A Short History of the Royal Navy, 1217 to 1688

by David Hannay

Before the fleet under Penn left to undergo its varied fortunes in the West Indies, another naval armament had sailed from England under the command of Robert Blake. It started somewhat earlier than the expedition directed against the West Indies—on the 29th September. Blake's orders were ultimately to attack the Spaniards, but the time for hostilities against them in Europe had not yet come. In the interval there was plenty for an English admiral to do in the Mediterranean. In the first place, he had, in the modern phrase, "to show the flag"—that is to say, to let foreign nations see that England was mistress of a naval force capable of extorting respect. Then the Protector had inherited from the Council of State a number of diplomatic disputes with the Italian princes. The presence of a powerful English fleet in the Mediterranean was likely to add material weight to the expostulations of his diplomatists. Blake worked his way slowly along the Spanish and Italian coasts of the Mediterranean, and was everywhere treated with deference. There is a story that at Malaga he gave the Spaniards a proof that the ruler of England did not bear the sword in vain for the defence of his subjects. It is said that an English sailor who was on shore on leave displayed his Puritan sentiments by insulting the host. For this he was maltreated by the mob, on the instigation of a friar. Blake, so the story goes, insisted on the punishment of the ecclesiastic, and was told by the governor that he had no power to punish churchmen, which, if it was ever said, was untrue. Upon this, the English admiral threatened to open fire unless the friar was given up to him. His threat and the ocular demonstration they had of his strength brought the Spanish authorities to reason. The friar was sent on board, presumably expecting and, if he was a fanatic, hoping for martyrdom. Blake, however, confined himself to rebuking the over-zealous friar, and declaring that he would make the English name as much respected as ever was that of a Roman citizen. There is nothing improbable in the story, which, however, rests solely on the authority of Bishop Burnet. Whatever may be the accuracy of this anecdote, it is beyond question that Blake's mission was to make the name of Englishmen respected in the Mediterranean, and that it was fulfilled. The Italian princes found that delay would no longer be tolerated. Their disputes with the English Government were wound up. A naval power is not limited in its influence, as the strongest of merely military powers must needs be. The States around the Mediterranean might have despised the menace of the New Model Army, which was no doubt capable of marching all through Italy, if only it could have got so far; but a fleet can make the power of the State felt wherever ships can go. Cromwell's menaces were formidable to the very extremities of the Mediterranean.

In that sea there was one duty to be discharged which the English Navy had been forced to neglect for too long. The pirates of the Barbary States had long been a pest and a menace to the commerce of Europe, and even to the coasts of Christian States. Within the Mediterranean nobody had yet seriously undertaken to break their power. It is true that they no longer operated in great fleets, as they had done in the days of Barbarossa. The age of the pirate admirals had been succeeded by that of the Raises, or pirate captains, but they were still formidable to commerce, if they attempted no longer to capture towns and conquer territory. The growing English trade in the Mediterranean suffered from them severely. When the Church of England included a prayer for prisoners and captives in her Litany, the words had a significance they no longer bear. In 1620 the ridiculously feeble effort already recorded, to check this disgraceful infliction, had been made with no better result than to convince these Mohammedan sea rovers that England was not formidable. It was necessary to bring them to a sounder view of the facts, and this was one part of the task entrusted to Blake.

After passing along the coasts of Spain and Italy, Blake went on to discharge this part of his duties. He first sailed over to Algiers in March and opened negotiations. It was his purpose to secure his object—the release of English captives and some security for the exemption of English ships from capture in future—without fighting, if possible. The Barbary States were still nominally part of the dominions of the Sultan, and there was always a chance that severe measures taken at their expense might provoke retaliation on the servants and property of the Levant Company at Smyrna and Scanderoon. At Algiers, then, Blake attempted peaceful negotiations with the Dey, and even exerted himself on his behalf with the Grand Master of the Knights of St. John. The Dey was obstinate, or, as he habitually lived in terror of the piratical portion of his subjects, it would perhaps be more accurate to say that he did not dare to make such an arrangement as Blake demanded. Still the English admiral held his hand. Before taking hostile measures at Algiers, he decided to pay a visit to the less formidable piratical town of Tunis. The Dey of this other town of plunderers was not less unreasonable, and by this time Blake's patience was exhausted. After returning for a few days to Trapani in Sicily, he came back and fell upon the pirate ships. Tunis was strong, and the Dey believed it to be unattackable. It lies at the very bottom of the deep gulf between Cape Farina and Cape Bon. The approach was protected by the forts of Farina and Goletta, famous in the wars of Charles V. and Philip II. The pirate galleys had been hauled under the guns of these fortifications, and their owners might with some show of reason believe them safe, but they had never yet been attacked in the style adopted by Blake. On the 4th of April 1655 (just one month, be it noted for purposes of comparison, before Penn and Venables sailed away from San Domingo shamefully beaten) the English admiral stood in and opened fire on the Tunisian ships. The forts proved very ineffectual, and the fire of the vessels was soon silenced. Then the English took to their boats and boarded. They were quickly masters of the prizes, and lost no time in burning them. From Tunis Blake went first to Tripoli, and then came back to Algiers. In these places satisfactory arrangements were at last made. The Orientals had, in fact, discovered that the moderation of the English admiral was not due to fear or weakness, and they at once bowed to force. Blake's conduct was approved by Cromwell, and he was now free to proceed to the execution of the last part of his duty.

The alliance with France was in the meantime maturing. There was no longer any reason for delaying an open declaration of hostilities against Spain. On the contrary, as Penn and Venables had had time to develop their attack on the West Indies, it was very desirable that the Spaniards should be prevented from sending reinforcements, and this could be most effectually done by compelling them to stand on guard at home. Blake was therefore ordered to cruise off Cadiz, for the double purpose of intercepting the treasure-ships on their way back from America and of preventing the despatch of a Spanish squadron to the West Indies. The blockade was so far successful that the Spaniards were paralysed, but no prizes were taken, and by the approach of autumn the English ships were severely strained. In October Blake returned to England. The war with Spain had not as yet been prosecuted with very triumphant success. The failure at San Domingo was a huge disgrace, hardly balanced in the opinion of the world by the capture of Jamaica. The successful blockade of Cadiz, though it must have caused great loss to the enemy, had not produced those visible results in the way of prizes and bullion which the nation could understand. But Cromwell was resolved to persevere.

In 1656 Blake returned to the coast of Spain. On this cruise he was accompanied by Edward Montagu, afterwards the first Earl of Sandwich, and their object was again to capture the much-desired Plate Fleet. This year they had a better chance of success. In 1655 the Spanish Government had stopped the vessels, but it was now in such dire need of money that it was compelled to run the risk of bringing them home. In summer a first detachment reached the neighbourhood of Cadiz, only to fall into the hands of the English blockading fleet. Blake and Montagu were not present at the capture, for they had retired to the friendly ports of Portugal to refit, but a squadron had been left to watch the port, under the command of Richard Stayner. It proved amply sufficient for the work to be done. The Spanish treasure-ships, though of great bulk for the time, were intrinsically very feeble, and their decks were hampered by merchandise. Stayner burned or captured nearly the whole, with a very trifling loss to himself. The bullion and goods taken amounted in value to nearly the revenue of England for a year—to over two millions sterling. Montagu returned to England with the booty, taking Stayner with him. Although the great sugar-loaves of silver were pillaged by the sailors, there was enough left to load thirty waggons, which were driven through London to the Tower, to the general gratification of the Protector's subjects.

Blake in the meanwhile remained outside of Cadiz during the autumn and winter, till the spring of 1657, waiting for the next instalment of the Plate Fleet. It was an unheard-of thing at that time to keep a fleet out for the winter. Even now the heavier vessels had been sent home with Montagu and Stayner, but the persistence of the others in remaining abroad shows that our navy was increasing in seaworthiness and hardihood. In the April of 1657 Blake was rewarded for his perseverance by learning that a large Spanish squadron carrying treasure had taken refuge at Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

To attack them in this port was in the general opinion an enterprise of the utmost hazard. The bay of Santa Cruz is deep and the island hilly, therefore the harbour is perpetually liable either to be in a dead calm, or to be swept by the violent gusts of wind off the land. These natural obstacles made entrance difficult for a fleet. And Santa Cruz was in addition very powerfully fortified. So strong, in fact, had art and nature made the harbour, that the Spaniards considered a successful attack impossible, and Blake's contemporaries looked upon his triumph as an unheard-of achievement of daring. Yet the Commonwealth admiral, like so many other men of strong mind, showed his strength by despising the vain appearance of force. He estimated the inefficiency of the Spaniards at its true value. Moreover, he saw that the forts, if attacked closely, would probably fail to stop the entry of a fleet running before a good breeze and borne on a rising tide. Once in the harbour, and in the midst of the Spanish vessels, he would be comparatively safe, since they would mask the fire of the guns on shore. With the turn of the tide, aided, as it was very likely to be, by one of the common winds off the land, he would be able to secure his retreat. No doubt there was an appreciable risk, as there always must be in the serious operations of war. But it was one a bold man commanding an effective fighting force could run without temerity.

The attack was made on the 20th of April, in the early hours of the morning. The fleet had sighted the harbour by daybreak, and the look-out frigates had reported that the Spanish ships were still in the bay. The decision to attack was taken at once, and the English fleet stood in. The result fully justified the calculations we may suppose Blake to have made. The English ships ran past the forts with little or no damage. They were in the midst of the Spanish ships and in hot action by eight o'clock. The Spanish galleons were as ill fitted for war as the vessels taken outside of Cadiz. Though the English remained in the bay while daylight lasted, they lost only 50 killed and 120 wounded, while none of the ships received more damage than could be made good at sea in a few days' work. The fate of the Spaniards was very different. By seven in the evening they were all sunk, driven on shore, or set on fire. When the work was thoroughly done, the English prepared to drift out on the ebb-tide. By this time daylight must have been over, and in the dusk and following darkness they would probably in any case have passed the forts with very little injury. But by one of those strokes of good fortune which commonly come to the help of a bold and skilfully conducted enterprise, the wind arose from the south-west, and they regained the sea swiftly, with no further injury.

The attack on the Spaniards at Santa Cruz de Tenerife was not only the most brilliant achievement of the navy during Cromwell's Government, but it was by far the finest single feat performed in the seventeenth century, and, though it has been equalled, it has never been greatly surpassed in later times. Even Nelson's attack on Copenhagen was not more intrepid. The delight felt by all Englishmen, without distinction of party, was unbounded. Cromwell sent Blake a "jewel" consisting of his portrait set in gold and diamonds, and the royal historian Clarendon has praised him without stint or qualification. Blake, indeed, deserved alike the jewel and the praise. Nothing quite of the same stamp as the attack on Santa Cruz had ever been done before, except his own bombardment of the forts of the Dey of Tunis. The captures of the Puntal Castle at Cadiz by the Earl of Essex in 1597, and then by his son in 1625, were small in comparison. In the Elizabethan time, ships had either shrunk from attacking forts, or, as in the case of Drake's attack on San Juan de Puerto Rico, had been beaten off. At the Ile de Rhé, our ships had shown no inclination to tackle the French fortifications. It is to Blake, as Clarendon justly pointed out, that the credit belongs of first showing what a fleet could do. But for Blake, his work was over. The destruction of the West India fleet had completed the task he was sent to do on the coast of Spain. He was therefore ordered to return home, but he never lived to reach his native country. He died, as it would seem, of scurvy, on board his flagship, the George, at the mouth of Plymouth Sound, on the 7th of August 1657. He was buried with his old fellow-admiral and general-at-sea, Richard Deane, in Henry the Seventh's Chapel, whence their bodies were taken with those of other Puritan leaders, at the Restoration, and thrown into a pit on the north side of the Abbey.

During the brief remainder of Cromwell's life, the navy had little to do except to assist the troops which were co-operating with Turenne in the siege of Dunkirk. With the death of the Protector the whole foundation of his Government was removed. It was based on his personal ascendency, and was supported by his immense superiority of faculty to all enemies. Englishmen submitted to it because the alternative was anarchy. When Oliver died, the anarchy which he had warded off came swiftly upon the nation. Between the end of 1658 and the beginning of 1660 power was snatched from one feeble hand by another, till at last Monk, at the head of the army in Scotland, imposed himself on all rivals. By this time the vast majority of Englishmen had come to the conclusion that their one means of escape from a succession of mere military tyrannies lay in the restoration of the ancient monarchy. Happily for England, no man saw that truth more clearly than Monk, and under his sagacious, phlegmatic guidance the restoration of the monarchy was effected in the May of 1660. A historian of the navy is strongly tempted to endeavour to prove that it helped materially towards attaining this result. I can, however, see no evidence that this was the case. A navy, though powerful to ward off foreign intervention in our affairs, was very little able to influence the nation. It could only apply pressure by intercepting trade and cruising outside ports,—in other words, by condemning itself to the hardships and tedium of blockade, and that, too, in circumstances which made effective blockade impossible, since the fleet could not draw supplies from abroad, and could only get them at home by the goodwill of their countrymen. The utter failure of the Royalist revolt in the fleet in 1648 even to check the triumph of the Independents is an example of the happy incapacity of a navy to take an influential part in civil strife. Throughout the war the navy had followed, not led, and this was its part during the fourteen months of confusion which intervened between the fall of the Protectorate and the Restoration of King Charles.