Chapter XI: The Reed Era 264 (2)

Another great change of these Henry VIII days was in the form of the ships.[6] At this era they began to be built with “tumble-home” sides, instead of sides slanting outwards upwards, and inwards downwards as heretofore. With the coming of the porthole came the decline of the cross-bow as a naval arm. In the pre-porthole days every record speaks of “showers of arrows,” and the gun appears to have been a species of accessory. In the early years of the Sixteenth Century it became the main armament, and so remained unchallenged till the present century and the coming of the long-range torpedo.

Henry VIII’s reign is also remarkable for the first institution of those “cutting out” expeditions which were afterwards to become such a particular feature of British methods of warfare. This first attempt happened in the year 1513, when Sir Edward Howard, finding the French fleet lying in Brest Harbour refusing to come out, “collected boats and barges” and attacked them with those craft. The attempt was not successful, but it profoundly affected subsequent naval history.

Therefrom the French were impressed with the idea that if a fleet lay in a harbour awaiting attack it acquired an advantage thereby. The idea became rooted in the French mind that to make the enemy attack under the most disadvantageous circumstances was the most wise of policies. That “the defensive is compelled to await attack, compelled to allow the enemy choice of the moment” was overlooked!

From this time onward England was gradually trained by France into the role of the attacker, and the French more and more sank into the defensive attitude. Many an English life was sacrificed between the “discovery of the attack” in the days of Henry VIII, and its triumphant apotheosis when centuries later Nelson won the Battle of the Nile; but the instincts born in Henry’s reign, on the one hand to fight with any advantage that the defensive might offer, on the other hand to attack regardless of these advantages, are probably the real key to the secret of later victories.

The Royal ships at this period were manned by voluntary enlistment, supplemented by the press-gang as vacancies might dictate. The pay of the mariner was five shillings a month; but petty officers, gunners and the like received additional pickings out of what was known as “dead pay.” By this system the names of dead men, or occasionally purely fancy names, were on the ship’s books, and the money drawn for these was distributed in a fixed ratio. The most interesting feature of Henry VII and Henry VIII’s navies is the presence in them of a number of Spaniards, who presumably acted as instructors. These received normal pay of seven shillings a month plus “dead pay.”

The messing of the crews was by no means indifferent. It was as follows per man:--

Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday: ¾ lb. beef and ½ lb. bacon.

Monday, Wednesday, Saturday: Four herrings and two pounds of cheese.

Friday: To every mess of four men, half a cod, ten herrings, one
pound of butter and one pound of cheese.

There was also a daily allowance of one pound of bread or biscuit. The liquid allowance was either beer, or a species of grog consisting of one part of sack to two of water. Taking into account the value of money in those days and the scale of living on shore at the time, the conditions of naval life were by no means bad, though complaints of the low pay were plentiful enough. Probably, few received the full measure of what on paper they were entitled to.

Henry VIII died early in 1547. In the subsequent reigns of Edward VI and Mary, the Navy declined, and little use was made of it except for some raiding expeditions.

When Elizabeth came to the throne the regular fleet had dwindled to very small proportions, and, war being in progress, general permission was given for privateering as the only means of injuring the enemy. It presently degenerated into piracy and finally had to be put down by the Royal ships.

No sooner, however, was the war over than the Queen ordered a special survey to be made of the Navy. New ships were laid down and arsenals established for the supply of guns and gunpowder, which up to that time had been imported from Germany. Full advantage was taken of the privateering spirit, the erstwhile pirates being encouraged to undertake distant voyages. In many of these enterprises the Queen herself had a personal financial interest. She thus freed the country from various turbulent spirits who were inconvenient at home, and at one and the same time increased her own resources by doing so.

There is every reason to believe that this action of Elizabeth’s was part of a well-designed and carefully thought out policy. The type of ship suitable for distant voyages and enterprises was naturally bound to become superior to that which was merely evolved from home service. The type of seamen thus bred was also necessarily bound to be better than the home-made article. Elizabeth can hardly have failed to realise these points also.

To the _personnel_ of the regular Navy considerable attention was also given. Pay was raised to 6/8 per month for the seamen, and 5/- a month with 4/- a month for clothing for soldiers afloat. Messing was also increased to a daily ration of one pound of biscuit, a gallon of beer, with two pounds of beef per man four days out of the seven, and a proportionate amount of fish on the other three days. Subsequently, and just previous to the Armada, the pay of seamen rose to 10/- a month, with a view to inducing the better men not to desert.

The regular navy was thus by no means badly provided for as things went in those days; while service with “gentlemen adventurers” offered attractions to a very considerable potential reserve, and so England contained a large population which, from one cause and another, was available for sea service. To these circumstances was it due that the Spanish Armada, when it came, never had the remotest possibility of success. It was doomed to destruction the day that Elizabeth first gave favour to the “gentlemen adventurers.”

Of these adventurers the greatest of all was Francis Drake, who in 1577 made his first long voyage with five ships to the Pacific Ocean. Drake, alone, in the _Pelican_, succeeded in reaching the Pacific and carrying out his scheme of operations, which--not to put too fine a point on it--consisted of acts of piracy pure and simple against the Spaniards. He returned to England after an absence of nearly three years, during which he circumnavigated the globe.

There is little doubt that Drake in this voyage, and others like him in similar expeditions, learned a great deal about the disadvantages of small size in ships. Drake, however, learned another thing also. Up to this day the crew of a ship had consisted of the captain and a certain military element; also the master, who was responsible for a certain number of “mariners.” The former were concerned entirely with fighting the ship--the latter entirely with manœuvring it.

This system of specialisation, awkward as it appears thus baldly stated, may have worked well enough in ordinary practice. It did not differ materially from the differentiation between deck hands and the engineering departments, which to a greater or less extent is very marked in every navy of the present day.

Drake, however, started out with none too many men, and it was not long before he lost some of those he had and found himself short-handed. His solution of the difficulty is in his famous phrase, “I would have the gentlemen haul with the mariners.” How far this was a matter of expediency, how far the revelation of a new policy, is a matter of opinion. It must certainly have been outside the purview of Elizabeth. But out of it gradually came that every English sailor knew how to fight his ship and how to sail her too, and this amounted to doubling the efficiency of the crew of any ship at one stroke.

Of Drake himself, the following contemporary pen-picture, from a letter written by one of his Spanish victims, Don Franciso de Zarate,[7] explains almost everything:--

“He received me favourably, and took me to his room, where he made
me seated and said to me: ‘I am a friend to those who speak the
truth, that is what will have the most weight with me. What silver
or gold does this ship bring?’

“... We spoke together a great while, until the dinner-hour. He
told me to sit beside him and treated me from his dishes, bidding
me have no fear, for my life and goods were safe; for which I
kissed his hands.

“This English General is a cousin of John Hawkins; he is the same
who, about five years ago, took the port of Nombre de Dios; he is
called Francis Drake; a man of some five and thirty years, small of
stature and red-bearded, one of the greatest sailors on the sea,
both from skill and power of commanding. His ship carried about 400
tons, is swift of sail, and of a hundred men, all skilled and in
their prime, and all as much experienced in warfare as if they were
old soldiers of Italy. Each one, in particular, _takes great pains
to keep his arms clean_;[8] he treats them with affection, and
they treat him with respect. I endeavoured to find out whether the
General was liked, and everyone told me he was adored.”

Less favourable pictures of Drake have been penned, and there is no doubt that some of his virtues have been greatly exaggerated. At the present day there is perhaps too great a tendency to reverse the process. Stripped of romance, many of his actions were petty, while those of some of his fellow adventurers merit a harsher name. Hawkins, for instance, was hand-in-glove with Spanish smugglers and a slave trader. Many of the victories of the Elizabethan “Sea-Kings” were really trifling little affairs, magnified into an importance which they never possessed.

But, when all is said and done, it is in these men that we find the birth of a sea spirit which still lingers on, despite that other insular spirit previously referred to--the natural tendency of islanders to regard the water itself as a bulwark, instead of the medium on which to meet and defeat the enemy.

The Spanish, already considerably incensed by the piratical acts of the English “gentlemen adventurers,” presently found a further cause of grievance in the assistance rendered by Elizabeth to their revolting provinces in the Netherlands. Drake had not returned many years from his famous voyage when it became abundantly clear that the Spaniards no longer intended quietly to suffer from English interference.

Spain at that time was regarded as the premier naval power of Europe. Her superiority was more mythical than actual, for reasons which will later on be referred to: however, her commercial oversea activities were very great. The wealth which she wrung from the Indies--though probably infinitely less than its supposed value--was sufficient to enable her to equip considerable naval forces, certainly larger ones numerically than any which England alone was able to bring against them.

Knowledge of the fact that Spain was preparing the Armada for an attack on England, led to the sailing of Drake in April, 1587, with a fleet consisting of four large and twenty-six smaller ships, for the hire of which the citizens of London were nominally or actually responsible. His real instructions are not known, but there is little question that, as in all similar expeditions, he started out knowing that his success would be approved of, although in the event of any ill-success or awkward questions, he would be publicly disavowed.

Reaching Cadiz, he destroyed 100 store ships which he found there; and then proceeding to the Tagus, offered battle to the Spanish war fleet. The Spanish admiral, however, declined to come out--a fact which of itself altogether discredits the popular idea about the vast all-powerful ships of Spain, and the little English ships, which, in the Armada days, could have done nothing against them but for a convenient tempest. On account of this expedition of Drake’s, the sailing of the Armada was put off for a year. So far as stopping the enterprise was concerned, Drake’s expedition was a failure. Armada preparations still went on.

It is by no means to be supposed that the Armada in its conception was the foolhardy enterprise that on the face of things it looks to have been. The idea of it was first mooted by the Duke of Alva so long ago as 1569. In 1583 it became a settled project in the able hands of the Marquis of Santa Cruz, who alone among the Spaniards was not more or less afraid of the English. In the battle of Tercera in 1583, certain ships, which if not English were at any rate supposed to be, had shown the white feather. Santa Cruz assumed therefrom that the English were easily to be overwhelmed by a sufficiently superior force, and he designed a scheme whereby he would use 556 ships and an army of 94,222 men.

Philip of Spain had other ideas. Having a large army under the Duke of Parma in the Netherlands, he proposed that this force should be transported thence to England in flat-bottomed boats, while Santa Cruz should take with him merely enough ships to hold the Channel, and prevent any interference by the English ships with the invasion.

Before the delayed Armada could sail Santa Cruz died; and despite his own protestations Medina Sidonia was appointed in Santa Cruz’s place to carry out an expedition in which he had little faith or confidence. His total force at the outset consisted of 130 ships and 30,493 men. Of these ships not more than sixty-two at the outside were warships, and some of these did not carry more than half-a-dozen guns.

The main English fighting force consisted of forty-nine warships, some of which were little inferior to the Spanish in tonnage, though all were much smaller to the eye, as they were built with a lower freeboard and without the vast superstructures with which the Spaniards were encumbered. As auxiliaries, the English had a very considerable force of small ships; also the Dutch fleet in alliance with them.

The guns of the English ships were, generally speaking, heavier, all their gunners were well trained, and their portholes especially designed to give a considerable arc of fire, whereas the Spanish had very indifferent gunners and narrow portholes. The Spaniards themselves thoroughly recognised their inferiority in the matter of gunnery, and the specific instructions of their admiral were that he was to negative this inferiority by engaging at close quarters, and trust to destroying the enemy by small-arm fire from his lofty superstructures.

The small portholes of the Spanish ships, which permitted neither of training, nor elevation, nor depression, are not altogether to be put down to stupidity or neglect of progress, for all that they were mainly the result of ultra-conservatism. The gun--as Professor Laughton has made clear--was regarded in Spain as a somewhat dishonourable weapon. Ideals of “cold steel” held the field. Portholes were kept very small, so that enemies relying on musketry should not be able to get the advantage that large portholes might supply. To close with the enemy and carry by boarding was the be-all and end-all of Spanish ideas of naval warfare. When able to employ their own tactics they were formidable opponents, though to the English tactics merely so many helpless haystacks.

On shore, in England, the coming of the Armada provoked a good deal of panic; though the army which Elizabeth raised and reviewed at Tilbury was probably got together more with a view to allaying this panic than from any expectations that it would be actually required. The views of the British seamen on the matter were entirely summed up in Drake’s famous jest on Plymouth Hoe, that there was plenty of time to finish the game of bowls and settle the Spaniards afterwards!

Yet this very confidence might have led to the undoing of the English. The researches of Professor Laughton have made it abundantly clear that had Medina Sidonia followed the majority opinion of a council of war held off the Lizard, he could and would have attacked the English fleet in Plymouth Sound with every prospect of destroying it, because there, and there only, did opportunity offer them that prospect of a close action upon which their sole chance of success depended. Admiral Colomb has elaborated the point still further, with a quotation from Monson to the effect that had the Armada had a pilot able to recognise the Lizard, which the Spaniards mistook for Ramehead, they might have surprised the English fleet at Plymouth. This incident covers the whole of what Providence or luck really did for England against the Spanish.

To a certain extent a parallel of our own day exists. When Rodjestvensky with the Baltic fleet reached Far Eastern waters, there came a day when his cruisers discovered the entire Japanese fleet lying in Formosan waters. The Russian admiral ignored them and went on towards Vladivostok. The parallel ends here because the “Japanese fleet” was merely a collection of dummies intended to mislead him.[9]

The first engagement with the Spanish Armada took place on Sunday, June 21st. It was more in the nature of a skirmish than anything else. The Spaniards made several vain and entirely ineffectual attempts to close with the swifter and handier English vessels. They took care, however, to preserve their formation, and so to that extent defeated the English tactics, which were to destroy in detail what could not be destroyed without heavy loss in the mass. So the Spaniards reached Calais on the 27th with a loss of only three large ships.

They there discovered that Parma’s flat-bottomed boats were all blockaded by the Dutch, and that any invasion of England was therefore entirely out of the question. It must have been perfectly obvious to the most sanguine of them by this that they could not force action with the swifter English ships, while they could not relieve the blockaded boats without being attacked at the outset. In a word, the Armada was an obvious failure.

On the night of the 28th, fire ships were sent into the Spanish fleet by the English. This, though the damage done was small, brought the Spanish to sea, and the next morning they were attacked off Gravelines by the English. The battle was hardly of the nature of a fleet action, so much as well-designed tactical operations intended to keep the enemy on the move. It resulted in the Spaniards losing only seven ships in a whole day’s fighting. The only really serious loss that the Spaniards sustained was that they were driven into the North Sea, with no prospect of returning home except by way of the North of Scotland.

Followed for awhile and harried by a portion of the English fleet, which fell upon and destroyed stragglers, the Spaniards were driven into what to most of them were unknown waters and uncharted seas. To the last the retreating fleet maintained a show of order. Fifty-three ships succeeded in returning to Spain.

Stripped of romance this is the real prosaic history of the defeat of the Spanish Armada. The wonder is not that so few Spanish ships returned, but that so many did! The loss in Spanish warships proper appears to have been little over a dozen all told, and of these not more than three at the outside can be attributed to “the winds.”

Havoc was undoubtedly wrought, but the “galleons” which “perished by scores” on the Scotch and Irish coasts were mainly the auxiliaries, transports, and small fry; the battle fleet proper kept together all the time, and with a couple of exceptions the ships reached home together as a fleet.[10]

At no time in the advance of the Spanish--probably at no time in the retreat either--could the English have engaged close action with any certainty of success. Victory was attributable solely and entirely to the evolution of a type of ship, fast, speedy and handy, able to hit hard, and which had been more or less specially designed with an eye to offering a very small target to the clumsily designed Spanish style of gun mounting.

It was “history repeating itself” in another way. As Alfred overcame the Danes by evolving something superior to the Danish galleys; so, in Elizabethan days, there was evolved a type of warship meet for the occasion.

From the defeat of the Armada and onwards, English naval operations were mainly confined to raiding expeditions against the Spanish coast, with a view to checking the collection of any further Armadas. These operations were chiefly carried out by the “gentlemen adventurers”; but the real Navy itself was maintained and added to, and at the death of Elizabeth in 1603, it consisted of forty-two ships, of which the 68-gun _Triumph_ of 1,000 tons was the largest. This Navy was relied upon as the premier arm in case of any serious trouble.

IV.

THE PERIOD OF THE DUTCH WARS.

With the accession of James I peace with Spain came about, but the Dutch being ignored in the transaction, out of this there arose that ill-feeling and rivalry which was later on to culminate in the Dutch wars.

In James I’s reign no naval operations of great importance took place, but considerable interest attaches to the despatch of eighteen ships (of which six were “King’s Ships”), to Algiers in 1520. This was the first appearance of an English squadron in the Mediterranean.

Under James I the numerical force of the Navy declined somewhat. The art of shipbuilding, however, made considerable advance.[11] A Shipwrights’ Company was established in 1656, and Phineas Pett, as its first master, built and designed a 1,400 ton ship named the _Prince Royal_. Pett introduced a variety of novelties into his designs, and the _Prince Royal_ and her successors were esteemed superior to anything set afloat elsewhere at the time.

Here it is desirable to turn aside for a moment in order to realise the influences at work behind Phineas Pett. It has ever been the peculiar fortune of the Royal Navy--and for that matter of the inchoate “Navy” which preceded its establishment--to have had men capable of “looking ahead” and forcing the pace in such a way that new conditions were prepared for when they arrived.

Of such a nature, each in his own way, were King Alfred, King John, Richard III, and Henry VII, but greater than any of these was Sir Walter Raleigh, whose visions in the days of Elizabeth and James I ran so clearly and so far that even now we cannot be said to have left him behind where “principles” are concerned. Drake was the national hero of Elizabethan days, but in utility to the future, Raleigh was a greater than he, albeit his best service was of the “armchair” kind.

The following extracts from Raleigh’s writings, except for geographical and political differences, stand as true to-day as when he wrote them about 300 years ago. The idea of a main fleet, backed up by smaller vessels, the idea of meeting the enemy on the water and so forth, are commonplaces now, but in Raleigh’s time they were quite otherwise. The italicised portions in particular indicate quite clearly in Elizabethan words the naval policy of to-day.

“Another benefit which we received by this preparation was, that
_our men were now taught suddenly to arm, every man knowing his
command, and how to be commanded_, which before they were ignorant
of; and who knows not that sudden and false alarms in any army are
sometimes necessary? To say the truth, the expedition which was
then used in drawing together so great an army by land, and rigging
so great and royal a navy to sea, in so little a space of time, was
so admirable in other countries, that they received a terror by it;
and many that came from beyond the seas said _the Queen was never
more dreaded abroad for anything she ever did_.

“Frenchmen that came aboard our ships did wonder (as at a thing
incredible) that Her Majesty had rigged, victualled, and furnished
her royal ships to sea in twelve days’ time; and Spain, as an
enemy, had reason to fear and grieve to see this sudden preparation.

“It is not the meanest mischief we shall do to the King of Spain,
if we thus war upon him, to force him to keep his shores still
armed and guarded, to the infinite vexation, charge and discontent
of his subjects; for no time or place can secure them so long as
they see or know us to be upon that coast.

“The sequel of all these actions being duly considered, we may be
confident that _whilst we busy the Spaniard at home, they dare not
think of invading England or Ireland_; for by their absence their
fleet from the Indies may be endangered[12] and in their attempts
they have as little hope of prevailing.

“Surely I hold that the _best way is to keep our enemies from
treading upon our ground: wherein, if we fail, then_ must we seek
to make him wish that he had stayed at his own home. In such
a case, if it should happen, our judgments are to weigh many
particular circumstances, that belong not to this discourse. But
making the question general, _the position, whether England,
without that it is unable to do so_: and, therefore, I think it
most dangerous to make the adventure. For the encouragements of a
first victory to an enemy, and the discouragement of being beaten
to the invaded, may draw after it a most perilous consequence.

“Great difference, I know there is, and diverse consideration to be
had, between such a country as France is, strengthened with many
fortified places, and this of ours, where our ramparts are but the
bodies of men. But I say that an army to be transported over sea,
and to be landed again in an enemy’s country, and the place left
to the choice of the invader _cannot be resisted on the coast of
England without a fleet to impeach it; no, nor on the coast of
France, or any other country, except every creek, port, or sandy
bay had a powerful army in each of them to make opposition.... For
there is no man ignorant that ships, without putting themselves out
of breath, will easily outrun the soldiers that coast them_.[13]

“Whosoever were the inventors, we find that every age hath added
somewhat to ships, and to all things else. And in mine own time the
shape of our English ships hath been greatly bettered. It is not
long since the striking of the topmast (a wonderful ease to great
ships, both at sea and in harbour) hath been devised, together
with the chain pump, which takes up twice as much water as the
ordinary did. We have lately added the Bonnet and the Drabler.
To the courses we have devised studding-sails, topgallant-masts,
spritsails, topsails. The weighing of anchors by the capstone is
also new. We have fallen into consideration of the lengths of
cable, and by it we resist the malice of the greatest winds that
can blow. Witness our small Millbroke men of Cornwall, that ride it
out at anchor half seas over between England and Ireland, all the
winter quarter. And witness the Hollanders that were wont to ride
before Dunkirk with the wind at north-west, making a lee-shoar in
all weathers. For true it is, that the length of the cable is the
life of the ship, riding at length, is not able to stretch it; and
nothing breaks that is not stretched in extremity. We carry our
ordnance better than we were wont, because our nether over-loops
are raised commonly from the water, to wit, between the lower part
of the sea.

“In King Henry VIII time, and in his presence at Portsmouth, the
Mary Rose, by a little sway of the ship in tacking about, her ports
being within sixteen inches of the water, was overset and lost.

“We have also raised our second decks, and given more vent thereby
to our ordnance lying on our nether-loop. We have added cross
pillars[14] in our royal ships to strengthen them, which be
fastened from the keels on to the beam of the second deck to keep
them from setting or from giving way in all distresses.

“We have given longer floors to our ships than in elder times, and
better bearing under water, whereby they never fall into the sea
after the head and shake the whole body, nor sink astern, nor stoop
upon a wind, by which the breaking loose of our ordnance, or of the
not use of them, with many other discommodities are avoided.

“And, to say the truth, a miserable shame and dishonour it were for
our shipwrights if they did not exceed all others in the setting
up of our Royal ships, _the errors of other nations being far more
excusable than ours_. For the Kings of England have for many years
_being at the charge to build and furnish a navy of powerful ships
for their own defence, and for the wars only. Whereas the_ French,
the Spaniards, the Portuguese, and the Hollanders (till of late)
_have had no proper fleet belonging to their Princes or States._
Only the Venetians for a long time have maintained their arsenal of
gallies. And the Kings of Denmark and Sweden have had good ships
for these last fifty years.

“I say that the aforenamed Kings, especially the Spaniards and
Portugals, have ships of great bulk, but fitter for the merchant
than for the man-of-war, for burthen than for _battle_. But
as Popelimire well observeth, ‘the forces of Princes by sea
are marques de grandeur d’estate--marks of the greatness of an
estate--for _whosoever commands the sea, commands the trade;
whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of
the world, and consequently the world itself_.’

“Yet, can I not deny but that the Spaniards, being afraid of their
Indian fleets, have built some few very good ships; _but he hath no
ships in garrison_, as His Majesty hath; and to say the truth, no
sure place to keep them in, but in all invasions he is driven to
take up of all nations which come into his ports for trade....

* * * * *

“But there’s no estate grown in haste but that of the United
Provinces, and especially in their sea forces, and by a contrary
way to that of Spain and France; the latter by invasion, the former
by oppression. For I myself may remember _when one ship of Her
Majesty’s would have made forty Hollanders strike sail and come to
an anchor_. They did not then dispute de Mari Libero, but readily
acknowledged the English to be Domini Maria Britannici. That we are
less powerful than we were, I do hardly believe it; for, although
we have not at this time 135 ships belonging to the subject of
500 tons each ship, as it is said we had in the twenty-fourth
year of Queen Elizabeth; at which time also, upon a general view
and muster, there were found in England of able men fit to bear
arms, 1,172,000, yet are our merchant ships now far more warlike
and better appointed than they were, and the Navy royal double as
strong as it then was. For these were the ships of Her Majesty’s
Navy at that time:

1. The Triumph
2. The Elizabeth Jonas
3. The White Bear
4. The Philip and Mary
5. The Bonadventure
6. The Golden Lyon
7. The Victory
8. The Revenge
9. The Hope
10. The Mary Rose
11. The Dreadnought
12. The Minion
13. The Swiftsure

to which there have been added:--

14. The Antilope
15. The Foresight
16. The Swallow
17. The Handmaid
18. The Jennett
19. The Bark of Ballein
20. The Ayde
21. The Achates
22. The Falcon
23. The Tyger
24. The Bull

“We have not, therefore, less force than we had, the fashion, and
furnishing of our ships considered, for there are in England at
this time 400 sail or merchants, and fit for the wars, which the
Spaniards would call galleons; to which we may add 200 sail of
crumsters, or hoyes of Newcastle, which, each of them, will bear
six Demi-culverins and four Sakers, needing no other addition of
building than a slight spar deck fore and aft, as the seamen call
it, which is a slight deck throughout....

“I say, then, if a vanguard be ordained of those hoyes, who will
easily recover the wind of any other sort of ships, with a battle
of 400 other warlike ships, and a rear of thirty of His Majesty’s
ships to sustain, relieve, and countenance the rest (if God beat
them not) I know not what strength can be gathered in all Europe
to beat them. And if it be objected that the States can furnish a
far greater number, I answer that His Majesty’s forty ships, added
to the 600 beforenamed, are of incomparable greater force than all
that Holland and Zealand can furnish for the wars. As also, that
a greater number would breed the same confusion that was found in
Xerxes’ land army of 1,700,000 soldiers; _for there is a certain
proportion, both by sea and land, beyond which the excess brings
nothing but disorder and amazement_.”

I have quoted from Raleigh at considerable length--a length which may seem to some out of all proportion to the general historical scheme of this work. But of the three possible “founders of the British Navy,” King Alfred by legend, King Henry VII by force of circumstances, and Sir Walter Raleigh, Knight, by his realisation of certain eternal verities of naval warfare, the palm goes best to Raleigh, to whose precepts it was mainly due that England did not succumb to Holland in the days of the Dutch wars. Compared to the struggle with the Dutch, neither the Spanish wars, which preceded them, nor the great French wars which followed, were of any like importance as regarded the relative risks and dangers. And the interest is the greater in that where the United Provinces were, about and just after Raleigh’s time, Germany stands towards the British Navy to-day.

In 1618 the Duke of Buckingham was appointed Lord High Admiral and continued in that position after the accession of Charles I. Of the incapacity of the Duke much has been written, but whatever may be said in connection with various unsuccessful oversea enterprises, for which he was officially responsible, naval shipbuilding under his régime made very considerable progress.

Things were quite otherwise, however, with the _personnel_. Abuses of every sort and kind crept in unchecked, and the men were the first to feel the pinch. The unscrupulous contractor appeared, and with him the era of offal foods and all kinds of similar abuses, of which many have lasted well into our own time, and some exist still. The money allotted for the men of the fleet became the prey of every human vulture, the officers, as a rule, being privy thereunto. Besides food, clothing also fell into the hands of contractors who supplied shoddy at ridiculously high prices, with the commission to officers stopped out of the men’s pay.

Pay, nominally, rose a good deal, and in 1653 reached twenty-four shillings a month for the seaman, but the figures (approximately equal in purchasing value to the pay of to-day) convey nothing. The men were half-starved, or worse, on uneatable food, and their clothing was such that they went about in rags and died like rats in their misery.

The first naval event in Charles I’s reign is mainly of interest because of the peculiar personal circumstances that attended it. One King’s ship and six hired ships were despatched, nominally to assist the French against the Genoese. On arriving at Dieppe, however, the English officers and men discovered that they were really to be used against the revolted French Protestants of La Rochelle. This being against their taste, they returned to the Downs and reported themselves to the King. They were ordered to sail again for La Rochelle. One captain, however, point blank refused to do so. The other ships went, but the officers and men, with a single exception, having handed their ships over to the French, returned to England.

Little or nothing seems to have been done in the way of punishment to the mutineers (possibly on account of public opinion). But the incident sheds an interesting sidelight on the state of the Navy at the time. It is hardly to be conceived that the Army at the same period could have acted in similar fashion with equal impunity.

From the contemporary portrait by William Dobson in the National Portrait Gallery.]

The history of the British Navy of this period is the history of a navy lacking in discipline, and its officers divided against each other. Such expeditions as were undertaken against France and Spain signally failed. It is usual to attribute these failures to the mal-administration of the Duke of Buckingham, an unpopular figure. But whether this is just or not is another matter. The entire Navy was rotten to the core in its _personnel_. But Buckingham’s share in it would seem to have been inability to understand rather than direct carelessness.

Under the Duke’s régime the building of efficient warships continued to progress. The “ship money,” which was to cause so much trouble inland later, is outside the scope of this work, save in so far as its direct naval aspect is concerned. This, of course, was the principle that inland places benefited from sea defence quite as much as seaside districts. A great deal of the money was undoubtedly spent on shipbuilding; indeed, some of the trouble lay over alleged (and seemingly obvious) excessive expenditure on the “Dreadnought” of the period, Phineas Pett’s _Royal Sovereign_, a ship altogether superior to anything before built in England, and the first three-decker ever constructed in this country. She was laid down in 1635 and launched in 1657. An immense amount of gilding and carving about her irritated the economically minded, but it is questionable whether the objections were well informed.

Just about this time elaborate ornamentations of warships was the “vogue,” and it carried moral effect accordingly. What to the uninitiated landsmen merely spelt “waste of money on unnecessary display” spelt something else to those who went across the seas. Even in our own present utilitarian days a fresh coat of paint to a warship has been found to have a political value; and fireworks and illuminations (seemingly pure waste of money) have played their share in helping to preserve the peace.

John Hampden, according to his lights, was a patriot, and according to the purely political questions with which he was concerned he may also have been; but on the naval issue of Ship Money he was little more or less than the First Little Englander, and hampered by just that same inability to see beyond his nose which characterised the modern Little Englander who protested against “bloated naval expenditure.” The intentions were excellent--the intelligence circumscribed.

A contemporary account of the _Royal Sovereign_ is as follows:--

“Her length by the keele is 128 foote or thereabout, within some
few inches; her mayne breadth or wideness from side to side, 48
foote; her utmost length from the fore-end to the stern, _a prova
ad pupin_, 232 foote. Shee is in height, from the bottom of her
keele to the top of her lanthorne, 76 foote; she beareth five
lanthornes, the biggest of which will hold ten persons to stand
upright, and without shouldering or pressing one on the other.

“Shee hath three flush deckes and a forecastle, an halfe decke,
a quarter-decke, and a round house. Her lower tyre hath thirty
ports, which are to be furnished with demi-cannon and whole
cannon, throughout being able to beare them; her middle tyre
hath also thirty ports for demi-culverin and whole culverin;
her third tyre hath twentie sixe ports for other ordnance; her
forecastle hath twelve ports, and her halfe decke hath fourteen
ports; she hath thirteene or fourteene ports more within board
for murdering-pieces, besides a great many loope-holes out of the
cabins for musket shot. Shee carrieth, moreover, ten pieces of
chase ordnance in her right forward, and ten right off, according
to lande service in the front and the reare. Shee carrieth eleven
anchores, one of them weighing foure thousand foure hundred pounds;
and according to these are her cables, mastes, sayles, cordage.”

_Ex. Fincham._

THE _ROYAL SOVEREIGN_.

The dotted lines represent a ship of the time of 1850.]

It remains to add that the ship was extraordinarily well built. She fought many a battle and survived some fifty years, and then only perished because, when laid up for refit in 1696, she was accidentally burned. And about sixty-three years ago (1852) naval architects still alluded to her with respect, nor did their designs differ from her very materially.

Wherever and however Charles I and the Duke of Buckingham failed, their shipbuilding policy cannot but command both respect and admiration. It is the curious irony of fate that--excepting King Alfred, and also Queen Elizabeth--it is the Sovereigns of England with black marks against them who ever did most for the Navy or understood its importance. And understanding what the Navy meant, generally secured these marks at the hands of some quite well meaning but intellectually circumscribed prototype or successor of John Hampden, to whom “meeting the enemy on the water” was an entirely indigestible theory, and a waste of money into the bargain. There is no question whatever that to them the sea appeared a natural rampart and ships upon it pure superfluity, save in so far as inconvenience to the shore counties might result. Later on, Cromwell, of course, acted on a different principle--but Cromwell was an Imperialist. Hampden was merely the “Insular Spirit” personified.

In 1639, a naval incident occurred which goes to discredit the popular idea of the impotence of the British Navy under Charles I, whatever its internal condition. Naval operations were in progress between Holland and France on the one side, and Spain on the other. The British fleet was fitted out under Sir John Pennington (that same Pennington who had commanded the squadron which refused to attack La Rochelle) with orders to maintain British neutrality.

The Spanish fleet took refuge from the Dutch in the Downs, whereupon Pennington informed the rival admirals that he should attack whichever of them violated the neutrality of an English harbour. The Spanish having fired upon the Dutch, the Dutch Admiral Van Tromp applied to Pennington for permission to attack the Downs. This was given, and the bulk of the Spanish fleet destroyed. The incident suggests that the English fleet was recognised as a neutral able to enforce its orders against all and sundry.

In connection with this, it is interesting to record the existence of a naval medal of the period, bearing the motto: “_Nec meta mihi quae terminus orbi_”--a free translation of which would be, “Nothing limits me but the size of the World.” However short practice may have fallen, Charles and his advisers had undoubtedly grasped the theory of “Sea Power.”

_THE CIVIL WAR._

When the Civil war began in 1642, the regular fleet consisted of forty-two ships. It was seized by the Parliamentarians and put under the Earl of Warwick, who held command for six years. With his fleet he very effectually patrolled the Channel, rendering abortive all over-sea attempts to assist the King with arms and ammunition.

On Warwick being superseded in 1648, the fleet mutinied, and seventeen ships sailed for Holland to join Prince Charles; but upon Warwick being reinstated the bulk of the fleet returned to its allegiance to the Parliamentarians. That the Parliamentarians were fully alive to the importance of naval power is evidenced by the fact that they seized every opportunity to lay down new ships; and “Parliament” once in power made it very clear indeed that the Sovereignty of the Seas would be upheld at all costs.

_THE FIRST DUTCH WAR._

Some forty years before, Sir Walter Raleigh, discussing the rise of the Dutch United Provinces, remarked: “But be their estate what it will, let them not deceive themselves in believing that they can make themselves masters of the sea.” He advised the Dutch to remember that their inward and outward passages were through British seas. There were but two courses open to the Dutch: amity with England or destruction of English naval power.

Since both nations had large commercial fleets, rivalries were inevitable; and for some long while previous to 1652, both sides were ready enough for a quarrel. Minor acts of hostility occurred. The Dutch failed to pay the annual tax for fishing in British waters. In May, 1652, a Dutch squadron refused to pay respect to the English flag. It was fired on accordingly, and after some negotiations, war was declared two months later.

The war is interesting because it saw an end to the old ideas of cross-raiding with ships regarded primarily as transports in connection with raids or to cover such. In this war fighting on the sea for the command of the sea first made a distinct appearance. Its birth was necessarily obscure and involved, both sides having the primary idea of attacking the commerce of the enemy and defending their own, rather than of attacking the enemy’s fleet. The earlier battles which took place were brought about by the defence of merchant fleets.

None of the battles of 1652 were conclusive, and though marked with extraordinary determination on both sides the damage done was, relatively speaking, small. The general advantage for the year rested slightly with the Dutch, mainly owing to Tromp’s victory over Blake, who was found in considerably inferior force in the Downs.

In February of the following year Tromp, with a fleet of seventy warships and a convoy of 250 merchant ships, some of which were armed, met Blake with sixty-six sail in the famous Three Days’ Battle.

In the course of this fight the Dutch lost at least eight warships, and a number of merchant-men variously estimated at from twenty-four to forty. The English admitted to the loss of only one ship. At the end of the third day, however, Blake drew off, and the Dutch admiral got what was left of his convoy into harbour.

Oliver Cromwell being now in full power, naval preparations were pressed forward with unexampled vigour, and on June 2nd an English fleet of ninety-five sail under Monk and Deane met Van Tromp and forced him to retreat. Reinforced by Blake with eighteen more ships the English fleet renewed the battle, ultimately driving Van Tromp into harbour with the loss of several ships.

On the 29th July the Dutch ran the blockade and came out. On the 31st a battle began in which Van Tromp was killed, and the Dutch with the loss of many ships driven into the Texel.

The English fleet, though it lost few ships, appears to have been badly mauled in this final battle, on account of which the Dutch claimed a victory.

In the following month the Dutch fleet again came out, and under De Witt took one convoy to the Sound and brought another back without interference. Just afterwards, however, their fleet was so severely injured by a tremendous three days’ gale that further naval operations were out of the question. Overtures for peace were therefore made, and concluded.

The types of English warships in this first Dutch war are given in Pepys’ Miscellany as follows:--

=====================================================================
| | Length |Breadth.|Depth. |Burthen|Highest No. of
Rate. | Name. |of Keel.| | | Tons. +--------------
| | ft. |ft. in. |ft. in.| | Men. | Guns.
------+-------------+--------+--------+-------+-------+-------+------
First |_Sovereign_ | 127 |46 6 |19 4 | 1141 | 600 | 100
Second|_Fairfax_ | 116 |34 9 |17 4½| 745 | 260 | 52
Third |_Worcester_ | 112 |32 8 |16 4 | 661 | 180 | 46
Fourth|_Ruby_ | 105½ |31 6 |15 9 | 556 | 150 | 40
Fifth |_Nightingale_| 88 |25 4 |12 8 | 300 | 90 | 24
Sixth |_Greyhound_ | 60 |20 3 |10 0 | 120 | 80 | 18
=====================================================================

The principal Dutch vessels were conspicuously inferior to the best of these English ones, and the war may be said to have been considerably decided by ship superiority. In the peace that followed--which was really very little better than an armed truce--the Dutch set themselves to build warships more on English lines. And, as we shall presently see, they evolved from the war,[15] future strategies based on its lessons.

Considering the number of battles and the desperate nature of them, it is perhaps curious to note the relatively small amount of damage done. With the advent of the porthole and the consequent multiplication of guns a hundred and fifty years before, it had seemed that any naval engagement must result in swift mutual destruction. Much the same kind of idea obtained as when at the end of 1910 a squadron of Dreadnoughts almost instantly obliterated a target five miles off. But as in the Armada fights, so in this First Dutch War, an immense amount of fighting was done with comparatively, and relatively to what might have been anticipated, small harm on either side.

This result is partly to be attributed to the fact that defence increased with offence. The warship proper was designed to stand hammering, and every increase in size, involving increased gun-carrying capacity, involved also increased strength of construction. Something may also be put down to the very inferior artillery then in use, and the great deal of boarding which took place.

There is some reason to believe that Cromwell, with his complete recognition of the advantages of naval power, with his assiduous energy in the creation of a strong fleet, recognised--as perhaps both Buckingham and Phineas Pett had done before--the advantages of the “big ship.” Yet under his rule no appreciable advance in size took place. Nor, for that matter, did it take place any time within a hundred and fifty years later on.

The reason is interesting. It was purely a matter of trees. The length of a ship was circumscribed by the height of trees; other dimensions by similar hard facts. The beam was dependent on the ship’s length; while the draught was governed by the harbours and docking facilities. It is doubtful whether any man ever sought to solve the problem of an invincible navy with more energy than Oliver Cromwell; yet under his rule nothing in the way of improvement was evolved at all comparable with the step taken with the _Royal Sovereign_ under the weaker Charles Stuart--Buckingham régime. The limitations of the tree proved the limitations of the ship.

When Cromwell died, his record was left in numbers. The Navy at his death consisted of 157 ships. His architectural improvements were but a new form of bottoms.[16]

Oliver Cromwell had not been long dead when the Navy--then under Monk--decided to restore the Monarchy. It sailed to Holland, embarked Charles II and James, Duke of York, and established Charles on the throne without opposition. Monk is popularly regarded as a political time-server. But in his change of sides he made one very important stipulation: that Charles was to pledge himself to the upkeep of the fleet. The fleet accomplished the Restoration. The bulk of evidence is that it did so with little regard for any issue other than the naval one.

_THE SECOND DUTCH WAR._

The second Dutch War broke out in 1665. As usual a state of unofficial war had preceded it. Both sides, having thought over the first war, had come to the conclusion that protecting their own merchant ships and attacking those of the enemy at one and the same time was an impossible proposition.

Both officially ordered their merchant ships to keep inside harbour; but in both nations there were traders who took their own risks at sea and found warships handy to protect them. None the less, this war is of much importance as the first in which the command of the sea, fleet against fleet, received general recognition.

The battles themselves of this war are of little interest. They were marked by that same equality of courage and determination which was an outstanding feature of the First War. Slight early English successes led to little but attacks on merchant shipping; then the Great Plague paralysed English efforts. The Dutch got to the mouth of the Thames, but a sudden sickness among their crews scared them off after a sixteen days’ blockade.

Following this the French took side with the Dutch; but inconclusive fighting still resulted, till the Dutch, imagining that they had done better than they really had, found themselves engaged in the battle of the North Foreland.