A Short History of the Royal Navy, 1217 to 1688

by David Hannay

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 manœuvring 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-manœuvred 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.