His Majesty's Ships.
Ships.Tons.Men.Brass Guns.Commanders.
The Lion60025040Sir Robert Mansel.
Vanguard, Vice-Admiral66025040Sir Richard Hawkins.
Rainbow, Rear-Admiral66025040Sir Thomas Button.
Constant Reformation66025040Captain Arth. Manwaring.
Antelope40016034Sir Henry Palmer.
Convertine50022036Captain Thomas Love.
Merchant Ships.
Iron Guns.
Golden Phenix30012024Captain Samuel Argall.
Samuel30012022Captain Chr. Harris.
Marygold26010021Sir John Fearn.
Zouch Phenix28012026Captain John Pennington.
Barbary2008018Captain Thomas Porter.
Centurion20010022Sir Francis Tanfield.
Primrose1808018Sir John Hamden.
Hercules30012024Captain Eusaby Cave.
Neptune28012021Captain Robert Haughton.
Merchant-Bonaventure26011023Captain John Chidley.
Restore1305012Captain George Raymond.
Marmaduke1005012Captain Thomas Harbert.

The command of the squadron was given to Sir Robert Mansel, an old officer of the Elizabethan time, who had fought against the Armada, and had seen much service. He was a cousin of Lord Howard of Effingham, had been a greedy if not corrupt official, and had taken an active share in supporting the Lord Admiral in his opposition to the Commission of 1613. The second in command, Sir Richard Hawkins, was the son of the more famous Sir John. He had in the former reign been taken prisoner by the Spaniards in the South Seas after a gallant fight. During his captivity he had been converted to Roman Catholicism. His account of his voyage to the South Seas is, next to the Naval Tracts of Sir William Monson, the best contemporary account of the sea life in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The Captain John Pennington who appears among the commanders of the merchant ships, is the Sir John Pennington of later years. Although not a man of great ability or considerable achievements, he is interesting as a type. He belonged to a family of Puritan tradesmen, who came originally from Henham in Essex, but were settled in London. The seaman did not share the politics of his family, but was, in the fullest sense of the word, a king's servant, making it his boast that it was his one rule to obey his master's orders. He began life as a merchant's skipper, and sailed in the employment of Raleigh in the last voyage to Guiana. He had endeavoured to enter the service of the East India Company, without success, although (if it ought not to be because) he had the patronage of Buckingham. The same patron probably obtained for him the command of the Zouch Phenix on this voyage. From this time forward he was regularly in the employment of the Crown, and generally in command of the Narrow Seas. The qualities which made his fortune lie on the surface. He was, as has already been said, the king's servant and nothing more, ready to fight or to run away, to tell the truth or to lie, even to tell manifestly incompatible lies, upon the order of anybody whom the king told him to obey. Such a man was invaluable. The combination of perfect loyalty with a total absence of scruple is never very common. Charles appreciated Pennington's qualities to the full, and, when the Civil War was about to break out, even inclined to give him the great office of Lord High Admiral.

The expedition against the Algerine pirates left England on the 12th October 1620. In June of the following year it turned homeward, having done nothing in the interval except make one futile attempt to defraud the Dey of Algiers, by sending a sham consul, who was, in fact, a common sailor dressed up for the occasion, and another no less feeble effort to burn the pirate ships in the harbour. It spent a great part of its time at Alicante, or in the Balearic Islands. It went aimlessly to and fro between these places and Algiers. It was in harbour when it ought to have been cruising against the pirates, and was at sea when the pirates were safe back in Algiers. It finally returned, having done much more harm than good by encouraging the Algerines in their belief of their own strength.

King James died on the 27th of March 1625. The navy which he left his son was still at the strength fixed by the Commissioners of 1618. As compared with the navy of Queen Elizabeth, it shows a decrease of either nine or eleven, for there is some doubt as to the exact number of the king's ships, and an increase of about 2350 in tonnage. The work before the navy in the new reign was, to judge by appearances, very serious. The failure of the negotiations for a Spanish marriage, and the wounds inflicted on the vanity, both of Charles and of Buckingham, during their journey to Madrid, had provoked a war. It was not long before the management of the new favourite added a war with France to the existing struggle with Spain. Formidable as the task looks, there is no reason to doubt that the Royal Navy, aided by the levies of merchant ships always made when a great fleet was fitted out for sea at that period, would have been amply sufficient. Spain was already exhausted, and was only too happy to be able to repel attack, while France had, as yet, no navy at all. But in order that the strength of England on the sea could be fully exerted, there was need for good management, a full treasury, and hearty zeal on the part of the nation. All these three conditions were wanted. Therefore the enterprises of one kind or other which went on from 1625 to 1629 were little less languid, and were even more disgraceful, than Mansel's useless demonstration against Algiers. Their political history is of immense interest, but it is unnecessary to be told here. The miserable business of the surrender of the seven English ships to the King of France, to be used against Rochelle in 1625, tells us much about the character of Charles, of Buckingham, and of Pennington, who executed his part of a discreditable transaction stolidly, though not without reluctance; but it is of no interest in the history of the navy proper.

The expedition to Cadiz in 1625, the despatch of the Earl of Denbigh with a fleet to cruise in the Channel in 1626, the attack on the Ile de Rhé in 1627, then the two equally useless cruises of Denbigh in April and May and of Lindsey in September and October of 1629, were indeed all either in whole or in part naval undertakings. But they were so languid, so barren of incident worthy to be remembered, and so wholly without result, that to do more than mention them very briefly would be to rob passages of our naval history, which really deserve to be recorded at length, of their due space. The expedition to Cadiz was a mere parody of the great foray of Queen Elizabeth's reign. The fleet was raised in the same way, consisting partly of ships of the Royal Navy, and partly of vessels levied on the maritime counties. The command, too, was in the hands of men of the same classes, that is to say, nobles and soldiers, with their subordinate council of seamen. But the men and the times and the spirit were very different. The commander, Sir Edward Cecil, Lord Wimbledon, was a commonplace officer of the English regiments of the Low Countries, and he had no associate of marked authority or experience. The young Earl of Essex, son of Elizabeth's unhappy favourite, and later on the Lord General of the Parliament in the Civil War, repeated his father's gallantry in the attack on the fort of Puntal. The rest of the history of the voyage to Cadiz is made up of divided councils, vacillation, drunkenness, and failure. The share of the fleet was confined, apart from the attack on the Puntal fort, to carrying the troops there and bringing them back. In 1626, when war had broken out with France, we had some success in capturing French prizes in the Channel, but there was no enemy to fight, which, as the fleet were very badly equipped, was fortunate. The expedition to the Ile de Rhé in 1627 was the Cadiz voyage over again, but worse. Here the fleet had little more to do than to carry the soldiers out at the end of June, and bring back all that remained of them at the end of October. In 1629 two fleets were sent to succour Rochelle, where the Huguenots were making their last stand against Richelieu. They went out, they came back, and they did nothing.

A large part of the discredit of this four years of failure must be thrown on the flighty incapacity of Buckingham, but some share of it is due to the conditions in which the King's Government was working. Charles I. disagreed with his Parliament from the beginning. Therefore he never had enough money, and his armaments, fitted out by makeshifts, were maintained from hand to mouth. Efficiency was hardly to be expected in such circumstances. The unpopularity of the wars reacted on the king's forces. The navy was still in a state of transition, being neither altogether a regular force nor altogether sea militia, but a combination of the two. A regular navy, properly officered, well disciplined and paid, will always fight well. A sea militia will, in favourable circumstances, do very fairly. When there is a great national enthusiasm, a sense of the need for exertion, the hope of booty, and capable leaders, it will render good service, as was shown both in the fighting against the Armada, and at Cadiz in 1597. But in the early years of Charles I. all these conditions were wanting. The merchant ships, when pressed for the service, came unwillingly. Their owners and crews were uncertain of getting their pay from the Crown. The spirits of the men were damped when they saw the destitution of the king's soldiers. Their wish was to get through as soon as they could, to suffer as little damage as might be, and to return at the earliest possible day to their ordinary peaceful and profitable avocations. At Cadiz they behaved with actual cowardice, and at the Ile de Rhé they certainly showed no zeal, whereas the royal ships did the trifling fighting which had to be done very creditably. The deduction that the Crown must make itself independent of their feeble aid was obvious, and, when next England was engaged in a serious naval war, measures were taken to arm a force solely belonging to the State.

This was not, however, to be done by the Government of Charles I. The king never had the revenue needed for the maintenance of a really great navy. His efforts to obtain one were among the causes of the disasters which finally overwhelmed him. Charles was very conscious of the need for a fleet. Indeed, a less intelligent man must have seen the necessity. The naval power of Holland was increasing with great rapidity, while Richelieu was supplying France with an effective navy. The relations of England with her neighbours were always uneasy, and at one time the French and the Dutch were talking of an alliance, which was to end in dividing the Spanish Netherlands and the sea between them. In the presence of this danger Charles I. made serious efforts to raise the strength of the navy. He built no less than 19 vessels. Ten of these were of about 120 tons each, and were known by the odd name of the Whelps, numbered consecutively from one to ten. The great Sovereign of the Seas was one of the ships built to bring the navy to its proper strength. In 1633 the navy had reached the figure of 50 ships of 23,695 or 23,995 tons, carrying in all 1430 guns. When the Civil War broke out, it numbered 42 ships of 22,411 tons, of which 5 were first rates, measuring on an average 1060 tons each. The difference was due to the shedding of small ships.

The means which the king took to find money for all this building are famous in English history. The constitutional aspects of the writs of ship-money do not concern our subject. It is of course obvious that if the king could tax the whole country for the support of the fleet, if he alone was to be the judge of the amount demanded and of the use to be made of it, he could raise any revenue he pleased. In view of the constant attempts made by Charles I. to escape from the control of his Parliament, it is not wonderful that the Country Party, as the Opposition was called, suspected him of some such scheme. Yet, as a matter of fact, it appears that when the king took to calling in peace on the service of the coast counties, which had as yet only been demanded in war, when he commuted the actual service of men and ships for money payments, when he extended the assessments to the inland counties, he was unaffectedly resolved to spend the fund thus raised on his fleet. The administrative defects of his reign are undeniable, and have been pointed out already. Yet, when the Civil War began, the ships and the guns were there. The service they rendered to his domestic enemies throughout the Civil War may be taken as satisfactory evidence that both were good. We possess an elaborate description of the most famous of the ships built by Phineas Pett for King Charles, written by Thomas Heywood.

"This famous vessel was built at Woolwich in 1637. She was in length by the keel 128 feet or thereabout, within some few inches; her main breadth 48 feet; in length, from the fore-end of the beak-head to the after-end of the stern, a prora ad puppim, 232 feet; and in height, from the bottom of her keel to the top of her lanthorn, 76 feet; bore five lanthorns, the biggest of which would hold ten persons upright; had three flush decks, a forecastle, half-deck, quarter-deck, and round-house. Her lower tier had ... 30 ports for Cannon and Demi-Cannon,

Middle tier30 for Culverines and Demi ditto
Third tier26 for other Ordnance
Forecastle12