THE FIRST YEARS OF THE COMMONWEALTH
The AUTHORITIES for this chapter are the same as for the last. By
far the most valuable is the Life of Penn. This book is in reality a
collection of authorities, with no other internal coherence than is
supplied by the subject and chronological order, but the compiler has
missed little indeed which is of interest. M. de Pontalis' _Jean de
Witt_ gives a luminous account of the political and military condition
of Holland at the time of the outbreak of the war with England.
The Civil War came to an end, and the interregnum began with the
execution of Charles, on January 30, 1649. The resolute men who had
now laid their hands on power made their grip felt at once. Before the
month of February was over, they had completed the work of reorganising
the navy. The change was typified by an outward symbol which told
its own tale to every sailor's eye. Warwick had carried the Royal
Standard at the main, and his ships had worn the man-of-war flag of
King Charles's reign. This was the Union in the old form, which lasted
until the end of the eighteenth century; that is to say, the Red Cross
of St. George and the White Saltire of Scotland. English merchant
ships had carried the English Ensign, the Red Cross of St. George on
the white ground, while Scotch ships used the national White Cross of
St. Andrew on a blue ground. By order of the Council of State, now the
executive governing body, the English Navy was to carry the Red Cross.
The Royal Standard disappeared, and so did the Crown, from the device
carved on the stern of the ships. In future they were to carry only
two shields--one with the arms of England, and another with those of
Ireland. The removal of the old symbols was naturally followed by the
dismissal of a commander who had of late been little more than a living
symbol of the vacillations and political incompetence of his party. On
the 22nd of February, Warwick was dismissed from his place of Lord High
Admiral. On the following day three soldiers of the victorious party
were appointed as joint commissioners for the command of the fleet,
with the title of admirals and generals at sea. These were Colonel
Edward Popham, Colonel Robert Blake, and Colonel Richard Deane. Popham
and Blake were Somersetshire men of good birth. Blake, after serving in
subordinate positions in the West, had held Taunton for the Parliament
during the year between the battles of Marston Moor and Naseby, with
signal advantage to his party, and great glory to himself. Colonel
Richard Deane was of Gloucestershire by descent. His youth had been
obscure, but he had risen rapidly to high command in the Civil War, and
was known as one of the most able and trustworthy of the Independent
officers. He had perhaps been at sea in some humble capacity in his
youth. There is nothing to show that the other two had any experience
in ships. All three were appointed because their loyalty was certain,
and because they had shown themselves resolute fighting men.
At the same time, active measures were taken to secure both the
devotion and efficiency of the fleet. According to the uniform practice
of the Long Parliament, the administration was kept in the hand of an
Admiralty Committee of members of Parliament. Under them there was
a Navy Committee, consisting of officials who discharged the duties
of the Treasurer, Surveyor, Comptroller, and Clerk. Both bodies were
composed of able and zealous men, by whom the work of administration
was excellently done. During the first years of the Commonwealth,
the navy made great strides both in number and quality. Ships were
so rapidly built that the effective strength was as good as doubled
between 1649 and 1651. The work of building was largely done by the
Petts, who were now so effectually established in the dockyards that
it would have been impossible to replace them by an equally competent
body of officials. Nor, although their grasping spirit made them
unpopular, was there any reason for getting rid of them. The Pett
family served its successive masters with the undeviating loyalty of
the Vicar of Bray. For them the commanding interest of the nation was
that they should retain their places. During these earlier years the
Commonwealth was also comparatively rich. It had not yet to bear the
strain of the great Dutch war, and it had not exhausted the resources
afforded by the confiscated estates of the Church, the Crown, and
the Royalists, nor had it yet used up the fines levied on the king's
party for the sin of Delinquency. Therefore it was able not only
to build ships rapidly and well, but also to pay the sailor with a
regularity to which he had not hitherto been accustomed. The wealth
of the Government, and the need it had for his services, were, for a
time, of immense benefit to the sailor. His pay had been raised from
15s. to 19s. a month during the Civil War. Under the Commonwealth it
was increased to 23s. for able seamen, and 19s. for ordinary seamen.
As much as 25s. a month were given to the men engaged on particular
service, such as the pursuit of Rupert. Measures were also taken to
give the men a fairer share of prize-money, and to secure its rapid
and honest distribution. Government had hitherto looked upon prizes
taken from the enemy as a resource. Being in chronic want of money, it
had treated its men with scant generosity. The evidence both of Sir
William Monson and Sir Richard Hawkins shows that Elizabeth's sailors
expected little justice at the hands of her officers. The Commonwealth
was soon beset by the same necessities as the Crown, and yielded to the
temptation of throwing as many charges as possible on the Commissioners
for prizes. Yet it did try to be handsome in its behaviour towards
its servants, who for a time, before and after the establishment of
Cromwell as Protector, profited both in pay and prize-money to a
hitherto unknown extent. At no time do they seem to have been so badly
used as they had been under Charles I., and were again to be under
Charles II. Pay and prize-money were not all. Care was taken to supply
better food, and more of it. The observance of Lent, which had hitherto
enabled the State to economise meat rations, was abolished; though
this was probably mainly done by the Puritans from a religious motive.
Better pay, more prize-money, and good feeding had the desired effect
of securing the loyalty of the seamen. We may at any rate attribute
to them at least as much effect in keeping the sailors steady to the
Commonwealth as to their high conception of that duty of preventing
foreigners from "fooling us," which is sometimes supposed to have
supplied their main motive.
The work before the navy of the Commonwealth at the beginning of 1649
was sufficiently abundant and varied. The Royalists still held the
Channel Islands, and Ireland was unsubdued. Besides this, the English
settlements in America had not yet been brought to submission to the
new Government. The Puritan colonies were indeed thoroughly in sympathy
with the Commonwealth, but Virginia was Royalist, and Barbadoes, then
our only footing in the West Indies, was held for the king. An even
more pressing duty than the subjugation of Royalist strongholds in
the Channel and the West Indies lay before the Commissioners who had
succeeded Warwick in the command of the fleet.
When the Parliament's fleet retired from Helvoetsluys, carrying with
it the revolted ships which had returned to their duty, it left a
remnant of seven vessels in the service of the Prince of Wales. It was
natural that he should endeavour to make use of these vessels for the
cause. The manner of using them was imposed upon him by circumstances.
They could not hope to meet the Commonwealth's naval forces in open
conflict, but they could prey upon the commerce of the king's disloyal
subjects. It might have been wiser not to yield to the temptation of
using them in a species of warfare which could hardly help becoming
piratical, but the need for money was great, the technical right of
the king to fight for his crown on the sea was at least as good as his
right to continue the struggle by land, and the prince did what it
would have required exceptional wisdom and virtue to restrain him from
doing. He appointed Prince Rupert as his admiral, with the proviso
that he was to vacate the place to the Duke of York if called upon,
and issued commissions authorising him and his captains to make prize
of all the king's English enemies, and all such foreigners as should
give them help. It was one thing to appoint an admiral and give him a
commission, and quite another to fit the ships for sea. The exiled king
had no money. He expected his squadron to provide him with funds. The
ships must be got to sea somehow. A resource was found by selling the
guns of the =Antelope=, and with the money thus provided another of the
ships at Helvoetsluys was armed for sea. A lucky privateering cruise
brought in funds, and with them the remainder were armed.
Rupert left Helvoetsluys in January 1649, with a squadron of seven
warships and one armed prize. This was the whole naval force which now
supported the Royal Standard of England. It ran down Channel and made
for Kinsale. The blockade of this port had been raised by Parliament
on the recommendation of Colonel Edward Popham. Prince Rupert entered
it with the ships which had accompanied him from Helvoetsluys, and
perhaps with some prizes he had picked up on the way. From this harbour
he began cruising against English commerce with such success, that
whereas the remnant of His Majesty's navy had lately been in extreme
distress, it was now able to boast itself rich. A further service was
rendered to the Royalist cause by the relief of the garrison still
holding the Scilly Isles for the king. Prince Rupert was struck by
the advantages this group of islands seemed capable of affording to
an enterprising leader engaged in harrying commerce. He thought they
might be turned into another Venice. Another Algiers would have been
a more accurate expression. His schemes for making the Scilly Isles
a basis of operations against the commerce of England were nipped in
the bud by the naval forces of the Parliament. One of his ships was
captured after a hot fight by two of the Commonwealth cruisers, and
this misfortune seems to have been received as a sharp warning by its
comrades. They returned to Kinsale, and, while engaged in getting ready
for a summer cruise, were disagreeably surprised by the appearance of a
strong blockading force under the command of Sir George Ayscue. Ayscue
was soon called away to other service, but his place was taken by two
of the new admirals and generals at sea, Blake and Deane. They held
Rupert so closely blockaded until October, that not only were his raids
against commerce entirely stopped, but great discontent arose among
his men, who were reduced to idleness and threatened by want. Many
deserted, and Rupert was compelled to disarm some of the prizes which
he had been fitting for sea. After the first successes of Cromwell had
made it clear that the king's cause was ruined in Ireland, the position
of Rupert at Kinsale became one of extreme danger. If the blockade had
continued until the Puritan army was upon the town, it is eminently
probable that, unless Rupert had been slain in action, he would have
followed Hamilton and Culpepper to the block. A heavy gale released
him from this peril. It drove the forces of the Parliament off the
coast, and gave Rupert an opportunity of escaping of which he did not
fail to avail himself. With his original seven ships, but without his
prizes, he sailed for Portugal. The overwhelming naval strength of the
Parliament in the Channel had rendered his original scheme of holding
the Scilly Isles impracticable.
On his way south he fell in with and captured some English merchant
ships near the Berlings. Rejoiced by this booty, which he calculated
would be worth forty thousand pounds to the king's service, he entered
the Tagus. At Kinsale he had heard of the execution of King Charles,
and had received a confirmation of his commission from the new king.
He appealed to the Portuguese Government for a friendly reception.
The King of Portugal owed his own throne to a successful revolt, but
he was quite as much shocked by the iniquity of the English rebels
as any of the longer established monarchs of the Continent. As the
Commonwealth was not yet fully established, the Portuguese acted as if
they thought it safe to treat it with indifference. Rupert was openly
received by the king, and was allowed to make profit of his prizes.
Complaints of his depredations, and outcries from the merchants trading
to the Straits, whose ships were endangered by his cruisers, assailed
the Council of State. In December it began to take measures to send a
squadron in pursuit. Blake and Popham were ordered to consult on the
measures to be taken. Almost immediately afterwards it was decided
that Blake should sail alone for Lisbon, while Popham remained in
the Channel. Deane had been called off for service with the army in
Scotland. The squadron appointed to go with Blake was first fixed at
five vessels--the =Tiger=, the =John=, the =Tenth Whelp=, the =Signet=,
and the =Constant Warwick=. Before Blake was ready to sail, his force
was increased to twelve vessels. There was, however, an interval of
nearly three months between the decision to send him to the southward
and the sailing of his squadron. In spite of the efforts of the New
Admiralty Committee, the navy was not yet in a condition to provide
large squadrons at very short notice. The calls upon its resources
were many. In April of 1650 thirty-nine vessels were required in the
Downs, or on the coasts of Ireland and Scotland, in addition to the
twenty which were then cruising to the southward under the command of
Popham and Blake. The establishment which the Council of State thought
necessary was sixty-five vessels in all. Blake spent the two first
months of 1650 at Plymouth, getting his squadron ready for sea. Early
in March he made his appearance off the mouth of the Tagus, with a
fleet strong enough to be too much, not only for Rupert, but for the
feeble kingdom of Portugal. He had explicit instructions, which were
confirmed and extended when Popham joined in April, to treat Rupert
as a pirate, that is to say, as an enemy of the human race, who was
not entitled to receive asylum. His orders were to point this out to
all princes in whose ports he might meet the Royalist admiral. If
they refused to take the same view, then Blake was authorised to
attack Prince Rupert, even in the harbour of a State not at war with
England--to act, in fact, on the principle that whoever treated Rupert
as a friend was an enemy of England.
When Blake found Rupert at anchor in the Tagus, he made a demand for
his surrender. A diplomatic agent was landed to represent the case of
the British Parliament to the King of Portugal. King John was in a
cruel position. He could not surrender Rupert without a certain amount
of disgrace. Indeed he was so feeble that the Royalist adventurers
would have been formidable enemies. Rupert had no scruple as to
treating his host with scant politeness, and there was a party at the
Portuguese Court in favour of helping the Royalists. On the other hand,
the king had fair warning that if he did not treat Rupert as a pirate,
the Parliament would ruin his commerce. While the king was vacillating,
the two fleets remained at anchor not far from one another, and their
sailors had frequent conflicts. An unsuccessful attempt was made by
the Royalists to blow up Blake's flagship by a torpedo. When Blake
found that the Portuguese Government was not yet ready to help him
against the Royalists, he proceeded to prove to it the danger of the
course it preferred. His station at the mouth of the Tagus enabled
him to lay hands easily on all ships coming in or going out. When the
outward-bound Brazil fleet put to sea, it was found to include several
English vessels freighted by the Portuguese. These Blake pressed for
the service of the Commonwealth, and sequestered their cargoes. The
blow was a sharp one, and was not made more palatable by an intimation
that it was only a warning, and that worse would follow if the
Portuguese persisted in their ill-advised courses. The king was not
unnaturally very angry, and appealed to Rupert to help him in driving
off Blake's squadron. Nothing could have been more to the taste of the
Royalist admiral, and if there had been any effective Portuguese fleet
to help, he would have helped it. But there was not, and therefore
when Rupert put to sea no battle took place. Rupert hoisted the Royal
Standard and made a bold show. But in reality he could not venture
to do more than skirmish with the overwhelming force opposed to him.
Blake had been joined by Popham, and their combined force was not less
than twenty vessels. The three capital ships and four small frigates of
Rupert's own following were no match for such an antagonist. Therefore,
although Rupert came near enough to have his topmast shot away, he
could not venture to do much more than skirmish at a moderate distance
from the forts, when the wind blew from a direction which gave him
security that he could get safely back again.
Shortly after this ineffectual effort to drive off the blockading
squadron, the home-coming Brazil fleet appeared, and, being quite
ignorant of the state of affairs, sailed into the hands of Blake and
Popham. This was a second and a worse blow to the Portuguese. Once
more King John was stirred up to make an effort. Again he appealed to
Rupert, and again nothing came of it. The Royalist promised help, but
Blake and Popham left him no opportunity of keeping his word. Their
ships by this time must have been very foul. They had good reason to
be satisfied with the punishment they had inflicted on the King of
Portugal, and they sailed with their prizes for the Spanish port of
San Lucar de Barrameda. By this time the Portuguese Government had
been taught that it was not wisdom to fight with the keepers of the
liberties of England. It took advantage of the absence of Blake and
Popham to get rid of Rupert, not by driving him out, a feat beyond its
resources, but by bribing him to be gone. His ships were refitted, his
prizes were taken off his hands, and he was bowed out. Rupert himself
was not loth to be at sea again, where there were prizes to be taken.
He ran through the Straits of Gibraltar and entered the Mediterranean,
with the intention of preying on English commerce.
This third stage of his career began in September 1650. It was a step
downwards. By this time the ruin of the Royalist cause had been put
beyond doubt. The Governments of the Continent were beginning to grasp
the fact that it would be wiser for them to make friends with the
new power. A naval force, which no longer represented a Government
in possession of even a part of its territory, was on the high road
to fall into sheer piracy. It could live only by plunder, and was
compelled to treat all who refused to allow it to sell its booty as
enemies. In the Mediterranean, Rupert made haste to prove to all the
world that he was not the man to stand upon trifles, or to consider
those who were not strong enough to inspire him with respect. The
extreme feebleness of the Spanish Government was a temptation to a man
of his temperament. He took a bold and simple line with the Spanish
authority in the southern ports. All English ships, he said, which obey
the present revolutionary Government are the property of the rebels. No
civilised State can be allowed to harbour such people. Therefore, when
I find English ships in your harbours, I shall attack them, and, if you
interfere with me, shall fire on you.
This declaration of policy was the answer of the exiled King's Lord
High Admiral to the Parliament's declaration that he himself was a
pirate. It was very natural, and as a matter of theory was perhaps
equally accurate, but then it was not supported by the same effective
force. When, therefore, Rupert insisted upon acting on the principle
that his opponents were rebels, who were not entitled to enjoy asylum
in the ports of foreign princes, he laid himself open to severe
retaliation. As a matter of fact, he did just enough to inspire the
Spaniards with a strong desire to see Blake's squadron make an end
of him. At Malaga, at Velez Malaga, and again at Motril, he attacked
English merchant ships, and made prize of all of them which did not
run on shore, without paying the slightest respect to the neutrality
of Spanish waters. Had there been any Spanish navy in existence, his
career would have been short. But the Spaniards were too weak to defend
themselves from insult. They were compelled to rely on the assistance
of Blake, who was refitting his squadron at San Lucar, after the
fatigues of the blockade at Lisbon.
Blake had not been able to prevent Rupert from running through the
Straits, probably because his ships were all equally foul, and equally
in need of scraping, and he was therefore unable to station vessels
at sea to intercept the Royalists. So soon as he could get ready, he
followed Rupert up the Mediterranean, and about the 7th of November
came on the bulk of the Royalist cruisers at Carthagena. Rupert
himself was absent. His ships had been scattered in a gale on the
5th of November, and he, with one other vessel, was cruising in the
neighbourhood of Formentera, where he took a richly-laden merchant ship
called the =Marmaduke=, after some fighting. With his prize, Rupert
returned to the mainland of Spain, and, not finding his consorts, left
a message informing them that he had sailed for Toulon. It was not till
he reached the French port that he heard of the disaster which had
overtaken the rest of his squadron. Blake had attacked at once. The
Royalists complained that the Spaniards had suffered the law of nations
to be outraged in their harbours. They had very little choice, but,
from their point of view, the action of Blake cannot have appeared much
worse than Rupert's. The Royalists made no resistance, many of the men
were pressed out of the English prizes, and, even of those who were
not, many were getting tired of an adventure which brought them little
but danger and exile.
Rupert had been driven on to the coast of Sicily by bad weather,
before he could make the coast of France. There he was well received,
and allowed to sell his prizes--an act of compliance on the part of
the French officers for which the commerce of France was severely
punished. Blake, acting on his instructions, immediately retaliated by
capturing French merchant vessels, and when he left the Mediterranean,
as he did shortly afterwards, the same course was vigorously pursued
by his successor, William Penn. Penn's cruise in the Mediterranean
lasted till April of '52, and was fruitful in French prizes. He had
been called from the coast of Ireland to command a squadron of eight
frigates, designed to replace the heavier ships of Blake's command.
The Parliament was now using the naval forces of England with a vigour
of which there had been no previous example. The necessity of proving
to the country that it was capable of protecting commerce against the
utmost Rupert could do, acted as a stimulus, even if there had not been
a strong wish to make the monarchies of the Continent understand that
the new Government was far too powerful to be treated with neglect.
The measures taken were not inadequate to the work on hand. In the
November of 1650 William Penn sailed with a squadron of eight frigates,
and with orders first to make a cruise against the Portuguese on their
own coast, and in the Western Islands, with the object of capturing
their merchant ships on the way home from Brazil, and then to enter the
Mediterranean, where he was to relieve Blake in the work of hunting
down Rupert. The Council of State was so resolute not to delay the
work, that it did not wait until the whole squadron was ready. Penn
sailed on the 30th of November, with five of his frigates, for the
Azores. The other three joined him there under the command of John
Lawson. The whole force contained an exceptional proportion of men who
gained distinction in the sea service: it consisted of the--
Ships. Men. Guns. Captains.
=Fairfax= 250 52 William Penn, vice-admiral.
=Centurion= 150 36 John Lawson.
=Adventure= 150 36 Andrew Ball.
=Foresight= 150 36 Samuel Howett.
=Pelican= 150 36 Joseph Jordan.
=Assurance= 150 36 Benjamin Blake.
=Nonsuch= 150 36 John Mildmay.
=Star= 80 22 Robert Sanders.
This squadron was in the Azores by the 17th of January 1651, and, after
cruising with fair success between them and the Rock of Lisbon, entered
the Mediterranean in March. In addition to Penn's squadron, another was
fitted out under command of Captain Edward Hall, for the purpose of
convoying the trade to the Mediterranean. Hall's squadron consisted of--
Ships. Men. Guns. Captains.
=Triumph= 300 52 Edward Hall, vice-admiral.
=Tiger= 150 36 James Peacock.
=Angel= 150 30 William Rand.
=Ant. Bonadventure= 150 30 Walter Hopton.
=Trade's Increase= 160 44 William Jacob.
=Lion= 190 44 Jac. Birkdel.
=Hopeful Luke= 126 34 William Goodson.
There was thus a double protection. While Hall applied himself to
the convoying of merchant ships, Penn was free to pursue Rupert. The
Royalists gave no trouble, and the two squadrons of the Parliament
had little to do beyond making reprisals on the nations which had
incurred the hostility of England by showing favour to Rupert, and by
endeavouring to put some check on the excesses of the Algerines. Yet
the presence of two forces acting in the Mediterranean at once, so soon
after the appearance of Blake, must have given the Southern nations a
greatly enhanced opinion of the naval power of England. The officers
in command were well aware that they were doing much more than merely
chasing away a handful of Royalist cruisers. Their sense of the higher
importance of their work is very well expressed in a letter written by
Captain Hall from Cadiz, on the eve of entering the Mediterranean.
"Your fleets meeting here, so soon after the departure of the other
fleet, is of no less admiration to other foreign kingdoms (into
which reports fly of them daily) than to Spain; who much admire your
quickness, in such strength and full supplies. So as I believe, in a
short time, the Spaniards, between fear and love, will grow respectful
to us. Though, hitherto, we have had little sign of it, more than
compliments (only free access to the shore, where we are in nowise
molested in our business), which we fail not to equalise them in."
Although Rupert vanished from the sight of Blake and his successors
in the Mediterranean, and indeed did not again come in contact with
the naval forces of the Parliament, we cannot ignore the actions of a
gentleman who was Lord High Admiral, and who flew the Royal Standard
by commission of the rightful king. After the defeat at Carthagena he
was now reduced to three vessels, and a large part of his crews was
discontented. Only the high courage of the man, and the determination
of the exiled Royalists who had accompanied him, sufficed to prevent
wholesale desertion, or open resistance to his authority. Partly by
good management, but more by force, Rupert kept his command together.
With the proceeds of his prizes he purchased a fourth vessel, and
started on certainly the most extraordinary cruise ever undertaken by a
Lord High Admiral of England. It lasted for two years, and at the end
there remained only one of the four ships with which it began. He had
entered the Mediterranean with "poverty and despair as his companions,
and revenge as his guide." These comrades attended him, and he kept
this aim in view to the end. From Toulon he sailed to the coast of
Africa, and there began avenging the wrongs of his master and uncle,
Charles I., by capturing a Genoese carrack, partly on the pretext that
the Republic had given him offence, and partly through the "clamour of
the seamen," who, having entered on a voyage which had much the look of
piracy, were minded to enjoy the privileges of the position. Then he
took a Spanish galleon, making use of the Parliament flag as a device
to throw her off her guard. Having now done his very best to arouse
the whole naval forces of the Mediterranean against him, Rupert wisely
roamed out into the Atlantic. He had a scheme for making a cruise on
the coast of Africa, and thence over to Barbadoes, which was known to
be still held for the king by Lord Willoughby of Parham. It may be
that this scheme was not very definite, and that he in reality drifted
about very much at the mercy of accident, and the pressure exercised
on him by the hope of booty, or the constant mutinous conduct of his
men. He first went to Madeira, where he was civilly received by the
Portuguese authorities, who were subject to hostilities both from Spain
and the Parliament, and could therefore not put themselves in a worse
position by favouring Rupert. From Madeira he went to the Canaries, and
then to the Cape de Verd Islands, and then back to the Azores, always
capturing what English and Spanish ships came in his way. On the coast
of Africa he was actively helped by the Portuguese, and even by the
Dutch, who were now themselves on the eve of war with England, and were
not sorry to see the Lord High Admiral engaged in destroying the trade
and settlements of the king's disloyal subjects. The Hollanders did not
foresee that within a few years the knowledge gained in these cruises
would be turned against themselves. Among the officers who followed
Rupert was the Captain Robert Holmes who became an admiral after the
Restoration and led a squadron to the coast of Africa for the purpose
of sweeping out the Dutch.
In the September of 1651 Rupert's strength was sorely diminished.
His flagship went down in a gale with three hundred and thirty men,
although every effort was made to stop the leak, even to the thrusting
of a hundred and twenty pieces of raw beef into it, and stancheoning
them down. Rupert was saved by the devotion of his followers. Shortly
afterwards another of his little squadron ran aground in the Azores and
became a total wreck. He endeavoured to replace these losses by arming
his prizes, but his resources diminished too fast. His men continued
to desert, and he had no means of replacing them. After his disasters
in the islands, he returned to the coast of Africa in May '52, and
applied himself alternately to plundering the English at sea, and the
Moors on shore in the neighbourhood of Cape Blanco. By this time his
vessels had become strained, so that well-found merchant ships had less
difficulty in escaping them. The Portuguese, too, had made peace with
England. His refuges were being shut to him, and he could not sell his
prizes. After failing to capture an English vessel, "very snug, with
taut masts," which they took for a man-of-war (the fighting ship was
already known by her greater smartness), Rupert deserted Africa and
the Atlantic islands and betook himself to the Antilles. He had come
too late to assist in the defence of Barbadoes against the Parliament,
but the Dutch war had now begun. Rupert had not the smallest scruple
in assisting the enemies of England against the enemies of the king.
He was busy near Nevis and other parts of the Windward Islands. In
the course of his cruising he gave his name to Prince Rupert's Bay on
the western side of the island of Dominica, very close to the scene
of one of the most famous of English naval victories. At last, among
the Virgin Islands, he was overtaken by the most destructive of the
many storms he had experienced. His brother Maurice went down with all
hands, and Rupert himself, being now worn out and overmatched, returned
home with his only remaining ship. He reached Nantes early in 1653
in safety. His one surviving vessel was burned by accident, so that
nothing was left of the force with which he had originally sailed,
except a few of the adventurers.
While the small remnant of the king's naval forces was pursuing a
course of adventures which hovered between piracy and privateering, the
Council of State was making vigorous use of its navy for the purpose
of stamping out what resistance to its authority still lingered on
in outlying territories. In 1651 it armed, in addition to the Home
Guards and the squadrons of Penn and Hall, a further squadron under
the command of Sir George Ayscue. His mission was to reduce the royal
garrison at Barbadoes, and to receive the submission of the plantations
of North America. Barbadoes had passed into our hands by occupation
as far back as the reign of Elizabeth. It had never been held by the
Spaniards, who probably neglected it because it lay well out in the
Atlantic to the eastward of the Antilles. Although of little direct
value to them, its position made it desirable to a Power which wished
to be able to attack the Spanish Indies. Being to windward, it supplied
an excellent starting-point for a squadron intending to assail the
Antilles. It has a good harbour and fertile soil. The early history
of our settlement in Barbadoes is peaceful and obscure. The settlers
appear to have included an exceptional number of capitalists, and few
among them belonged to that class of emigrants who left England for
religious reasons during the reign of Charles I. By the middle of
the century it is said to have contained fifty thousand inhabitants,
over and above the black slaves and the remnant of the native Indian
population. In the desperate state to which the king's fortunes were
reduced, his desire to retain so valuable a fragment of his dominions
was very natural. He could do little to defend it in the way of
supplying men or money. It was, however, in his power to appoint a
resolute governor; and this he did. The Lord Willoughby of Parham, who
had been named Vice-Admiral by Charles at Helvoetsluys in 1648, had
been displaced by the mutiny of his men when the squadron returned
from its unsuccessful cruise into the Thames, was sent as governor to
Barbadoes, and was well received by the planters. So long as they were
not called upon to fight or suffer for the royal cause, these persons
were perfectly prepared to recognise the king's authority. They had a
militia apparently well armed, and forts in the principal settlement at
Carlisle Bay, but the reality of strength was not in proportion to the
show.
In spite of the ease with which Willoughby established his authority,
the Barbadians were not undivided. There was a Parliamentary party
among them. Some of the leaders of this section of the inhabitants
thought it more prudent to desert the island on the arrival of Lord
Willoughby. They had taken refuge in England, and had promised the
Parliament support if it could send out a force for the conquest of the
island. Several of them accompanied Ayscue. Sir George did not proceed
at once to the West Indies, but began his campaign by a cruise on the
coasts of Spain and Portugal. It was hoped that before crossing the
Atlantic he might do something towards the final suppression of Prince
Rupert. But Rupert had by this time given up even the appearance of
struggling with the Parliament's navy, and had gone farther to the
south. After searching in vain for an enemy who eluded him, Ayscue went
on to discharge the second part of his mission. It is possible that he
did not wish to reach the West Indies during the hurricane months of
July, August, and September. In October that danger is considered to
be over. On the 16th of October he appeared off Carlisle Bay, on the
western side of Barbadoes. There were several Dutch and some English
ships at anchor, and these Ayscue seized, on the ground that they were
trading with the enemies of the Parliament. Then he summoned Lord
Willoughby to surrender. The Royalist governor made a stout answer,
and the planters appeared for a time to be ready to support him. But
in truth, as the result showed, they were not prepared to risk much
for the cause. Ayscue established a blockade of the island, and put an
entire stop to its trade. This threatened the planters with ruin, and
a large party among them were soon converted to a conviction of the
necessity of bringing Lord Willoughby to reason. A very active leader
of this section of the inhabitants was a certain Thomas Modyford,
colonel of one of the regiments of colonial militia, a man who had a
very strange and varied career to run in the West Indies before he
died. He had fought for the king in England, and was a new-comer in
Barbadoes, where he had landed only in 1647, but he had brought with
him the means of buying a plantation, and now he was not inclined
to risk his possessions in the apparently desperate cause of his
master's son. He therefore made his peace with Ayscue, and gave the
Parliamentary leader assurances of support. Ayscue had but few soldiers
with him, and would probably not have risked the landing unless he
had been sure of help. In December, two months after his arrival, he
received what he had the art to represent as a reinforcement. The West
Indian Islands were commonly supplied with food for themselves and
their slaves from Virginia. The ships bringing these stores arrived
in the month of December. Trading fleets at that time, when the New
World swarmed with pirates, preferred to sail together, for the sake
of mutual protection. When they reached him, Ayscue made believe that
he had received a reinforcement of men, and at once landed at Carlisle
Bay. The resistance was so trifling that it is hard to believe the
defenders to have been in earnest. Ayscue obtained possession of the
forts without the least difficulty. The occupation of the rest of
the island would have been beyond his power if the planters had been
unanimous in the support of Lord Willoughby. Colonel Modyford had done
his work too well, and there were no doubt many other planters as
little disposed as himself to lose all for loyalty's sake. They must
have known very well that even if they beat off Ayscue, they would
only bring a more formidable armament on themselves a little later,
while their trade would be ruined in the interval. They soon made Lord
Willoughby understand that he must not expect too much from their
devotion, and the king's governor surrendered on terms which Ayscue had
the generosity, or the good sense, to make liberal. From Barbadoes the
fleet sailed to Virginia. There had been some fear that Prince Rupert
might reach the Old Dominion, and give trouble; but the prince, as we
have seen, was otherwise employed. Virginia, though partly Royalist
in sympathies, had already submitted. The plantations farther to the
north were thoroughly Puritan; and when Ayscue returned to England, he
was able to report that the authority of the Parliament was peacefully
acknowledged throughout the whole extent of the American colonies.
Whilst Sir George Ayscue was bringing the colonial settlements to
obedience of the Parliament, the work of utterly extirpating the
king's authority had been completed at home. Blake had returned from
the Mediterranean in February, leaving Penn to take his place. He
was well received by the Council of State, and rewarded not only by
thanks, but by a grant of money. The Government had immediate need of
his services again. Though completely beaten in England, the Royalists
were still struggling in Scotland, and they held possession both of
the Scilly and the Channel Isles. From these posts they carried on
harassing privateering war against commerce. It was not only the damage
they did to trade which made these garrisons highly inconvenient to
the Government. They had not been very careful to distinguish between
English and foreign property in their captures, and had at least done
enough to justify the Dutch in threatening to take the law into their
own hands. The fear that Tromp, who commanded the naval forces of the
States in the Channel, would seize at least upon Scilly was avowed,
and was possibly not wholly unfounded. The most effectual way to put a
stop to any enterprise of the kind was manifestly to eject the Royalist
garrisons from these posts. In April Blake convoyed a military force
sent to take possession of the Scilly Isles. The service was rapidly
and effectively performed, with the help of Ayscue, who was starting
on his voyage to America, and of Colonel Clarke, a military officer
despatched by Desborow. Sir John Grenville, the Royalist governor,
held out until the 24th of May, and then brought a resistance, doomed
to be unavailing, to an end by surrender. The operations against the
Channel Isles were suspended for a short time by the march of the Scots
army under Charles II. into England. But after the "crowning mercy"
of Worcester in September they were resumed. On this occasion Blake
had the sole naval command, and his military colleague was Colonel
Hayne. Sir George Carteret was helped to prolong his defence by the
bad weather, which made it impossible to land the troops for days.
But the end was inevitable. With an overwhelming naval force at their
command, and the now completely victorious New Model Army to draw on
for reinforcements, it was at best a mere question of time when the
Parliament would obtain possession of the islands. So soon as he had
done enough for honour, Sir George Carteret saved his estate from
confiscation by surrendering his forts. In these operations the share
of the navy had in a sense been subordinate. It had comparatively
little to do with the fighting, and its work had been almost wholly
confined to carrying the troops over and landing them. But in another
sense these last Royalist garrisons were in reality taken by the navy.
If it had not acquired such a commanding superiority of strength at sea
as destroyed every Royalist hope of help, Grenville and Carteret might
have held out for long. In this, as in the earlier stages of the war
with the king, it was the possession of the navy by his enemies which
proved ruinous to him.
The revolutionary party had now done its work effectually in the
domestic field of battle. Its enemies, as far as the navy was
concerned, were in future to be foreigners. There was no doubt, even
before the end of 1651, who the main enemy would be. At that time
there was but one possible opponent at sea for England, the United
States of the Netherlands. War had been preparing between them for some
time, and very little was wanted to bring it on. The passing of the
Navigation Act in 1651 was of itself an almost sufficient cause for
hostilities. The policy which this law was designed to enforce was not
in itself new. As far back as the reign of Henry VII., laws had been
passed to support English shipping against foreign competition, but
they had either been ill enforced, or ill calculated to secure their
purpose. The Navigation Act of 1651 was directed against the carrying
trade of Holland, with avowedly hostile intentions. It was drafted for
the express purpose of ruining the Dutch shipping as far as we were
concerned, by forbidding the importation of goods into England, except
in ships belonging to the nation which produced them, or in English
vessels. This of itself might not have led to open conflict between the
two countries, but there were other causes of hostility. The rivalry of
the English and Dutch at sea had not always been peaceful. In the early
days of the century the East India Companies of the two countries had
combined to assert their right of trading with the East in defiance of
the Portuguese. When their feeble opponent had been overcome, a task
very easily effected, they had fallen out with one another. The chief
scene of their conflict had been in the islands of the Indian Ocean,
and the victory had remained with the Dutch, who made these the seat
of their Eastern Empire. The most notorious incident of the expulsion
of the English from the region which the Dutch desired to reserve to
themselves, was the massacre of Amboyna, an island near the Moluccas,
in 1623. By the terms of a treaty made in 1619 between England and
the United Provinces, it had been agreed that the two nations were to
live in peace in these regions, and that their respective factories
were to share the trade. According to the English account, which is
certainly supported by probability, the Dutch vamped up an accusation
of treason against the English factors (_i.e._ commercial agents)
at Amboyna. Under the pretence that they had entered into a plot
with the Japanese to massacre their Dutch allies, they were suddenly
attacked, thrown into prison, and tortured with abominable cruelty.
Then, taking advantage of this supposed discovery of a plot, the Dutch
made it a pretext to expel the English factories from the whole of
the Spice Islands. During thirty years the memory of the massacre of
Amboyna had remained fresh with the English. The Governments of James
I. and Charles I. had made several attempts to obtain satisfaction by
diplomatic means, but the States had either been unwilling or unable to
compel the powerful East India Company to replace the English factories.
There were other causes of dispute between the Governments, such as the
not unnatural favour shown by the Prince of Orange to the cause of his
father-in-law, King Charles. The prince had indeed recently died in
the midst of a constitutional conflict with the Republican party. His
opponents were now masters in Holland, but even this served rather to
promote discord. The Commonwealth took up with a fantastic scheme for
a union between the two republics, and when it was coldly received, as
might have been expected, was, not very wisely, angry. The murder of an
English envoy at the Hague by Royalist refugees served to exasperate
existing ill-feeling. Perhaps not the weakest motive with the Council
of State was its knowledge that war with Holland would be popular.
Revolutionary Governments have at all times the strongest possible
motive for directing the energies of a nation into foreign war. Under
the influence of these different motives, England undoubtedly forced a
war upon the Dutch Republic. Trade rivalry, the memory of old wrongs,
the hope of displacing the Dutch from their commercial supremacy, and
the natural instinct of all Governments to do what will tend to their
own preservation, combined to make conflict inevitable.
The importance of the first Dutch war as an epoch in the history of the
English Navy can hardly be exaggerated. Though short, for it lasted
barely twenty-two months, it was singularly fierce and full of battles.
Yet its interest is not derived mainly from the mere amount of the
fighting, but from the character of it. This was the first of our naval
wars conducted by steady, continuous, coherent campaigns. Hitherto our
operations on the sea had been of the nature of adventures by single
ships and small squadrons, with here and there a great expedition sent
out to capture some particular port or island. When we now look back on
the long and glorious story of England on the sea during the last three
centuries, the grandeur of the later period is liable to mislead us
in our estimate of the earlier. In 1652 England was far from enjoying
that reputation for superiority in naval warfare she earned in later
generations. In fact, the majority of operations undertaken by her
fleets had been failures. The defeat of the Armada had always, and
not unjustly (whatever our national vanity may say to the contrary),
been accounted for by causes other than the strength of Elizabeth's
navy. Since then, the Cadiz expedition of 1596, in which we had the
co-operation of a Dutch squadron, had been our only signal triumph. The
voyage to Portugal in 1589, the last voyage of Drake and Hawkins to
the West Indies in 1594, the expedition against Algiers in 1620, the
expedition to Cadiz in 1625, the attack on the Ile de Rhé in 1627, had
all been either barren or disastrous. The valour and the seamanship of
the English was not disputed, but there was nothing to lead the Dutch
to believe that they would prove a specially formidable enemy on the
sea. If the States hung back from war, it was not so much because they
had reason to doubt the capacity of their fleets to contend on equal
terms with ours, but because they were a commercial power having much
to lose and little to gain by hostilities, because their long war with
Spain had burdened them with a heavy national debt, and because the
obligation to defend a vulnerable land frontier made it impossible for
them to dispense with the burden of a large standing army. This war
caused a great change in the estimate of our power at sea. It proved
that we could show ourselves superior to what was beyond all question
the greatest naval power on the Continent, and thereby raised the
position of England in the world.
The novelty of the war no less than its importance makes it convenient
to take a survey not only of the material condition of our fleet, but
of its moral and intellectual capacity for warfare at sea, before
beginning an account of the operations. There is nothing to be added
to what has been said at the beginning of this chapter as to the
organisation of the navy of the Commonwealth. Experience led to some
changes during the progress of the war, but at the beginning the fleet
was governed and organised as it had been during the Civil War. It
has already been pointed out that between 1648 and 1651 the number of
ships fit for service had been substantially doubled, and the quality
of the recent additions to the list was excellent. With the help of
hired or pressed merchant ships, the Council of State was able to meet
the Dutch with equal forces. The size of the squadrons maintained
during the Civil Wars, with the nature of their recent service in the
Mediterranean and America, had given the fleet practice, and the State
the command of a body of proved officers.
There is more doubt as to how far the navy was prepared for a great war
by the possession of a definite system or order of battle. According
to the prevailing opinion, an English fleet was a collection of ships
which fought pell-mell, each as it best could, and as the spirit of
its captain caused it to be handled. This is a view which I find
myself unable to accept. It has, in my opinion, both probability and
direct evidence against it. In the first place, it is difficult to
conceive that any force consisting of ships ranging in number from
forty to nearly a hundred can possibly have been moved about, directed
against an enemy, and led to victory, unless it had had some understood
formation which the commander could use, and the individual captains
were familiar with. A fighting force which goes in no kind of order
is a thing one finds it hard to imagine--provided, of course, that
it is also supposed to be efficient. The most barbarous tribes of
warriors have some method of marshalling a host. The most rudimentary
common-sense will teach the most backward of mankind that they cannot
fight at all unless they move together on the enemy, help one another,
and put each individual of their body in such a position that he can
use his weapons. The same experience must have taught the seamen of the
middle of the seventeenth century the same lesson. Unless they had been
incredibly stupid, they could not possibly think of rushing into battle
with an enemy so formidable as the Dutch, without some more or less
definite idea how they were to bring their whole power to bear upon
him. It is true that they did not write essays on tactics, but this
only proves that the time was not given to writing about the operations
of war at sea, while the want of minutely precise fighting orders may,
in the light of the later history of our navy, be considered as rather
a proof of sagacity than of the want of knowledge.
We are not, however, left to draw our deductions as to the existence of
a recognised formation of battle in the English Navy from probability
only. There is direct evidence that the natural order of a fleet which
fights with its broadside, the famous line of battle, was familiar
to the generation of Blake. Fourteen years after this war, Penn, in
speaking to Pepys, declared that the Dutch always fight in a line,
"and we, whenever we beat them." As this was said at the beginning
of the second Dutch war, it is impossible to believe that Penn was
not thinking of the previous struggle. Then we had been repeatedly
successful against the Dutch, and it seems to follow that it had been
for the reason given by the veteran admiral, among others. His words
in conversation to Pepys are not Penn's only contribution to the
evidence of the existence of a line of battle. In a letter describing
his share in the battle off the Kentish Knock, he says: "We ran a fair
berth against the head of our general to give room for my squadron
to be between him and us." It is to be presumed that when the ships
forming that squadron filled the place left vacant for them, they
were understood to do so in such a way as to be able to use their
broadsides. This implies that none of them were to be so placed as to
get between a comrade and the Dutch; in other words, they were to be
in "line ahead," _i.e._ one behind the other, the only position in
which a number of vessels carrying their guns on their sides could all
fire without running the risk of hurting one another. We hear, too, of
fleets tacking together, which presupposes that they were so placed as
to allow them freedom of movement, and that there was some system by
which a general order could be conveyed. But there are two pieces of
still stronger evidence which I cannot but think must be held to settle
the question. The first is to be found in a letter from Captain Joseph
Cubitt of the =Tulip=, and gives an account of the last battle of the
war.
"The 31st, the weather being fair, and both standing to sea, we tacked
upon them, and went through their whole fleet, leaving part on one
side, and part on the other of us; and in passing through, we lamed
several and sunk more. As soon as we had passed, we tacked upon them
again, and they on us, and as we passed each other very near, we did
very good execution on them, and some of their ships that had lost all
their masts struck their colours, and put out a white handkerchief on
a staff, and hauled in all their guns. My men were very desirous to go
to them, there being two of them very close, but the fight being but
then begun, I would not suffer it; they were fired by others after the
fight was over.
"As soon as we had passed each other, both tacked, the Hollander
having still the wind, and we keeping close by, we passed very near
and did very great execution upon each other. In this bout we cut off
some of his fleet, which could not weather us, and therefore forsook
him, and some of them were sunk, and we had the =Oak= fired by one
of their Branders. We again tacked upon them and they upon us, and
in this bout we fought most desperately, almost at push of pike. A
Flushinger was sunk close by the =Victory=. He intending to board the
=Victory=, had entered three or four of his men with their pole-axes,
but the =Victory's= carpenter's axe cut them down on the side of the
ship."
The movements described by Captain Cubitt are not conceivable unless
we suppose that the English fleet was in line ahead. When he says,
"We went through their whole fleet, leaving part on one side and part
on the other of us," and again when he says, "We cut off some of his
fleet which could not weather us," he describes the movement which
was deliberately executed by Rodney on the 12th April 1783, and was
unwittingly performed by all the ships of his fleet, counting from
Commodore Affleck's to the rear at another breach in the French line.
It could not have been executed except by ships in a line ahead, and
we have therefore sufficient reason to believe that this formation
was adopted by our fleets in the first Dutch war. The second piece of
evidence is to be found in the "Instructions for the Better Ordering
of the Fleet in Fighting," issued by Blake, Monk, Disbrowe, and Penn,
in March 1655. Here it is distinctly ordered that, when the fleet
prepares to engage, the vice and rear admirals are to place themselves
respectively to right and left of the commander-in-chief, "giving a
competent distance for the admiral's squadron"; that, when in action,
every ship is to keep in a line with the chief of its own squadron,
or, if he falls out crippled, then with the commander-in-chief; that,
if one vessel falls out injured, the others are to "keep in a line"
between her and the enemy; while signals are provided by which an
admiral can order his van or rear, which are leeward or windward of
him, to come into his "wake or graine," that is, into a line behind
or ahead of him. It may be allowed that the order of line ahead was
not very accurately preserved. It is as near impossible as may be to
keep sixty to ninety ships of very different sizes and sailing powers
manoeuvring for any length of time without allowing them to fall into
disorder. But the weakness of the execution does not prove the want of
a system. We may therefore consider it as established that, however
ill the plan may have been executed, our ancestors in the first Dutch
war did endeavour to fight in that formation which experience has
shown to be the most effective for a fleet of ships depending on their
broadsides for their power of injuring the enemy. That the Admiralty
of the time did no more than prescribe a method of engaging in general
terms, and then order their captains to do their best, is to their
honour. This is what Nelson did at Trafalgar, at a time when nobody
supposes that the line was unknown to our seamen. What the reticence
of the Admiralty of the Commonwealth proves is, that the formation
had not been degraded to the superstition which it became in the last
quarter of the century.
The reason which made the line ahead the most effective formation for
warships is implied in what has already been said. Their power lay in
their broadsides, which could only be used when the vessels were in
that order. The ancient galleys relied on their beak, and the later
galleys carried a single great gun in the bows, and would therefore
naturally be placed with their prow towards the enemy, since it was
this that they relied on as their means of offence. When several of
them were acting together, they would be placed side by side, as a
matter of course, as this arrangement put them all where they would
have an opportunity of striking the enemy, and of helping one another.
This formation is called the line abreast, and for ships armed on the
broadside is manifestly useless. It might be, and was, used when they
were moving together to attack the enemy, but, from the moment that
they came within striking distance, their natural course was to turn
their side to him. In doing so, they would take care to turn in the
same direction, since, if they did not, the fleet would be immediately
split up into a number of discordant parts going in different
directions, and in imminent danger of running into one another. But
this movement of turning in one direction from the line abreast would
inevitably bring them into a more or less accurately formed line
ahead. There remains the alternative that the fleet attacking in line
abreast--a course it could only follow from windward--might endeavour
to steer through the enemy and engage him on the lee side. This was
actually attempted by Lord Howe on the 1st of June 1794, and it has
the obvious advantage of putting the attacking force on the enemy's
line of retreat, which, in the case of sailing ships, is unavoidably
to leeward. But this method of attack could only be employed against
an enemy who remained passive, which it does not appear that the Dutch
ever did in this war.
With two fleets both moving, it could hardly happen that they could
engage except when sailing on the wind, that is, with the wind on
one side and not behind them. In that position an admiral had a much
greater control over the movements of his squadron. Thus the formation
which gradually came to be accepted as normal was the close-hauled
line of battle. In order that each vessel, while retaining the power
of striking at the enemy, was also to have the necessary freedom of
movement, a space had to be left between them in which they could turn
when occasion arose, and which would give to each the time to avoid the
ship immediately ahead of her, if it, by any chance, became disabled.
As it was desirable to employ the greatest number of men in fighting,
and as few as might be aloft, while it was obviously convenient to
diminish to the utmost the surface presented to an enemy's fire, it was
a practice imposed by the conditions of sea battles to go into action
with a diminished spread of sail. It was further necessary that every
vessel should have the power of increasing her rate of speed. If one
vessel was crippled, the next behind her had to push up and take her
place, which could only be done where there were some immediate means
of increasing the rate of speed. This margin was secured by employing
a detachment of men to spill the wind out of one of the sails, so that
it did not produce its whole effect in dragging the ship on. Spilling
the wind meant the keeping one corner of the sail loose, so that it
flapped and did not hold the wind. When the speed of the ship had to be
increased, the sail was sheeted home, or, in the old phrase, they "let
everything draw." It follows, from what has been said, that a fleet was
always compelled to regulate its speed by that of the slowest vessel in
the line. The great majority of battles fought by ships under sail were
conducted very slowly. It was seldom that the line moved at more than
two and a half or three miles an hour.
In saying that the seamen of the middle seventeenth century knew the
advantage of forming a line and attacking in that order, I do not
mean to assert that they had carried the art of handling a fleet in
battle to the perfection it attained in later times, but only that
they were not in the habit of endeavouring to fight in a mere swarm.
Their ignorance of the refinements of the conduct of a fleet was
perhaps in their favour. It is the defect of every formation for war,
whether by land or sea, that it is capable of becoming, in the belief
of dull and pedantic men, an end in itself. This did happen with the
close-hauled line of battle, within about forty years of the first
Dutch war. Every order is valuable only in so far as it enables a
fighting force to bring its whole strength to bear. When it has done
that, it has served its purpose. But it may happen that a generation of
unintelligent leaders will get into the habit of endeavouring to avoid
whatever disturbs the mere arrangement of their forces, and will aim
at preserving that, even when, by so doing, they have to let slip the
opportunity of damaging the enemy. In the first Dutch war this pedantry
had not yet begun to be visible among the admirals on either side.
That the modern navy was beginning in this war is further to be seen
in the fact that we now first meet with a general body of orders
established for the maintenance of discipline by the authority of
the State. Hitherto each admiral had drawn up his own code, and from
among them there had been formed what may, without a fantastic abuse
of words, be called a body of common law known as the Customs of the
Sea. The brief pamphlet containing the regulations of the Council
of State is the germ of the weighty volume, hardly smaller than a
family Bible, which contains the Queen's Regulations and Admiralty
Instructions. There will be occasion to return to it when we reach the
great organising period of Charles II.'s reign. It is enough to note at
present that, while maintaining the old authority of the admirals and
captains, it gave the seamen a security against the arbitrary will of
their superiors by providing that they were not to be punished until
after regular trial. One change in the internal economy of the ship
was promoted by this war. Hitherto it had been the custom to carry
lieutenants in ships of the third rate and upwards, and in them only
one. Under the strain of a great and serious war, it was found that
this did not afford a sufficient supply of the higher rank of officers,
and the number of lieutenants was increased. Admiral Penn, in a letter
to Cromwell dated early in the war, argued they should be employed in
all vessels.
"And if the charge of it be objected, it may be answered that, by
taking off one man from each ship that shall have these lieutenants
(which man's victuals and wages is 1s. 4d. per diem), the lieutenant
receiving as common pay, which is 8d. per diem, makes him 2s.; and
truly, 'tis a sad lieutenant that's not worth two common men in time
of action."
The enemy with whom we were about to engage was strong enough to call
for the exercise of the whole power of England. He was not, however,
of such resources but that it was within our means to overcome him
by sufficient exertions. In number of seamen and ships the United
Provinces excelled us largely, but not in the number of men available
for war, or of ships equal to the strain of battle. England was still
mainly an agricultural and pastoral country. She could, if needful,
take nearly all her seamen for her fleet, and suspend her trade for a
time. The Dutch Republics could not do so without ruin. Three hundred
and sixty thousand people depended on the herring fishery for their
subsistence. Amsterdam, according to the old proverb, was built upon
herrings. Unless this trade could be pursued, ruin stared the State of
Holland in the face. The over-sea commerce and the carrying trade were
no less vital. The Dutch were the carriers by sea, and the importers of
tropical produce, for all Europe. If the fishery and the over-sea trade
were even seriously interrupted, the loss to Holland was colossal;
therefore even an inability to drive the English fleets off the sea,
though it might stop short of complete defeat for themselves, would
entail such loss on the States that they would be forced to make peace.
In view of the strenuous exertions of both Charles I. and the Long
Parliament to strengthen the English Navy, the Dutch Government ought
certainly to have taken proportionate measures to increase their own.
But the Dutch naval strength had been rather neglected. This error can
be accounted for by more causes than one. The Republics had hitherto
had to contend with Spain alone at sea, and she had long ceased to
be a formidable enemy. In the meantime they had been called upon to
maintain a constant land warfare, first against Spain alone, and then
in the later stages of the European conflict called the Thirty Years'
War. They had to keep on foot an army of 57,000 men, which was raised
by voluntary enlistment and largely recruited abroad. It was therefore
very costly, and to it the navy had been sacrificed. The princes of
the House of Orange, though great soldiers and great statesmen, had
not been uninfluenced by professional feeling. They had consequently
devoted their attention mainly to the army by which they had won their
own glory. Between economy and the want of statesmanlike military
direction, the naval force had been treated in a somewhat peddling
fashion. Its ships were slighter and smaller than the fine vessels
constructed by the Petts. As they were also made flat-bottomed, in
order to navigate the shallows of the Dutch coast, they were less
weatherly than the English, and therefore liable to be out-manoeuvred
and out-sailed in the open sea.
The nature of the government of the United Netherlands was a cause of
weakness to their fleet and of strength to us. Although we habitually
speak of the Dutch Republic, there were, in fact, seven sovereign
republics, each independent within its own borders, joined together
by necessity, and common interests, in a very loose confederation.
The authority of the Stadtholders of the House of Nassau, Princes
of Orange, had given unity of direction to the armed forces of
the Confederacy. They were Captains and Admirals General, and so
Commanders-in-Chief by sea and land. They appointed to the higher
posts, and could secure the steady combined co-operation of all
the forces. But in 1652 there was no Stadtholder. William II., the
successor of Frederick Henry, and son-in-law of Charles I., had died
suddenly in the midst of a conflict with the State of Holland, and
the reigning Prince of Orange was his posthumous son, our own King
William, after the Revolution of 1688. William II. had been aiming at
welding the whole seven provinces into one strongly organised State,
under the hereditary rule of his own house. He had made an unsuccessful
attempt to seize Amsterdam and coerce the State of Holland. In the
course of this adventure he had imprisoned a number of the magistrates
in his castle of Loevenstein--from which the Republican party took
their name. It is possible he might have succeeded if he had lived;
and in that case we know, and the Long Parliament knew, that he had
entered into an alliance with the King of France, for the double
purpose of dividing the Spanish Netherlands between them, and upsetting
the Republic in England. But he died before doing more than arouse the
Republican Party in his own country, and convince those who now ruled
England that their own safety was bound up with the destruction of the
House of Orange Nassau.
In the absence of an Admiral-General, the control of the naval
forces of the Low Countries was divided between five Boards of
Admiralty,--that of the Maas, which sat at Rotterdam, that of
Amsterdam, that of North Holland, and the Boards of Zeeland and
Friesland. The States General, the only approach to a common government
of the Confederacy, was a body in which each republic had one vote,
though represented by a number of deputies. It was of more dignity
than real strength, and exercised only the powers delegated to it
by the different members of the Union. At a later period, the State
of Holland, the most wealthy of the seven republics, was enabled to
gain a supremacy which to some extent replaced the authority of the
Stadtholder. It owed its success mainly to the statesmanship of the
Grand Pensionary, John de Witt. But in the first Dutch war, De Witt was
at the very beginning of his career, and the republics suffered from
all the weaknesses of an ill-knit and jarring Confederacy. Even if all
the inhabitants of the seven provinces had been united in sentiment,
the defects in the construction of their government would have put them
at a disadvantage in a conflict with England. But it is notorious
that this was far from being the case. The victory of the Republicans
had been the victory of the moneyed classes in the towns, of a very
able, very patriotic, but also very narrow and jealous oligarchy. The
majority of the nobles and the mass of the poorer classes were devoted
in sentiment to the House of Orange Nassau, and would, if they had had
their way, have seen the Stadtholdership conferred at once on the young
prince, with a regent drawn from his own family to administer for him
until he came of age. Many of the army and navy officers had the same
wish, so that the States General were in constant fear of domestic
sedition, while the party feelings of the officers of the fleet are
believed to have interfered with the discharge of their duty.
The condition of England was very different. Those who ruled might be
a revolutionary party, governing by force, but they claimed to have
inherited all the rights of the Crown, and it is beyond doubt they had
effective possession of them. Thus, while on the side of Holland there
was continual need for the co-operation of independent if not always
mutually hostile bodies, there was on the side of England one central
authority acting according to its own motives, and rendering an account
of its deeds to nobody. This Government, too, was composed of men
steeled against all risks by years of conflict in which their heads had
been at stake, and trained by long practice to the rapid transaction of
public affairs. The predominance of the commercial element in Holland
prevented the development of a high military spirit among its seamen.
The Dutch were skilful mariners, and valiant in a stolid, enduring way,
but their officers in many cases showed a very unofficerlike reluctance
to face risks. In our fleet something of the same kind was found among
the merchant captains left in command of the hired or pressed ships,
and no doubt the war, which tried men as by fire, revealed the weakness
of individuals. Yet the evil with us was less, and the power to remedy
it was far greater.
Not the least cause of the superior strength of England is to be found
in her geographical position. Her coasts stretched opposite those of
Holland, while she herself was open to the west. Thus the Dutch trade,
the very life-blood of the country, was compelled to flow either along
the Channel, where it was subject to attack at every moment, or by the
longer and stormier route round the north of Scotland, where also it
was not safe, since the route ended in the North Sea opposite the naval
station of Harwich.
On a general comparison, then, of the relative strength of the two
countries, it will be seen that the advantage was on the side of
England. There were numbers against her, and a somewhat greater
experience. But she had unity of authority, better instruments of war,
a more martial spirit, a stronger geographical position, and she was
much less vulnerable. If, then, ability and energy were not wanted in
the direction of her fleet, the probability was that she would win.