest limits increased the scale of pay; but it failed to keep up punctuality of payment, and it inherited an army of officials already debased by systematic corruption. As Pepys was to discover later, the tone of a public service can be permanently raised only by the long-continued pressure of authority. The Puritan movement deeply affected English habits of thought, and therefore in the long run influenced conduct; but its immediate effect upon the generality of men is often over-estimated. The minor officials of the navy adapted themselves readily enough to the new fashion of religious speech; but the spiritual revival failed to renovate a public service which had degenerated in obedience to the laws of its environment. The charges of corruption which Hollond brings against the naval administration of the Commonwealth are supported by other evidence, although he omits to record the conscientious efforts made by the higher officials to put down abuses.

1648-9] Rupert at Kinsale

The history of naval action during the period of the Civil War may be said to begin in May, 1648, when a partial revolt of the Parliamentary fleet gave the Royalist party the control of a naval force. The greater sea power was still retained by the Parliament, for the revolted squadron consisted only of one second-rate, five third and fourth-rates, and three small pinnaces. Nevertheless there was now a Royalist fleet, and from this fact consequences of great importance flowed. It enabled the Prince of Wales to make a demonstration off the English coast which was useful, and only just missed being successful; and made it possible for Rupert to cooperate with Ormonde in Ireland.

Rupert sailed from Helvoetsluys on January 11, 1649, with eight ships under his command; but they were all miserably undermanned, and nothing but speedy success made it possible for them to keep the sea. If he could have cooperated effectively with Ormonde, Rupert might have rendered a really great service to the Royalist cause; but either his equipment failed him, or his genius was ill suited for the more sustained efforts by which the issues of war are really decided. The dashing cavalry leader who had plundered the Parliamentarians speedily mastered the art of destroying commerce upon the sea. He established himself without difficulty at Kinsale, and during his voyage thither, and after his arrival, captured so many prizes that his financial difficulties were for the present removed. He also relieved the Scilly Islands, which Sir John Greenville was holding as the headquarters for Royalist privateers. But the serious issues of the war lay with Ormonde, and Rupert failed to support him, although urged to render assistance by blockading Londonderry or Dublin. The opportunity was missed; and before long the greater resources of the Commonwealth, both by sea and land, were brought effectively into play. The defensive scheme of the Commonwealth against Ormonde was Cromwell's invasion of Ireland, and an element in that scheme was the elimination of Rupert's fleet. On May 22 Blake arrived off Kinsale and blockaded the harbour, thus clearing the way for Cromwell, who landed in Dublin on August 15. During the whole of the summer the commanders of the Commonwealth kept a close watch upon Rupert, and at the same time prevented communication between Munster and the Continent, and intercepted privateers cruising under letters of marque from Charles II. The work was useful work, but it strained the resources of the fleet to the utmost; and in October, when the blockading squadron was driven off by a storm, Rupert with seven ships escaped to the open sea. His course now carried him very speedily outside the range of the Irish squadron. On December 1 news came that he was capturing English merchantmen off the coast of Spain; and soon afterwards he made his way with a number of prizes to Lisbon, where he was hospitably received by King John IV, and allowed to sell some of his prizes in order to arm and equip the rest with the proceeds, thus increasing his force to 13 ships.

Rupert’s reception at Lisbon created a fresh difficulty for the Commonwealth. The strength of the new military State made it an important factor in Continental diplomacy, a desirable ally for every Power; and yet every Power regarded it with detestation because it had executed a King. The States of Europe were disposed to recognize Rupert if they dared, and swarms of privateers were let loose from every European port to prey upon English commerce. It was therefore a matter of vital necessity for the Commonwealth to vindicate its claim to all the rights of a properly constituted Government, as well as to protect the trade routes and to destroy Rupert wherever he might be found; and to this end the English Government nerved itself to an energetic display of force in distant waters. In February, 1650, Blake with twelve ships of war sailed on a southern expedition; and on March 10 he cast anchor outside the fortified entrance to the river Tagus, and opened negotiations which aimed at persuading the King of Portugal to expel Rupert as a pirate from his port. These dragged on for two months, and then the King cast in his lot with Rupert. On May 26 Blake was reinforced by Popham, who brought four ships of war and four armed merchantmen, together with authority from home for open war with Portugal. The main business of the next three or four months, from the end of May to the middle of September, was the maintenance under difficulties of a blockade of Lisbon. Blake and Popham could no longer obtain supplies from the shore, and they had to detach ships from the blockading squadron to fetch them from Vigo and Cadiz, where the hostility between Portugal and Spain guaranteed a friendly reception. On the other hand Rupert was not only well provided, but he could now reinforce his fleet with ships furnished by the Portuguese and by the French merchants at Lisbon. In these circumstances the complete failure of Rupert's two attempts to break out proves both the efficiency of the blockading squadron and the ineptitude of the Portuguese. On the other hand, Blake succeeded on September 14 in intercepting their fleet of twenty-three sail from Brazil. After a three hours 1 action, fought in the midst of a violent gale, he sank the Portuguese Vice-Admiral and took seven prizes: he then raised the blockade and departed with his prizes to Cadiz.

The duel between Blake and Rupert was now to be transferred to other waters. From Cadiz Badiley was detached to convoy the prizes home, but Blake himself remained there with seven ships. On October 12, Rupert, now no longer a welcome guest at Lisbon, put to sea with six ships, and made for the Straits to prey upon English commerce. “Being destitute of a port”, wrote one of his followers, “we take the confines of the Mediterranean for our harbours, poverty and despair being companions, and revenge our guide”. Intelligence having reached Blake on October 27 that Rupert had attacked some English merchantmen in the harbor at Malaga, he was speedily within striking distance of Rupert's fleet; on November 3 he captured one of his ships; and on November 5 the rest were driven ashore and wrecked in attempting to escape from Carthagena. Rupert and Maurice, who had been separated from the rest of their squadron, made their way with two ships to Toulon.

The final extinction of Rupert’s squadron as a fighting force was for the present deferred. In Toulon he succeeded in increasing his force to five ships; and with these, “conceiving all disasters past, he fixed his resolution to take revenge on the Spaniard”, who had furnished Blake with a naval base. The hunting-ground of the Elizabethan pirate-captains still retained its glamour for the seamen of the next generation; and, with the Azores as his goal, he was able to man his ships, and sail westward, capturing English and Spanish prizes indiscriminately on the way. Though it was Rupert’s intention ultimately to support the King’s cause in the West Indies, his ships’ companies cared only to spoil the Egyptians. They refused to leave Spanish waters, and the chance of achieving anything was lost. During the rest of 1651 the squadron lingered off the Azores; in the spring of 1652 it cruised off the coast of Guinea and the Cape Verde Islands; nor was it until the summer of 1652 that Rupert reached the West Indies six months after Ayscue’s fleet had secured Barbados for the Parliament. Political results could no longer be achieved; and meanwhile the fleet had been steadily deteriorating. In 1651 the flagship and another vessel were lost; early in 1652 the crew of the Revenge mutinied and carried her over to the Parliament; in September of the same year Prince Maurice and two ships were lost in a storm. In March, 1653, Rupert returned to France with his own ship and a few unseaworthy prizes. His squadron was now finally broken up, and the Royalist party ceased to command naval power.

When on February 13, 1651, Parliament solemnly thanked Blake, and voted him £.1000, the statesmen of the time showed their perception of the fact that he had achieved something more than “breaking the head and pulling up the roots of the enemy’s marine strength in Prince Rupert”. With the appearance of the English flag in such force in the Mediterranean began the acceptance of the Commonwealth by the Powers of Europe the recognition of the “pariah State”. From Blake’s southern voyage there also dates a new departure in English naval policy the establishment of systematic convoy to the Mediterranean. Hitherto the English Government had only acknowledged the duty of protecting commerce in the neighborhood of the English coasts more particularly in the Channel and the North Sea. Now, the operations of Rupert, the privateers, and the French cruisers, forced upon the Commonwealth the duty of protecting commerce over a wider field; and for this purpose it was necessary to maintain a large naval force in the Mediterranean. The date of the new departure can be fixed with precision. On October 31, 1650, an Act was passed adding 15 per cent, to the customs, and providing that the money thus obtained should be used in paying the expenses of men-of-war employed to convoy merchantmen. From this time the system of convoy was entirely remodeled; and first Hall, and then Appleton and Badiley, were employed in escorting the Levant trade.

The destruction of the naval power which the Royalists had acquired by the mutiny of May, 1648, is the most important episode in the period of Commonwealth naval history which precedes the outbreak of the First Dutch War; but the command of the sea was of high value to the Commonwealth elsewhere as well as in the Mediterranean. The fleet intercepted arms and stores destined for Ireland, and cut off communication between Charles II in Scotland and his friends in Holland. Cromwell’s invasion of Scotland would have been scarcely feasible at all, had not his army been furnished with supplies landed from the fleet which accompanied its march. It was to the command of the sea also that the Commonwealth owed its ability to wind up so speedily the affairs of the monarchy, and to assert its sovereignty over the whole of the dominions of the House of Stewart. The Scilly Islands, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands all of them nests of Royalist privateers were successively reduced during 1651, mainly by an exertion of naval force; and in 1652 Ayscue’s fleet ensured the submission of the West Indian Islands and of the plantations on the mainland of America. The Commonwealth was at last supreme, not only over the whole realm of England, but over her dominions beyond the sea.

1652] First Dutch War.

The Government which had thus established itself so firmly in England was in closer touch with commercial interests than any of its predecessors, for the control of foreign affairs had passed out of the hands of Kings and diplomatists into those of members of Parliament. By a singular coincidence, the same thing had happened in the United Provinces, when in 1650 the death of the Stadholder, William II, the son-in-law of Charles I, threw the control of the foreign policy of the Dutch Republic mainly into the hands of the merchants of Holland, and substituted for dynastic and family sympathies the interests of the great ports of Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Commercial rivalry between the English and the Dutch was thus accentuated; and the First Dutch War, which opens the heroic period in the naval history of England, is also an important landmark in her commercial history. Moreover, the reigns of James I and Charles I had witnessed a wider distribution of sea-borne commerce, and a progressive improvement in the size and efficiency of ships, which were destined to affect profoundly the character of the war itself. The navies of 1652-4 could keep the sea and strike at great distances in a way which would have been impossible at an earlier time. The old conception of a naval militia, reinforced by armed merchantmen, was disappearing in favor of a professional navy permanently in the service of the State; and associated with this was an increased professional feeling among officers and men. Even in the merchant service the seamen had long experience of fighting, since piracy and privateering thrust upon them the necessity of going armed. Ships sailing on the Indian and American voyages, and even those in the Levant trade, carried large crews, heavy guns, and a complete equipment. It would be a mistake to suppose that until the time of Blake professional and caste feeling did not exist in the royal navy; but between 1642 and 1660 this feeling was greatly developed. Squadrons were kept at sea for longer periods of the year; the number of seamen employed in the ships of the State bore an increasing proportion to the mercantile marine; and both officers and men now had experience of continuous service. Such an episode as Blake's pursuit of Rupert, with the delicate calculations involved in the maintenance of a blockade of Lisbon from so distant a base as Vigo or Cadiz, must have gone a long way towards the production of properly trained crews. Clarendon’s description of seamen as “in a manner a nation by themselves” thus acquires a new significance in its application to this period. In a word, the Commonwealth was able to bring against the Dutch what had not existed a generation earlier a great professional navy.

In the character of their resources the two combatants differed widely. England was still a pastoral country, although with a growing maritime trade. The prosperity of the United Provinces was established upon fisheries, manufactures, and the carrying trade. Amsterdam was “built upon herrings”; and the yield from the export of cured fish was said to be greater than all the treasure brought from the New World by the galleons of Spain. The manufacture and export of fabrics was facilitated by the Dutch water-ways, which on the one hand gave cheap and easy access to Germany, and on the other hand placed the Dutch manufacturing towns within reach of the sea. The position of the United Provinces between France and the Baltic, at the mouth of the great German rivers, and within reach of the Mediterranean made them “the waggoners of all seas”. Last of all, the great Companies engaged in the Colonial and Eastern trade were tributary to the full-fed river of Dutch prosperity. Thus, as a contemporary observer remarked, the Dutch “sucked honey, like the bee, from all parts”. Yet in the event of a war between the Commonwealth and the Dutch Republic the geographical advantages were with the former. Lying, as it were, upon the flank of the Dutch trade, England occupied a strategic position which gave her control over its main thoroughfare. Ships trading to the Baltic started from points immediately opposite the English coast. Ships trading to the Mediterranean must pass the Channel at its narrowest part. In relation to the Eastern trade also England occupied interior lines; and, even if a homeward-bound fleet should take the long and dangerous voyage round the north of Scotland, it could easily be cut off before it reached the Dutch ports. Moreover, the general conditions of navigation compelled sailing ships to hug the English coast; and the prevalence of westerly winds was to the advantage of an English force attacking the Dutch coasts or shipping, and to the disadvantage of a Dutch force delivering a counter-attack.

The geographical advantages of England over the United Provinces were in 1652 seconded by the possession of what was, on the whole, a better fleet. The Dutch claimed that in comparison with their own the English had but a small navy. It was true that the United Provinces possessed more ships; but they were not able at any given moment to put more ships into the fighting line, and they were also relatively deficient in large vessels. Owing to the fact that their great struggle with Spain had shaped itself as a land war, the number of ships actually fit for sea had sunk as low as fifty, and the deficiency had to be made good by hastily arming merchantmen. In England, on the other hand, during the years 1649-51 forty-one new ships had been added to the navy list, though before these additions the navy of the Long Parliament was already the strongest navy which the country had ever possessed. The English ships were more solidly built than the Dutch, being “full of timber”; an English sea-captain had expressed the difference by the phrase, “we building ours for seventy years, they theirs for seven”. The sandy character of the Dutch coast also affected the size of their ships. Thus, when the rival navies came to action upon the open sea, it was found that the English ships could stand battering better than the Dutch; and, where the former were only crippled, the latter were sunk outright. The English ships were also more heavily armed, and were certainly better provided; and, although the Dutch had a larger number of merchant ships to draw upon for the service of the State, the English merchant ships were larger and carried more guns. The manning of the fleets was a difficulty upon both sides; but the English officers and men were much more experienced in the actual business of war, for the Dutch navy had seen little real service since 1609. When the war broke out, the seamen Ayscue and Penn had just returned from long cruises, the former from America and the latter from the Mediterranean; while the soldier Blake had already accumulated a large naval experience in his dealings with Rupert. Moreover, among the higher English officers political divisions had ceased to affect naval efficiency, whereas in the United Provinces the perpetual conflict between the great merchants and the House of Orange had been fanned into fresh flame by the ambition of the Stadholder William II. As a result of this, an attempt had been made to purge the Dutch navy, and to introduce into it officers who were not professional seamen. The counterpart of this in the English navy was the employment of military officers; but under seventeenth century conditions their experience of fighting could easily be applied to the sea.

It has been suggested that the English officers and seamen also enjoyed the advantage of that serene confidence and high religious enthusiasm which had carried the soldiers of the New Model to victory, and had made the enemy “as stubble to their swords”. But this comparison between the army of Cromwell and the fleet of Blake has probably been pressed too far. Both the political and the religious life of the army had been kept in full tide by the election of agitators, the Church-meetings of the sects, and the free intercourse between the regiments. In the navy the conditions were wholly different. The separateness of ships, the need for perpetual vigilance, the various preoccupations of life upon the sea, must have proved unfavorable alike to religious intercourse and to political speculation. Except in a few instances, the letters of the naval officers fail to yield any evidence of the strong Puritan zeal which is supposed to have animated them. The seamen were pressed without distinction of doctrine, and, so long as they were well fed and punctually paid, they served the Commonwealth cheerfully and fought for it courageously; but there is nothing to show that they were profoundly interested in religious questions. The influence of Puritanism upon the English navy is rather to be sought in the higher administration on land than in the ships at sea. The naval administrators of the Commonwealth were more honest, energetic, and capable than any of their predecessors; and they supported the fighting fleets more efficiently than they had ever been supported before. But it must not be forgotten that the tone of Dutch feeling was scarcely less religious, while Dutch patriotism burned with an even brighter flame.

In contrast to the comparative precision and effectiveness of the English naval direction, the Dutch administrative methods were singularly ill-adapted to put forth the whole strength of the nation upon the sea. Even in the days of the stadholderate the naval organization of the Seven Provinces had been extraordinarily loose, and local feeling had succeeded in expressing itself in five distinct and separate Boards of Admiralty. The only real link between the Boards was the Stadholder, who as Admiral-General presided over each Board. Thus, when in 1650 the stadholderate was abolished and the powers of the Admiral-General passed to the States General, an organization already loose suffered a kind of disintegration. The appointment of officers of ships, hitherto made by the Admiral-General on presentation of the Boards of Admiralty, was now transferred to the States General, the members of which were at once more susceptible to local pressure, and more ignorant of naval affairs. It must also be remembered that, of the seven Provinces represented in the States General, four had no direct interest in the navy. The only influence counteracting this tendency to disorganization was the preponderance of the Province of Holland, which contributed five-sixths of the fleet and controlled three of the five Admiralty Boards.

Thus the advantages in the coming conflict were likely to be almost entirely on the side of England; and, to crown all, she enjoyed this further advantage that in her case the war was one of limited liability. For the Dutch everything was at stake their carrying trade, their import and export trade, their fisheries, and their colonial trade and therefore they could be satisfied with nothing less than absolute naval supremacy. England, on the other hand, with a naval force almost as great, was risking far less commercially; and the result of this disproportion of risks is to be seen in the fact that the Dutch prizes taken during the war amounted to something like double the value of the whole ocean-going mercantile marine of England. The solitary advantage enjoyed by the Dutch was a better banking system, supported by greater financial resources; and even this was to a certain extent neutralized by the jealousies of the Provinces, and the difficulty of adjusting between them the burden of the war. Moreover, the finance of the Republic was based upon its commerce, and Ralegh’s comment, made a generation earlier, had lost none of its point : “If... they subsist by their trade, the disturbance of their trade (which England only can disturb) will also disturb their subsistence”. On the other hand, at no previous time had England been able so easily to bring her whole financial resources into play. The revolutionary Government had already emancipated itself from the vicious traditions of the subsidy, and had organized the whole power of the country for war; it was free from the constitutional limitations which had proved a hindrance to heavy taxation in the past; and the irresistible force of its veteran army could be applied at every point of the national life.

The outbreak of the war between England and the United Provinces was at one time attributed to the passing of the Navigation Act on October 9, 1651, but is more properly assigned to the effect upon the Dutch carrying trade of the informal maritime war between England and France. The letters of reprisal issued by the English Government let loose privateers, not only upon French ships, but, in accordance with the older maritime law, upon French goods in neutral ships; and this in turn carried with it the right of search. Down to the beginning of 1652, however, there was nothing to show that war was close at hand; but in February the irritation among the Dutch merchants was greatly increased by the news that Ayscue’s fleet had seized at or near Barbados 27 Dutch ships found trading there in contravention of an Act of October 3, 1650, forbidding all commerce with the Royalist colonies of Virginia, Bermuda, Barbados, and Antigua. The result of the policy of England towards neutral commerce was that on February 22 the States General decided to fit out 150 extraordinary ships of war, over and above the ordinary fleet, which had been increased already to 76 ships. In spite of financial and other hindrances, by the end of April as many as 88 out of the 150 were reported to be nearly ready for sea. The arrangements made for their distribution show that the chief preoccupation of the Dutch Government was to guard against an invasion; but the instructions given to Tromp involved the ultimate certainty of war. He was ordered to resist any attempt to exercise the right of search, and it should also be observed that he neither received nor gave any instructions upon the important point of striking the flag.

1652] Causes of the War.

Meanwhile, although negotiations were still going on in London, the English Government also was busily preparing for all eventualities. The news of the decision to fit out the 150 ships reached Westminster on March 5; and the first of the Orders of the Council of State designed to meet the new situation was dated March 8. The arrangements made included the reinforcement of the summer guard, the building of ships, and the purchase of ordnance. The nature of the emergency compelled the Government once more to rely in part upon armed merchantmen. On March 13 the Council required from all the ports a return of ships of 200 tons burden and over, fit to carry guns, and ordered the owners of them to get them ready for sea. The opening of hostilities might perhaps have been delayed if the two navies had not come into premature collision over the question of the flag. The action off Folkestone on May 19, 1652, was then and afterwards supposed to have been the result of a premeditated attack by the Dutch fleet. It is, however, now certain that the conflict was due to a misunderstanding between Tromp and Blake. The news was received by the Dutch Government with something like consternation; but the English Commission of Enquiry reported that Tromp had deliberately provoked the conflict, and against this it was impossible for the advocates of reconciliation to make any headway. Nor was it in England only that the tide of popular excitement was rising. The Dutch Government had always to reckon with the possibility of a revolution in favor of the House of Orange, if they should appear to be sacrificing the national honor of which the Stadholders had always been so jealous. Accordingly, on June 30, the final rupture took place, and the Dutch ambassadors withdrew. One of them remarked just before their departure : “The English are about to attack a mountain of gold; we are about to attack a mountain of iron”.

The war opened with an English attack upon Dutch commerce. On June 26 Blake, with about sixty ships, set sail for the north. He was ordered “to take and seize upon the Dutch East India fleet homeward bound”, and to “interrupt and disturb” the Dutch fishery upon the coast of Scotland and England, and the Dutch “Eastland” (or Baltic) trade, at the same time securing that of the Commonwealth. Ayscue with a small force was left in the Downs to guard the mouth of the Thames, and to intercept Dutch commerce as it passed the narrow part of the Channel. On July 2 with nine ships he attacked the Dutch fleet homeward bound from Portugal, and managed to take seven and burn three. Tromp had been prevented from an immediate pursuit of Blake by northerly winds; and he therefore turned upon Ayscue in overwhelming force, with 96 ships of war and 10 fireships, and on July 11 prepared to attack him in the Downs, where he lay with only 16 ships. By great good fortune, however, the wind dropped, and then blew strongly from the south, making it impossible for the Dutch to beat up against it through the Narrows, and at the same time giving the long-looked for opportunity for the pursuit of Blake. But it was only by this accident that Ayscue escaped annihilation.

When on July 11 Tromp started on his pursuit of Blake, he was without any certain information of the English admiral’s whereabouts, and was prepared to search the whole of the North Sea, even as far as Shetland; and it was off Shetland that he found him, fresh from the inglorious exploit of breaking up the herring fleet. But once more the weather befriended England. On July 25, a few hours after Tromp had succeeded in locating the English fleet, a great storm blew up from the south-west, converting the Shetlands into a dangerous lee shore for the Dutch, while they served to shelter Blake, who was north-east of them, from the fury of the gale. On the morning of the 26th Tromp could only muster 34 warships out of 92 and one fireship out of 7. Most of the missing ships ultimately reached Dutch ports in safety, but at the time they were supposed to have been lost, and it was therefore decided to make for home.

When Tromp sailed away to the north, leaving Ayscue undamaged in the Downs, a situation was created which compelled the Dutch Government to take further steps for the protection of that part of their commerce which passed through the Straits of Dover. For this purpose a new fleet of 23 men-of-war and 6 fireships, under the command of Michael de Ruyter, put to sea on August 1 escorting a number of merchantmen outward bound to Spain and Italy, and intended to meet the ships homeward bound. Meanwhile, the policy of the English Government was being determined by precisely similar considerations. On July 20 instructions were sent to Ayscue to sail to the westward for the better security of the ships homeward bound from the Indies, the Straits, Guinea, Spain and Portugal, convoying them, if necessary, from the Land’s End, or Scilly, or even “further to sea”. Thus the two fighting fleets, drawn by identical motives, were moving westward along the great highway of trade; and the next action of the war was sure to be fought at the point at which they should meet. The fleets met on August 16 between Plymouth and the coast of France; and, in spite of the fact that Ayscue with his 40 men-of-war and 5 fireships outnumbered the war fleet of the enemy, now reinforced, by something like four to three, he was compelled, after a sharp engagement, to put into Plymouth to repair damages, and Ruyter was able to send his convoy on its way. The disparity of forces was to a certain extent redressed by the fact that some of the merchantmen which Ruyter was escorting were armed, and it is possible that they took part in the fight. In this engagement, as in the later battles of the war, the English fire was directed mainly upon the hulls of the Dutch ships; the Dutch, on the other hand, fired at the masts, sails, and rigging, “the enemy’s main design being to spoil them, in hope thereby to make the better use of their fireships upon us”. It is also noticeable that both sides complained of the behavior of some of their captains.

The next action in the war was due to considerations of a different kind. On his return from the North Tromp had been suspended; and the command of his fleet had been given to Vice-Admiral de With. Towards the end of September de With found himself reinforced by Ruyter, and set free for a moment by the safe arrival of the homeward-bound fleet from Spain and Italy from the necessity of protecting trade; he was therefore tempted to strike directly at the English war-force in the hope of overwhelming Blake and obtaining command of the sea. For such an enterprise the force at his disposal was inadequate; but this was not realised at the time, and on September 25 he appeared at the back of the Goodwins, intending to attack Blake as he lay at anchor in the Downs. The weather, however, made the operation impossible, and the action was not fought until September 28, when Blake took the initiative, and with sixty-eight sail encountered the Dutch fleet of fifty-seven ships off the Kentish Knock, one of the most easterly of the sands which guard the mouth of the Thames. The fight began about five in the afternoon, “continuing till it was dark night”. The resistance of the Dutch, strenuous and fierce as it was at the beginning, was beaten down by sheer weight of metal and accuracy of fire. They lost two ships in action and their fleet was further weakened by the withdrawal of about twenty more, most of them commanded by captains from Zeeland, who were hostile to the domination of Holland, which de With represented. On September 30, therefore, de With decided to return home, under the erroneous impression that Blake's fleet had been strengthened by the arrival of sixteen large ships on the preceding day.

The importance of the victory off the Kentish Knock appears to have been exaggerated by the English Government, who regarded the war as over for the year. The batteries constructed to protect the anchorage in the Downs were dismantled, and Blake was ordered to detach twenty ships for service in the Mediterranean. Towards the end of November, 1652, he was left with only forty-two ships of war in the Downs, besides fireships and smaller craft. Meanwhile the Dutch Government had recalled Tromp to his command, and had been straining every nerve to set forth another fleet. On November 21 Tromp put to sea from Helvoetsluys with a force which was soon augmented to eighty-eight ships of war, besides five fireships and eight smaller craft. He was, however, hampered by an enormous outward-bound convoy; and on the 22nd he had with him altogether as many as 450 ships. Leaving his merchantmen off the Flemish coast, on November 29 he appeared suddenly at the back of the Goodwins, and Blake decided to leave his anchorage and fight.

Action off Dungeness. English reorganisation.

The two fleets came into action off Dungeness about three in the afternoon of November 30. The fight was stubbornly maintained with what a contemporary account describes as “bounteous rhetoric of powder and bullet” until the combatants were separated by the darkness, when Blake, completely outmatched, retreated to Dover Road under cover of night, and the next day returned to his anchorage in the Downs. The Dutch had succeeded in taking two ships; besides this, one had been burnt, three blown up, and many others severely damaged. Besides his inferiority in force there was another cause for his defeat “much baseness of spirit, not among the merchantmen only, but many of the State’s ships”. The defence of the defaulting captains was that they “had not men enough to ply their tackle”; and the evidence of the want of seamen about this time makes this very probable.

The effect of their victory off Dungeness was to transfer to the Dutch the control of the Channel; and the great highway of Dutch trade once more swarmed with ships. English prizes were taken almost at pleasure, and a projected attack on the Thames itself was only abandoned for want of pilots. It was at this time, according to the popular fable, that Tromp hoisted a broom at his masthead to indicate that he had swept the English from the seas. There is of course no good authority for crediting so steady and sober-minded a seaman as Tromp with any such melodramatic proceeding. The year 1652 also closed badly for England elsewhere than in the Channel, for the Dutch established a decisive superiority in the Mediterranean, with the result that, early in 1653, the English Levant trade was at their mercy; and their understanding with Denmark led to the closing of the Sound against England, and the detention of English merchant ships bringing “Eastland commodities” from the Baltic. This cut the English navy off from the main source of its supply of hemp, tar, and certain kinds of timber and plank, but the starvation of the dockyards was averted, as naval stores came in slowly from various places in spite of the measures taken to intercept them, and the naval administrators of the Commonwealth displayed much ingenuity in opening new sources of supply.

The defeat off Dungeness was followed by an enquiry into its causes, and this in turn by extensive measures of reorganization in the English navy, which were destined to exercise an important influence upon the issue of the war. A new scale of pay was adopted for officers and seamen; a new scheme was adopted for putting an end to the delays in the distribution of prize-money; and, by the Laws of War and Ordinances of the Sea, published on December 25, 1652, captains and ships’ companies displaying reluctance to engage were rendered liable to the penalty of death, as also those guilty of slackness in defending a convoy. A change of the utmost importance was also made in the system upon which armed merchantmen were hired. The reluctance of the merchant captains, who were often part-owners, to risk their ships in action, had contributed not a little to the defeat off Dungeness. It was now ordered that the captains of hired ships should be “chosen and placed by the State”, and the other officers “likewise to be approved of”.

It was not until the middle of February, 1653, that Blake’s reorganized fleet of from seventy to eighty sail was fully manned; but it was ready in time to dispute Tromp’s passage through the Channel, as he returned in charge of the homeward-bound merchantmen from the Mediterranean, and to compel him to fight the three days’ action of February 18-20, generally known as the battle “off Portland”. Tromp had a fleet of about seventy-five sail, but he had to cover from 150 to 200 merchant-ships, and to fight a rear-guard action. Moreover, the Dutch were now to experience the enormous disadvantage of fighting far from their base. The English fleet was fresh from port and fully supplied with ammunition and stores; while Tromp had had no opportunity of replenishing his magazines since the action off Dungeness, and was therefore obliged to husband his resources. It was only by a magnificent display of judgment and seamanship that he was able to draw off his convoy homeward. Four Dutch ships of war were taken and five sunk, and it was claimed that as many as fifty merchant-ships were taken, but the information on this point cannot be accepted as entirely trustworthy. One English ship was sunk, one burned by accident, and three disabled.

From March to May, 1653, there was a lull in the major operations, but the silent pressure of naval war was beginning to be severely felt on both sides. It proved impracticable in the long run efficiently to protect trade in the Channel, and the Dutch merchant traffic was being diverted to the long and dangerous route round the north of Scotland. The imperious necessity of protecting commerce on its newly chosen route at first drew Tromp to the north with convoys. The English fleet followed, but failed to meet him. The next encounter took place nearer home on June 2 and 3 off the Gabbard Shoal, east of Harwich. Tromp had with him 98 men-of-war and six fireships, while the English fleet numbered 100 men-of-war with five fireships; but the English ships were altogether superior in size and weight of metal, and the calmness of the sea was all to the advantage of the heavier English guns. Administrative deficiencies also prepared the way for disaster, for after the first day's fighting the Dutch found themselves short of powder; and on the second day the English fleet was reinforced by Blake, with thirteen fresh ships. Although Tromp was able to effect a retreat, he lost twenty men-of-war, all of which had fallen to the enemy as prizes; and the English fleet could now blockade the Dutch ports, reduce to a standstill such trade as remained, and even plan although not carry out a landing of troops.

Action off Scheveningen. [ 1652-3

The establishment of a blockade of their coasts compelled the United Provinces to make a supreme effort to regain control of their own waters. The beaten fleet of Tromp was refitted in the Meuse, and de With collected a squadron in the Texel; but the Dutch admirals could achieve nothing of importance until they had united these two forces. It was Tromp’s attempt to do this in the teeth of Monck’s blockading fleet which led to the final battle of the war. On July 24 Tromp put to sea with 80 men-of-war and five fireships; and on July 28 Monck left his anchorage with about 90 men-of-war and a number of smaller craft, and allowed himself to be drawn southward in pursuit of Tromp. He brought the Dutch rear to action off Katwijk; but the soldier had been outmaneuvered by the seaman, and de With’s escape from the Texel was now assured. In the afternoon of the 30th he joined the main fleet with 27 men-of-war and four fireships; and on the 31st Monck found himself confronted off Scheveningen by a numerically superior force. But once more the issue was decided by the larger ships and the heavier guns. Tromp fell as the fleets were coming into action, and was thus saved the humiliation of witnessing a great disaster. When the engagement was ended by the approach of night, the Dutch were in full flight towards the Texel, having lost heavily, both in ships and men. But the English fleet was too much damaged to keep the sea without refitting; and thus Tromp’s last achievement was to break the blockade and to open the sea once more to Dutch commerce, although at a prodigious cost.

On the side of the United Provinces there was as yet no thought of giving up the conflict. A successor to Tromp was found in the person of Opdam, a land officer, of whom a contemporary wrote : “Never having sailed anywhere but on the canals of Holland, he was obliged to make up by his goodwill and courage for the naval experience in which he was deficient”. But much the same might have been said of Monck on his first appointment; and Opdam was to have Ruyter as his Vice-Admiral. So considerable was the revival of energy and confidence, that nothing but want of provisions prevented the Dutch fleet from attacking the mouth of the Thames and endeavoring to block the river by means of sunken ships. But at the end of October de With’s fleet, riding off the Texel, encountered a furious gale from the north-west, by which half of it was destroyed or dismasted. The rest of the history of the war is concerned only with small captures on both sides.

Of the two belligerents the Dutch were the more exhausted. The impossibility of completely protecting their commerce had caused a shrinkage in the volume of sea-borne trade, and a consequent diminution in the area of productive business upon which the wealth of the country was based. Furthermore, the captures at sea had caused an actual transference of fixed capital from one side to the other. The loss to Dutch commerce occasioned by the war may be measured from the fact that the prize goods sold in England in the seven months between July 27, 1652, and March 8, 1653 at prices in all probability much below the normal market values amounted to =208,655. Thus peace, which was  to England only a relief, was to the Dutch a vital necessity; and this difference in the situation of the two countries was reflected in the terms of the treaty signed on April 5, 1654. The Dutch acknowledged the English claim to a salute for the flag “in the British seas”, undertook to pay compensation on account of the massacre at Amboina, promised to make good the losses of the owners of the English merchantmen detained in the Sound by the King of Denmark, and by implication accepted the Navigation Act. Each State also agreed to expel from its borders the enemies or rebels of the other. Commenting on this last provision from the Royalist point of view, Hyde wrote: “The news of the treaty has struck us all dead”. But if the terms of peace ruined the Royalists, the war which it ended had helped to wreck the Commonwealth. The causes of the Restoration make up a whole chapter of history, but among them a prominent place must certainly be given to the financial exhaustion of the revolutionary State.

If the naval operations of the First Dutch War are viewed as a whole, something of the nature of a progressive evolution may be detected in the strategical conceptions by which they were governed. It has been pointed out that this may be regarded as the first modern naval war, because it presents for the first time “vast concentrations of naval force merely for naval operations”, as distinguished from enterprises like those of Cadiz and Ré, or even from that of the Spanish Armada itself in which naval force was employed to escort and cover a land expedition. But although in this sense it was a modern war, the employment and distribution of naval force was not determined by modern rules. The war begins, not with an attempt to secure the command of the sea by striking at the enemy’s fleet, but with an eager attack upon Dutch commerce, which ignored altogether some of the considerations that weigh with modern naval strategists. When Blake sailed to the north with a large fleet to do what a large fleet was not required for, he left Ayscue exposed to annihilation, and nothing but the accident of a change of wind saved him from destruction. In regarding the destruction of Dutch commerce as the primary object of the war, the instincts of the English seamen of that day were not altogether at fault, for the trade of the Dutch Republic was its life. What they did not at first realize was that the best way to attack commerce was to find out and destroy the enemy’s fighting fleet. On the other hand the instructions to Tromp and his dispatches to the States General at the opening of the war suggest that the Dutch seamen were already thinking upon more modern lines. When Tromp followed Blake to the north, he had evidently grasped the idea that the best way to protect the herring-fleet and to put the homeward-bound merchant-men out of danger was to find and fight the fleet that threatened them.

Notwithstanding Tromp’s breadth of view, which his correspondence shows to have been shared in a measure by the administrators who instructed him, this principle was not yet accepted as axiomatic; and the Dutch Government was always under strong temptation to surrender to the merchants, and to make the protection of commerce the primary object of naval operations. So much was this the case that, generally speaking, the whole of the first phase of the war, so far as the engagement off Plymouth, was dominated by the idea of the destruction of commerce on the one side and its protection on the other. But a development of strategical conceptions can be traced in the later phases of the war. Although the modern phrases were not as yet in use, the battle off the Kentish Knock may be described as a deliberate attempt on the part of de With and Ruyter, now unhampered by convoys, to find and destroy the enemy’s fleet, and so to secure the command of the sea with all its ulterior advantages. The failure of this attempt threw the Dutch back once more upon the protection of trade; but their fleet was not limited to the business of convoy, and it went out of the track of trade to engage the British fleet. The action off Dungeness was fought to obtain command of the Channel and to free it to Dutch commerce; but the reorganized English fleet challenged Dutch control in the action off Portland; and the result of it closed the Channel, and diverted the trade of the Provinces to the longer route round the north of Scotland. In attacking off Portland, Blake may still have thought of himself as intercepting commerce; but the action off the Gabbard shows that the English also had now firmly grasped the importance of searching out and destroying the enemy’s fleet; and the result of it enabled them to take the offensive and to blockade the Dutch upon their own coasts. Last of all, in the operations off the Texel, Tromp, by a stupendous effort, flung off the tightening coils, and set the Channel free.

The tactical problems involved in the history of the First Dutch War are at once important and difficult of solution. The contemporary accounts of the naval battles are incomplete, confused, and contradictory; and the absence of conclusive evidence upon the points at issue establishes conditions favorable to controversy. The papers already published show that the Dutch fleets possessed a complete squadronal organization. They were divided into three, four, and even five squadrons; and each squadron was itself subdivided usually into three divisions, each under its own commander. In the English fleet squadrons can be traced at least as far back as the expedition of Norreys and Drake to Portugal in 1589, and they occur in the expeditions to Cadiz and Re. As far as the Dutch War was concerned, the foundation of a squadronal subdivision was laid on May 19, 1652, when Penn was appointed Vice-Admiral and Bourne Rear-Admiral; and it is clear that the English fleet was divided into three squadrons under Blake, Penn, and Bourne at the battle off the Kentish Knock, although at Dungeness, we are told, while “the Dutch had divided themselves into three battalions or squadrons, ours continued in one entire body”.

1652-4] The tactics of the War.

Another controversial question connected with the tactics of the First Dutch War is the battle formation of the fleets. At the beginning of the war the current conception of the way to fight an action was that expressed in Lindsey’s Instructions of 1635, and again in a slightly different form in the instructions given to Penn in 1648 an assault by the admiral, vice-admiral, and rear-admiral upon the corresponding ships of the enemy, the other ships to “match themselves accordingly as they can”, and “to secure one another as cause shall require”. Under this system the commanders would maneuver for the wind, and, having gained it, would bear down upon and thrust themselves through the hostile fleet, the ships of each squadron rallying round their own flagship. The action would then resolve itself into a general melee in which individuals would perform prodigies of valor; but there would be no attempt at concerted action on any important scale. Of such a kind was the first battle of the war, fought off Folkestone on May 19, 1652. The conflict was unpremeditated; there is no satisfactory evidence of a regular battle formation; and, after battle was joined, there appears to have been a general mélée, the ships being crowded together at short range. It was only to be expected, however, that the experience gained from the first continuous series of fleet actions at sea would lead to a development of tactical conceptions; and in this war a remarkable advance is noticeable towards the establishment of the line ahead as the inevitable battle formation of fleets.

But it is by no means easy to determine precisely how far the development of tactics towards the line ahead was carried by the seamen of the Commonwealth; for the meager allusions in the contemporary accounts do not enable the historian to realize in imagination exactly how the battles were fought, and there is a standing temptation to interpret doubtful phrases in the interest of a preconceived idea. The whole of the evidence is now before us so far as the three days’ battle off Portland on February 18-20, 1653, and it is not too much to say that it contains no suggestion of the existence of a line formation upon either side. The common form for the description of these actions on the English side is to say that a particular flag-officer charged the enemy “stoutly” or made “a furious assault”, and the context makes it probable that he was supported only by a group of ships. The formation of the Dutch fleet is indicated by Tromp’s Resolutions of June 20, 1652, “On the distribution of the Fleet in case of its being attacked”. These provide that the vice-admiral’s squadron is to “lie or sail immediately ahead of the admiral”, and the rear-admiral’s “close astern of the admiral”; but nothing is said about a line formation, and each captain is required only “to keep near” the flag-officer whom he serves. As each squadron had a divisional vice-admiral and rear-admiral, besides the admiral in command, these instructions when carried out in practice would have involved an organization in small groups, but that the effect produced was not that of a line formation appears from the contemporary accounts. It is expressly stated that the Dutch “lay in a close body” at the beginning of the action off the Kentish Knock; and Gibson’s account of the battle off Portland is that “the Dutch fleet in a body bore down upon the generals”.

 The action off the Gabbard on June 2, 1653, appears to have impressed contemporaries somewhat differently from the earlier battles of the war. The older phrases are not used to describe it, and an eye-witness observes of the English fleet that the ships “did work together in better order than before, and seconded one another”. The action off Scheveningen on July 31, 1653, was also described as “a very orderly battle”. These references to a better order are the way in which the contemporary accounts reflect what was not far short of a revolution in naval tactics. The way for this had been prepared by the reorganization of the English navy which had taken place just before the battle of Portland. In the earlier actions of the war the presence of large numbers of armed merchantmen would have been fatal to orderly fighting; for the merchant captains, who were always trying to save their ships in action and could not be trusted to obey a simple order to engage, would scarcely have been able to carry out fighting instructions which required concerted action of an elaborate kind and at the same time exposed individual ships to greater risks. The reorganization of 1653, which placed the hired merchantmen in the charge of officers chosen by the State, was a condition precedent to the adoption of a tactical system in place of promiscuous fighting.

 The new tactical system was imposed upon the navy when on March 29, 1653, the Generals-at-sea Blake, Deane, and Monck issued the first Fighting Instructions which aimed at the line ahead as a battle formation; and it was under these instructions that the action off the Gabbard was fought. They required the ships of each squadron, so soon as the signal to engage was given, to “endeavor to keep in a line” with their own flag-officer, unless he should be disabled; in which case his squadron “shall endeavour to keep in a line with the admiral, or he that commands-in-chief next unto him, and nearest the enemy”. That an attempt was made to carry this out in practice appears from an account of the action of June 2 sent from the Hague, stating that the English “put themselves into the order in which they meant to fight, which was in file at half cannon-shot”.

It should, however, be observed that the problem of the introduction of the line ahead is not of so simple a nature that it can be regarded as entirely solved by the issue of the Fighting Instructions of March 29, 1653. On the one hand it is usual for fighting instructions to crystallize previous experience rather than to establish a novelty, and the English naval commanders must have been feeling their way towards the new formation before they embodied it in formal instructions. It is probable that the influence of Monck was exerted in favor of introducing some of the orderliness of a land battle into battles at sea; but it is not likely that Monck could have carried through a revolution in tactics unless it had been justified by the larger naval experience already acquired by his colleagues of longer service. On the other hand although the Instructions of 1653 establish the line as a formation for squadrons, it would be premature to conclude upon the evidence at present available that we have here the single line ahead of later naval tactics. It is improbable that such a system would spring suddenly into being in full completeness to replace the older form of fighting; and, if such a revolution in naval tactics actually took place, we should expect it to leave deep marks upon the history of the problem. In the battle off the Gabbard the English fleet consisted of one hundred men-of-war and five fireships; in that off Scheveningen Monck had ninety men-of-war and a number of smaller craft. If these had gone into action in a single line ahead the difference in the formation from that of the earlier battles must have struck the contemporary imagination; and, if so, it would have been reflected in contemporary narratives, which would have teemed with statements supplying positive evidence of the fact. A “very orderly battle” appears a singularly inadequate phrase in which to record so striking and obtrusive a change; and yet the documents at present accessible yield nothing more definite. The one statement which, if true, would be conclusive, that on July 31, 1653, the English fleet was drawn up for battle “in a line more than four leagues long” rests on questionable authority.

The idea of the single line ahead is, no doubt, to be found in the Fighting Instructions of 1653; but, if practice rather than theory is considered, the transition from promiscuous fighting to the single line ahead would appear to lie through an application of the system to squadrons rather than to fleets. However this may be, recent investigation has effectually disposed of the notion once current among historians that the new system was borrowed from the Dutch. The line ahead and its applications were English from the beginning, and there is no satisfactory evidence upon which the Dutch admirals can be credited with initiating the change.

The Western Design. [1654-5

Three months after the signature of the treaty of peace with the United Provinces England found herself drifting towards a commercial war with Spain; and by the end of the year 1654 the Protector was employed in carrying out the “Western Design.” The expedition of Penn and Venables, which sailed in December, was the one irredeemable failure of Cromwell’s military career. He had approached the details of the scheme with some of the irresponsible optimism of Buckingham; and the enterprise reproduced most faithfully all the administrative defects which had ruined the expeditions to Cadiz and Ré. Although the demeanor of Penn and Venables towards each other during the voyage was reported as “sweet and hopeful”, the jealousy between them accentuated the evils arising out of a divided authority. The soldiers were not seasoned regiments, but drafts from different parts of the country chosen by their colonels for foreign service because they were useless at home. The victuals were found to be defective, and the “casualties of diseases... that men are subjected to” in the tropics had not been sufficiently taken into account. The troops landed in Hispaniola on April 13, 1655, and marched to attack the city of Santo Domingo; but no satisfactory arrangements had been made to keep open communications with the fleet, and the want of supplies, and especially of water, reacted disastrously upon discipline. The attempt upon the city proved a hopeless failure, and on May 4 the expedition re-embarked for Jamaica. Here success was cheap and easy, as the total Spanish population did not exceed 1500 persons, and of these not more than 500 were capable of bearing arms. On June 25 Penn set sail for England with his larger ships, leaving the frigates to guard the new acquisition and to look out for prizes; and soon afterwards his example was followed by Venables, with some justification, as he was dangerously ill. An attempt was made to suggest that Jamaica was practically part of Hispaniola; but to the Protector the failure of the expedition stood confessed. He had hoped to command the trade-route of the Spanish treasure-ships, and, as he himself had phrased it, to “strive with the Spaniard for the mastery of all those seas”. His great scheme had broken down, like those of Buckingham, upon the details of administration and at a prodigious cost in men and money he had acquired only a useless island. Yet, after all, the occupation of Jamaica must be viewed as part of a greater whole. The Dutch War had given England the command of the sea; and thus she was led to take the first step upon the road which was to lead to Empire in the West.

The "”Western Design” had grown out of the Protector’s relations with Spain : his relations with France led to the adoption as a principle of the maintenance of a permanent fleet in the Mediterranean. When Blake set sail on October 8, 1654, with twenty-four ships of war, his immediate purpose appears to have been to frustrate the expedition which the Duke of Guise was preparing for the conquest of Naples; and it is probable that his presence in the Mediterranean goes far to explain the ultimate abandonment of the project by France. But the expedition was also intended to protect the Levant trade against the Barbary corsairs, to show the flag in the Mediterranean ports, and to continue the reprisals against France. The problem of piracy was a standing perplexity of the English Government in the first half of the seventeenth century, and attempts had already been made to deal with it. Rainborow’s blockade of Sallee in 1637, in particular, is for several reasons a notable exploit in naval annals. He was the first commander to recognize the value of the boats of a squadron for purposes of blockade; he anticipated Blake in attacking forts with ships; and the proposals made by him on his return home for dealing with Algiers by protracted blockade anticipated the plan carried out in Charles II’s reign under Narbrough, Allin, and Herbert. Blake’s dealings with Tunis in 1655 mark another stage in the development of naval operations. Tunis itself was invulnerable; but Blake found nine of the Dey’s men-of-war lying in the neighboring harbour of Porto Farina under the protection of a fort and batteries. On April 4 he made his way into the harbour with fifteen sail, and silenced first the batteries on the moles and then the guns of the castle, “the Lord being pleased to favor us with a gentle gale off the sea, which cast all the smoke upon them and made our work the more easy”. Meanwhile, under cover of the fire from the ships, “boats of execution” boarded the Tunisian vessels, and set them on fire one by one. The fleet then warped out again, having inflicted ruinous loss upon the enemy at the trifling cost of twenty-five killed and forty wounded. It was not the first time that a fleet had successfully engaged shore batteries, and the landing of troops had been covered in this way before; but here we have a naval operation pure and simple, in which, without any landing of troops, the fire of shore batteries was overpowered and silenced direct from the sea. In spite of this exploit, Tunis remained obdurate; but, when on April 28 Blake appeared before Algiers, he met with quite a different reception. The treaty of 1646, securing freedom of trade to English merchants, and the exemption from slavery of Englishmen captured after that date, was extended to inhabitants of Scotland and Ireland, and numerous captives were ransomed. Blake’s work was completed three years later by Stoakes. In January, 1658, he appeared before Tunis and obtained from the Dey a treaty protecting English trade from interference and giving the warships of each State free access to the ports of the other; and from Tunis he repaired to Tripoli, and obtained for the asking a treaty similar to those which had been made with the other piratical States.

On October 24, 1655, peace was signed with France : a few days earlier, on October 15, the Council had decided upon war with Spain. During the months which intervened between this decision and the formal declaration of war by Spain in February, 1656, a powerful fleet was equipped in the English ports for service upon the Spanish coast, and Edward Mountagu, afterwards Earl of Sandwich, one of the Protector’s personal friends, was assigned as a colleague to Blake. His appointment as General-at-sea dates from January 2, 1656; but the fleet of about forty- six sail did not leave Torbay until March 28. The expedition was too late to intercept the treasure-fleet, and nothing could be done at Cadiz, for the Spanish warships had taken refuge in an inner channel of the harbour. Blake and Mountagu were therefore obliged to fall back upon their secondary objects; and one of these was to occupy a point in Spanish territory from which they could control the Straits and intercept any expedition for the relief or reconquest of Jamaica. The first suggestion for the occupation of Gibraltar as a naval base had been made at a Council of War held at sea on October 20, 1625, to decide on the objective of the ill-fated expedition which went to Cadiz. During the winter of 1651 Penn had used Gibraltar as an anchorage when he was watching the Straits night and day for prizes; and Blake himself had already had abundant opportunities of appreciating the importance of the rock which commands what has been called the “Mediterranean defile”. Thus it was only a further step upon a road already taken when it was now proposed to seize and occupy Gibraltar. It is probable that the project had been already discussed with the Protector before the expedition sailed, and he recommended it in a dispatch of April 28; but this did not reach the Generals-at-sea until after the idea had been abandoned as impracticable; and a second reconnaissance only convinced them that the place could not be taken without a land force of 4000 or 5000 men. The generals therefore contented themselves with maintaining the blockade of Cadiz. It was in the course of this operation that Richard Stayner, one of Blake’s best captains, with only three ships in action, attacked and nearly destroyed the Spanish Plate fleet of eight sail on September 9, 1656. One of the prizes was a great treasure-galleon valued at ,600,000, while the total loss to Spain was something like two millions.

After the destruction of the Plate fleet Stayner and Mountagu with several of the larger ships went home; but Blake, undertaking a new departure in naval warfare, maintained the blockade of the Spanish coast all the winter through. Not long after Stayner had rejoined him in the spring, news reached him that the silver-fleet from America had got as far as Santa Cruz in Teneriffe. On April 20, 1657, he arrived there with 23 ships, to find the fleet moored in the harbor under the protection of the castle and a number of smaller forts and entrenchments. The harbor was not an easy one to get out of, especially as the breeze was off the sea, and Blake had to take great risks. He stood into the bay with the flowing tide, intending to destroy the ships and forts, and come out when the tide turned. Any miscalculation in point of time might have meant a grave disaster, but Blake’s confidence in his guns was not misplaced. By three o'clock in the afternoon every Spanish ship was sunk, blown up, or burnt, without serious loss to the English fleet, which drew off on the ebb as its commander had intended. The legend is now rejected that the retirement was assisted by an almost miraculous change of wind.

The blow struck at Santa Cruz had great results. The destruction of the silver-fleet, and the interruption by England’s sea power of the flow of treasure from the New World, disorganized the military operations of Spain both in Portugal and Flanders. With this great achievement the work of Blake was ended, and he was ordered home; but he died on board his ship on August 7, 1657, at the entrance to Plymouth Sound. His successor, Captain John Stoakes, maintained the power of England off the coast of Spain and in the Mediterranean; but the political troubles which preceded the Restoration were felt far away from the center, and in June, 1659, Stoakes was recalled.

In the year 1657 the English military and naval forces found a new objective, and in alliance with France they were directed against Mardyk and Dunkirk. The share of the navy in this enterprise was limited to the maintenance of a fleet of twenty-six ships off Dunkirk to cover the military operations and to cooperate with the besieging army. In March, 1659, also, an English fleet under Mountagu was ordered to the Sound, to arrange, and if necessary to enforce, in conjunction with the Dutch, such a peace between Denmark and Sweden as should prevent the Baltic becoming a Swedish lake. The experience of the Dutch War had shown how important free access to Eastland commodities was to both the great naval Powers.

Meanwhile the tide of events was beginning to run strongly towards a Restoration. The revolutionary Governments of the period of the Commonwealth had been based upon military power, and except for Monck, who combined the parts, it may be said that the Restoration was effected by soldiers and not by seamen. But no opposition came from the navy. Mountagu’s resolution in favor of the King was adopted on May 3, 1660, at a Council of War, without a dissentient voice; and Pepys tells us that “all the fleet took it in a transport of joy”. On May 12 the fleet sailed from the Downs, and on the 25th it reappeared with the King on board; and thus the weapon of naval power first forged by the Stewart House passed into its keeping again. But in the interval this weapon had acquired a keener temper and had been wielded by stronger hands. England as a military State, disposing of a veteran army, must in any case have exercised an important influence upon the system of States to which she belonged. But England, armed on land, was also armed at sea, and a period which had begun with the ineffective expeditions of Charles I’s reign, ended with intervention everywhere, supported by a naval and military force which seemed almost irresistible. Thus the Commonwealth may be regarded as a period of transition between the naval tradition of Elizabeth and the modern conception of the English navy. It is curious to find this most strikingly expressed by a statesman who during the impressionable years of youth had himself watched the great conflict between the English and the Dutch for naval supremacy. Shaftesbury, who served under Cromwell, and who was still a young man at the Restoration, had been nourished in a period of revolution upon the ideas of the future, and he put one of these into words when he said to the Pension Parliament : “There is not so lawful or commendable a jealousy in the world, as an Englishman’s of the growing greatness of any Prince at sea”.