CHAPTER I
THE WAR WITH FRANCE TILL 1693
Authorities.—Burchett, Memoirs of Transactions at Sea 1688-1697; Lediard, Naval History of England; Colomb, Naval Warfare; Troude, Batailles navales de la France; Delarbre, Tourville et la Marine de son temps; Toudouze, Bataille de la Hougue; Lambert de Sainte-Croix, Marine de France 1689-1792; Code des Armées Navales; Crisenoy, L’Inscription maritime; Calmon-Maison, Châteaurenault; Martin Leake, Life of Sir John Leake; De Jonge, Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Zeewesen.
The Revolution of 1688 drew a line across the history of England, and marked the termination of the great struggle between King and Parliament. From that time forward it was settled beyond all dispute that when the two differed the last word was not to be with the king. Our sovereigns have ruled by a Parliamentary title, and the authority which conferred the Crown must always be superior in fact, if not in theory, to the Crown itself. Within Parliament the dominating body must necessarily be the House of Commons, which has the command of the purse. After 1688 the Crown, or the aristocracy, could only govern by securing the support, by means of pocket boroughs, by persuasion or corruption, of a majority of the Lower House. The navy, like the rest of the nation, was deeply affected by the change. From this time forward we hear little of the personal influence of the king. It was to the House of Commons that the navy appealed. Officers who wished to push their fortunes no longer thought of securing the goodwill of the sovereign or of a favourite. They became members of the House of Commons and earned promotion by serving a Parliamentary party. In one way the change was for the manifest good of the navy. It now had a master who might be unwilling to pay handsomely, but who both would and could pay whatever he chose to promise with a regularity far beyond the power of the king. In the years following the Revolution there were indeed complaints of wages in arrear and of necessities neglected. But this was only during the first period of strife. The increasing wealth of the nation supplied Parliament with ample means, and after a time the money was always regularly forthcoming. In another way the change was not so good. A great deal of party spirit was introduced into the navy, and there were times when Whig and Tory animosities interfered with the loyal discharge of duty.
The Revolution also dates, if it did not cause, an evolution in the navy. After 1688 the sea service was sharply marked off from the army. During the reign of King James it had not been uncommon to find men who had served alternately as soldiers and sailors, while some held double employments. Isolated cases of the kind may be met with later, but they became very rare, and soon disappeared altogether. The formation of a large standing army, and the participation of England in Continental wars, drew off the gentlemen volunteers who had been found in the fleets of Charles II. The stamp of man described in old plays as “a coxcomb but stout,” had a natural preference for the army. It did not take him off dry land, and the practice of retiring into winter quarters enabled him to combine a great deal of pleasure with his fighting. A ship was at all times but a prison, and in those it was a prison very much overcrowded and abounding in foul smells. The navy was left entirely to the tarpaulin who had been bred to the sea, and could endure its hardships.
The final victory of the tarpaulin element in the corps of naval officers brought with it both good and evil. The good lay in their seamanship. Even a bad seaman is better than an ignorant or careless landsman in command of a ship. The purely technical part of the navy’s work, that which consisted in the mere handling of the vessel, was better done in the years following the Revolution than had been the case before, except during the Interregnum, when also the sailors had been the predominant element. The evil which came was of a kind not to be wholly attributed to the disappearance of the military officer from the higher ranks of the fleet. It was that there was a distinct fall in the purely military spirit, and as a navy is a fighting as well as a navigating force, this was a misfortune. When we speak of a fallen military spirit, it is not meant that there was any sinking in the mere courage of the service, but only that the naval officer as he became at the Revolution and as he remained till far into the eighteenth century, was first and foremost a seaman, and that he had a tendency to discharge the military side of his duty in blind obedience to various rules of thumb. Two reasons may be assigned for this. Times of revolution are very often followed by times of lassitude. The seventeenth century had been very stormy, and it was to be expected that the Englishman of the following generations would be a less daring and original man than his ancestor of the Civil War time. The sailors shared in the general deadening and commonplaceness of their age. It was only natural that men who went to sea as boys, and were never asked to be more than sailors, should not have tried to be more. Then it was the misfortune of the navy that just at a time when it was tending to stupidity in military conduct, it was called upon by authority to obey a set of hard and fast rules.
Mention has already been made of the fighting orders drawn up by the admirals of the Commonwealth at the close of the First Dutch War, and reissued by Penn when he sailed on his expedition to San Domingo. It will be remembered that these rules established the line ahead as the regular formation for a fleet about to engage the enemy. After the Second Dutch War they were reissued by the Duke of York with certain additions of his own, and they became the orthodox pattern for the navy’s method of fighting. It is to them that we owe it that the line of battle passed from being the order adopted for the purpose of coming most effectually into action with the enemy, and grew to be regarded as an end in itself. The duke’s orders would not perhaps have hampered a more original generation; but they were sure to have a deadening effect upon men who felt no natural impulse to think. The admiral who conformed to the orders could always plead that he had obeyed authority, whereas if he departed from them, and his independence was not justified by a brilliant victory, he would be in considerable danger of being accused of insubordination. The harm done by these instructions arose mainly from two of the articles. No. VIII. lays it down that “if the enemy stay to fight (his majesty’s fleet having the wind), the headmost squadron of his majesty’s fleet shall steer for the headmost of the enemy’s ships.” No. XVI. contains the following peremptory instruction: “In all cases of fight with the enemy, the commanders of his majesty’s ships are to keep the fleet in one line, and (as much as may be) to preserve that order of battle which they have been directed to keep before the time of fight.” The duke had foreseen that an English fleet, being to leeward, might wish to force on a battle. In this case it was directed that the van upon obtaining a favourable position for the purpose, should tack and break through the enemy. So soon as it had broken through it was to turn, and attack from windward. In the meantime the centre and rear were to remain to leeward, and co-operate with the van. But this was a very difficult manœuvre to carry out against even a moderately efficient opponent. Ships performing it would be liable to lose spars and to drift to leeward towards their own centre. Moreover, an enemy who kept his wind and stood on might possibly file past, and so deliver the fire of all, or the greater part, of his ships into the unsupported English van. Article III., which prescribed this method of attack, remained a mere counsel of perfection, and was soon dropped out of the fighting orders. It was, I venture to affirm, never acted on except by Howe on the 29th of May 1794, and then with only partial success.
The course followed by English admirals was less complicated and risky than this, but also less likely to prove effectual when fully carried out. When they were to leeward and the enemy would not attack them, they manœuvred to gain the weather-gage. When they had the wind of the enemy, they came down on him with their fleet in line—the leading ship of the English steering for the leading ship of the enemy, and the others behind for their respective opponents. Thus the two fleets engaged van to van, centre to centre, rear to rear. To take “every man his bird” was the familiar naval image for a well-conducted action with an enemy who did not shirk. Of course this method only applied to the case where the two fleets were going in the same direction. If one turned, the two would pass one another, and then they must curl round again before the action could be resumed. The advantage of engaging the enemy from the leading ship to the last was this, that it prevented any portion of his ships from tacking, and so putting some of the English between two fires. The drawback was that if the two fleets were even not very unequal, no overwhelming superiority was developed on either side at a chosen point. The damage done was about equivalent, and the two separated without decisive result. This would not have been the case if the admirals after the Revolution had been as ready as the chiefs of the Dutch wars to depart from their line when once it had served its purpose of bringing them in contact with the enemy. If the captains had been allowed to steer through the hostile line wherever they could find or make an opening, a general mêlée must have ensued, and the battle would have been fought out. But here came in the influence of Article No. XVI., which prescribed the retention of the “same order” all through the battle. If an English captain stood out of the line to press through the enemy, it must necessarily be broken. But this was rigidly forbidden. Therefore the system of fighting adopted by our navy at the close of the seventeenth century made it inevitable that our admirals would attack from windward, would spread themselves all along the enemy’s line, that the damage done would be pretty equally divided between the two fleets, and that the enemy, having the road to leeward open, could retire whenever he pleased.
The Revolution brought no considerable alteration in the mere administrative machinery of the navy. From that time forward the office of Lord High Admiral was habitually put into commission, but the change was made for the purpose of finding the greatest number of places for Parliamentary supporters, and was in substance not very different from the method adopted by the Commonwealth, by Charles I., and by James I. It was of more importance that the reign of William III. saw the complete establishment of half pay. The later Stuarts had granted allowances to flag officers and a few captains, but the Parliament of the Revolution first regularly provided for the support of a body of officers of all commissioned ranks when not in active service. This also was inevitable if the country was to maintain a regular staff for the fleet. It was neither possible to maintain the navy continually on a war footing, nor to disband the whole corps of officers so soon as peace was signed, and trust to forming another when the need had arisen.
The establishment made by King James II. in 1686 fell with its maker. The handsome table-money allowance was not paid after the Revolution, and the officers were thus thrown back on the old scale of pay. This meant that the captain of a first-rate who had flattered himself with the hope of receiving £535, 18s. 4d. per annum found that he was in fact only entitled to £285, 18s. 4d. Captains of the lesser rates were disappointed in proportion. At the same time the regulations depriving them of convoy money, and restricting their chances of casual gains, were more strictly enforced. The trading classes had won great power by the Revolution, and could put pressure on the House of Commons, and they were not unnaturally eager to defend themselves against extortion. Their case was good, but the grievance of the naval officer was not the less genuine. Yet the loss of King James’s establishment was probably not much regretted by the navy at large, since it benefited the captains only. Other ranks had their grievances. The complaints of the sea officers were so loud and persistent that at last the Government was compelled to do them some justice. By an Order of the Commissioners of the Admiralty dated 14th February 1694, it was established that the sea pay “of the flag officers, commanders, lieutenants, masters and surgeons of their majesty’s ships be increased to as much more as it is at present.” As a set off to this the number of servants they were entitled to take to sea at the expense of the Crown was reduced. With this provision for the officers on active service came the formation of a half-pay list. It was somewhat arbitrarily constructed. The benefit was confined to “all flag officers and commanders of ships of the first, second, third, fourth and fifth rates, and of fireships, and also the first lieutenants and masters of the first, second and third rates who have served a year in ships of rates respectively, or have been in a general engagement with the enemy, and shall have performed their duties to the satisfaction of the Lord High Admiral of England or the Commissioners executing that office.” These were to “be allowed half pay during their being on shore in time of peace at home.”
This establishment was too good to last. When the Peace of Ryswick was made, the country was burdened with a heavy debt. The House of Commons was in an economical mood. It insisted upon disbanding a large part of the troops, and was only prevented from leaving the officers entirely without support by the strenuous exertions of the king. William III. made no effort to save the naval officers, for the House of Commons had no such jealousy of the fleet as of the army. The sea officers presented a petition stating their hard case. The petition was laid on the table in a busy session, and was for a time smothered, but in the following year the Commons took up the case of the naval officers, and the result was the establishment of April 1700. This new scheme cut down the rate of pay allowed during the last six years. According to a tolerably uniform practice, the reduction was less severe with the higher than with the lower ranks. While the Admiral of the Fleet was reduced from £6 to £5 per diem, a captain of a fifth-rate was reduced from 12s. to 8s. But while the House of Commons was thus economising the whole pay, it fully recognised the necessity of maintaining a “competent number of Experienced Sea Officers, supported on Shore, who may be within reach to answer any sudden or immergent Occasion; and therefore do humbly propose the number of Flag Officers, Captains, Lieutenants, and Masters following, to be always supported on Shore while out of Employment, by the Allowances against their Names exprest.” The scale drawn up by Parliament provided for 9 admirals at sums ranging from 17s. 6d. per diem for the Rear-Admiral to £2, 10s. for the Admiral of the Fleet. For 50 captains who had served during the “late war,” at 10s. a day for 20 and 8s. for 30. For 100 lieutenants who had seen service, in the following proportions: 40 at 2s. 6d. and 60 at 2s. For 30 masters, of whom one half were to receive 2s. 6d. and the other half 2s. per diem. The total half-pay charge of that time was only £18,113. No officer who took service with the merchants, or had other employment, was to be entitled to the allowance. As officers on the half-pay list died or were drawn for active service, an equal number of others who were duly qualified were to step into the enjoyment of the allowance. It will be seen that this was at best a half measure. Many men who deserved to be supported were left without provision, yet the House of Commons had adopted the principle of granting half pay, and that was a great step towards the complete establishment of the rule that all who served the State were entitled to be maintained at its expense, even when they were not immediately wanted. It is in this tentative way, not by great administrative schemes, but by small measures meant to meet a present necessity, that the whole of the organisation of our navy has grown. At the close of the reign of Queen Anne the right to half pay was made general.