A Short History of the Royal Navy, 1217 to 1688

by David Hannay

In so far, he was doing what every Royalist would have wished to see the king do. Then Oliver was resolved to obtain security for English commerce on the sea, and on that point there were no differences of opinion in the nation. Finally, he designed to obtain for England that extension of her trade and that expansion of her colonial empire after which the ambition of the nation was already straining. The criticism that his schemes were too great for his resources is perhaps well founded. Yet, had he lived to establish his Government firmly, it is probable that he would not have asked the nation for more than it could easily give. The sums spent by his Government on maritime expeditions were not greater than those pilfered and wasted during the reign of Charles II. But, however that may be, the fact remains that Oliver first pointed out to England the course she was to follow in the eighteenth century; and if he was wrong in practice, it was because the principles of his foreign policy were in advance of their time.

There were two ways by which the Protector could carry out his policy—by alliance with Spain or by alliance with France. The long war between these two nations was still in progress—with growing success and resources on the side of France, and daily increasing weakness on the side of Spain. There were reasons which might seem to make it the Protector's interest to ally himself with Spain. The growing strength of France at her very doors was a menace to England. The weakness of Spain would render her a dependent ally—that is to say, it would have that effect if Spain were capable of being influenced by ordinary considerations of policy. Then the close relationship between the families of Stuart and Bourbon must always give the French monarchy a leaning to the side of the opponents of the Protector's Government. But Spain was not to be influenced in the way desired by England. Before Cromwell could undertake to help the Spaniards against the French, there were two concessions he was bound to demand from them. The first was the exemption of Englishmen from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition. The second was the admission of English trade to the Spanish possessions in the New World. Pride and the blind obstinacy with which the Spaniards, to their ruin, have always clung to their most extreme pretensions, made it impossible for the King and Council of Castile to yield what Oliver demanded. It is a well-known story that when the Protector made these two concessions the price of his alliance against France, the Spanish ambassador, Don Alonso de Cárdenas, answered, "My master has but two eyes, and you ask him for both of them." Spain, in fact, would rather fight on in hopeless, contumacious obstinacy than yield up her right to protect the purity of her faith and her pretension to retain the monopoly of the New World. Since, then, Cromwell could not obtain his ends by treaty, he prepared to extort them from Spain by force. He turned to the French alliance, and made ready for war.

The attack on Spain was to be conducted on three lines. One does not concern us, except in so far as it is necessary to remember that unless England had possessed a superiority of strength at sea, she could not have followed it. At a later period English troops were sent to co-operate in the conquest of the Spanish Netherlands. But before this, Spain had been attacked on the sea. Two expeditions were fitted out in England. The first, under the command of Robert Blake, was to sail for the Mediterranean, and, after disposing of certain preliminary duties, was to attack Spain at home. The second, under the combined commands of William Penn as general-at-sea, and of Robert Venables as general of the land forces, was to fall upon the Spaniards in the New World. This second expedition marks a notable epoch in our colonial history, and, at the cost of somewhat forestalling the order of time, may be told as an episode by itself.

According to all modern notions, the policy of Cromwell in fitting out this expedition was eminently immoral. A great fleet carrying a force of soldiers was sent out with orders to attack the Spaniards before a declaration of war. But in the middle of the seventeenth century, and in the circumstances, there was nothing even irregular in what the Protector did. It is necessary to understand in their main lines the relations of European States to Spain in the New World, and to do that we must look back for a moment. At the close of the fifteenth century, the almost simultaneous voyages of Columbus across the Atlantic and of Vasco da Gama round the Cape of Good Hope had appeared to give the Crowns of Spain and Portugal the rights of previous discovery over the trade routes to the East. It must not be forgotten that Columbus was believed to have reached the eastern extremity of Asia. He himself died in the belief that this was what he had done. It was not until Vasco Nuñez de Balboa had crossed the Isthmus of Darien, and Magellan had sailed through the straits named after him, and had found a vast expanse of ocean between him and Asia, that it came to be understood that there was a continent of America. In 1494 it was thought that Asia had been reached, and it appeared not improbable that Spain and Portugal would come to blows over the limits of what we should now call their respective spheres of influence. The two States appealed to the Pope, Alexander VI., and he drew a line between them running from pole to pole 100 miles to the west of the Cape de Verd Islands. The decision of the arbitrator did not appear satisfactory to the Portuguese, who would have been confined too closely to the coast of Africa. They protested, and their protest was listened to by the Catholic sovereigns, Isabel of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon. In the year after the Pope had given his decision, a conference was held at the town of Tordesillas, and it was then settled that the line of demarcation should run 300 leagues to the west of the Azores and in the corresponding meridian on the other side of the globe. In the course of time, it was found that this decision had thrown by very much the greater part of the two American continents into the share of Spain. Other nations refused, indeed, to allow that the bull "Inter cætera" gave Spain any exclusive rights. But the Spanish Government was of another opinion. It abstained, indeed, from interfering with the English settlements in New England and the French in Canada, which were poor and distant. Its own weakness forced it so far to acquiesce in what it could not prevent, but it never recognised the legitimacy of foreign settlements; and whenever any of them approached those regions where the Spanish rule was strong, they were liable to attack, even when peace prevailed in Europe. The Spaniards, in fact, recognised no peace beyond the line—that is to say, the line of demarcation from north to south, and not, as is sometimes supposed, the equator.

Hence there arose a permanent condition of lawless violence in the West Indies. By far the greater part of the islands, composing the Greater and the Lesser Antilles, were not occupied by the Spaniards at all. European adventurers were not to be debarred from settling in unoccupied lands, by a mere decision of the Pope which they did not recognise as valid. During the first half of the seventeenth century, English, French, and Dutch had swarmed in to dispute these islands with the Spaniard. The weakness of Spain made it impossible for her to keep them out altogether. The early history of these settlements is obscure. One very curious colony, founded by a Puritan company, of which Pym was one of the directors, in the island of Old Providence on the coast of Honduras, has left no trace except a few letter-books. Barbadoes was peacefully occupied by Englishmen, and became rapidly prosperous. Other English adventurers, some of them holding patents from the king and others without, had settled in Antigua, Montserrat, Nevis, and part of St. Kitts. The other part of St. Kitts was held by the French. The Dutch also were in the West Indies, less as settlers than as traders with the French and English. Yet, though these settlements had increased and prospered, they were never quite safe from Spanish attack. One great Spanish armament, under Don Fadrique de Toledo, had swept the West Indies in 1629; other and minor attacks had been common. The settlement in Old Providence, after many alarms and adventures, had been finally exterminated at some time in the earlier stages of our Civil War. It will be seen, then, that if the Spaniards were assailed by Cromwell without formal declaration of hostilities in the New World, the act was abundantly justified by Spanish precedents.

In 1654 the newly established Government was being urgently pressed to send out just such an armament as was finally despatched. An Englishman, of the name of Thomas Gage, the son of a family of English Roman Catholics and strong Royalists, had published an exhortation to his countrymen to fall upon Spanish America, and had revealed the real weakness of the land in a book called the New Survey of the West Indies, published in 1648, and very popular in the seventeenth century. Gage, who had been a priest, and who then became converted, and preached as a Puritan divine in England, was one of the very few Englishmen for whom it had been possible to visit the Spanish possessions. At the same time, some at least among the planters of Barbadoes were urging the English Government to adopt an aggressive policy, and were promising effectual support.

Under the stimulus of all these motives, the Protector's Government organised this expedition in the summer and autumn of 1654. It was to consist of 38 warships, carrying 1134 guns and 4380 seamen. A land force of 3000 soldiers, divided into five regiments of 600 each, was to be raised. The whole, when ready, was to sail for the West Indies, and to begin hostilities with the Spaniards from the day it crossed the tropic of Cancer. The orders given to the expedition, as was commonly the case with the Council of State and Cromwell, were perfect examples of what such things should be—at once absolutely precise in prescribing the aim, and wisely large in defining the means to be adopted. "We shall not," said the Protector, "tie you up to a method by any particular instructions." The generals, in fact, were deprived of every excuse for failure by being left free to choose the fittest means. As for the object of the cruise, on that point there was no doubt. They were to go over to the West Indies, firstly, to chastise the French, who had been guilty of excesses against English trade; secondly, to enforce the Navigation Laws against the Dutch, who had been carrying on an interloping commerce with the English islands; thirdly, and this was the main purpose of the armament, they were to effect a settlement among the Spanish possessions. Where it was to be made, they were themselves to judge on the spot, and according to circumstances. They might land on the islands, taking Hispaniola by preference, or, failing that, St. John, that is, San Juan de Puerto Rico. Or, again, they might pass the islands and fall upon the mainland somewhere between the mouth of the Orinoco and Porto Bello, that part of South America commonly called the Spanish Main. A third course was to attack both the islands and the mainland, but it was made abundantly clear that the hands of those who were to be responsible for doing the work were not to be tied by too precise instructions.

This was as it should have been, but all was not equally well with the expedition. The leaders selected by Cromwell did not do honour to his choice. Venables, the commander of the troops, must have done something to make the Protector think him fit for the place, but on this expedition he showed himself a feeble, pottering, uxorious man. He took his wife with him, and appears to have been miserable when separated from her company. Penn was undoubtedly a brave and skilful seaman, but he wanted the intellectual resources and strength of character required to make good the deficiencies of his colleague. The weakness of the usurping Government is revealed by the action which these two men, seemingly without any agreement with one another, took during the summer. They both wrote to the exiled king, offering him their services. At such a time, men who have not honour enough to stand aside from a usurping Government, and who cannot serve it with enthusiasm, are very likely to be found looking over their shoulders for a safe retreat, and making friends with the enemy of the Government of to-day, who may possibly be the ruler of to-morrow. Penn and Venables offered to bring the whole armament over to King Charles if he could find a port for them abroad. The king, who was totally unable to comply with the condition, declined the offer. It throws an unpleasant light on the character of Penn, that, immediately after he had been making this offer to betray the master who trusted in him, he was found appealing to the Protector for a grant of land in Ireland, which land, as a matter of fact, was the confiscated property of the supporters of the king. He and Venables did not work harmoniously together. They had a squabble in England before they sailed, which was made up by the exertions of friends, but probably left them on not very confidential terms with one another. It was not only the inferiority of, and want of harmony between, the leaders which was likely to militate against the efficiency of the expedition. The victualling was ill done, probably because of the poverty of the Government. A good part of the stores was not ready in time, and had to be sent on later. A large portion of the soldiers raised were of an inferior quality. Cromwell could not spare the choice troops who were the support of his rule. The five regiments were specially raised for the service, and they consisted mainly of discharged soldiers of the king as well as of the Parliament. These men had lost, or in many cases had never possessed, a true military character. The number of 3000 provided for by the scheme was never attained. The expedition did not carry more than 2500 men, of whom perhaps half were more likely to be a hindrance than a help where discipline was required.

On the 20th of December 1654 Rear-Admiral Dakins was sent on with fourteen ships in advance. The bulk of the expedition sailed on Christmas Day, which was probably chosen at least partly from a Puritan desire to show disrespect for the feast. In mid-ocean the heavier ships, which hampered the speed of the fleet, were left behind. Penn and Venables pressed on with the better sailers. By the 29th January 1655 the whole armament was assembled in Carlisle Bay in Barbadoes.

The disappointments of the expedition began at once. It was found that those planters who had been urging the Government to send a force into the West Indies, and had promised effectual help, had spoken without authority. The planters of Barbadoes were by no means generally pleased at the appearance of an expedition from England. The generals were authorised to raise a regiment in the island, and the planters were afraid that if the freemen enlisted in large numbers, their "servants" would revolt so soon as the armed force was gone. By servants must be understood both the black slaves and those white men, criminals and prisoners of war, who were bound to a term of service. Much pressure had to be exercised before this opposition was overcome. It was at last surmounted, and the regiment was raised. In the meantime the news spread through the English islands. The swarm of loose adventurers who filled them, the runaway "servants," sailors who had deserted from their ships,—all the raw material, in fact, out of which the formidable buccaneering body called the "Brethren of the Coast" was afterwards formed,—began to collect in regiments, and were burning to take part in the service, which seemed to promise plunder. Such men as these, the floating population of the frontier, valiant in pothouses, but feeble in battle, were of no real value for military purposes. Yet they were accepted to the number of several thousands. The expedition had unfortunately been put under the command of a committee. In this Cromwell followed the practice of the Parliament, and was perhaps influenced by the fear of putting too much power into the hands of a single man. Not only Penn and Venables, but Goodson the vice-admiral, Dakins the rear-admiral, two special Commissioners, Winslow and Gregory Butler, together with some others, were joined in the general command, and nothing was to be done without the consent of three of them. The opinion of the wiser few, who would willingly have dispensed with the riff-raff of the islands, was overborne, and the expedition was hampered by an ill-armed, worse-disciplined, and thoroughly untrustworthy mob. It is to be noted also that this distant and unhealthy service in the West Indies was not popular with the sailors. While at Carlisle Bay, the sea officers came in a body to Penn and represented to him their hope that the hardships of their service would be allowed for in their pay and prize-money. One good measure that had been decided upon in England was here perfected. A regiment of sailors was formed. It was put under the command of Admiral Goodson as colonel, with naval officers to lead the companies.