A Short History of the Royal Navy, 1217 to 1688

by David Hannay

W. Coventry.

May 7, 1661."

Mr. Thomas Darcy was, in the modern sense of the word, the first midshipman in the English Navy. The title had hitherto been given to a petty officer serving under the boatswain, and it even continued to be used in that sense for some time. By the duke's own orders, nobody was to be rated a midshipman who had not served seven years at sea. There does not seem to have been any intention that the young gentlemen who were sent in the squadron with Stayner to apply themselves to the learning of navigation, and fit themselves to the service of the sea, were to be known by the name. It was purely by use and wont that midshipmen came to be the title of the young gentlemen who were in training to make officers, and ceased to be applied as had heretofore been the case. This appointment completed the foundation of the corps of naval officers. Young gentlemen sent on board ship in this way were known as King's Letter boys, and it was understood that they were qualifying for the rank of lieutenant, though they never were allowed to possess the right to demand it. When this modest little expedient is compared with the imposing establishment of the French king, it looks humble enough, yet it may, when judged by the results, well be considered the wiser method of the two. The French naval officers of the end of the seventeenth and the whole of the eighteenth century were more book-learned than ours, more cultivated men, much more addicted to the scientific side of their profession and to writing books, but they were far less efficient as practical seamen. Moreover, they formed a close corporation which had a strong moral if not legal claim to the exclusive right to command the king's ships. Such a body was very jealous, and even very selfish. It was capable of sacrificing the interests of the country to the protection of its own privileges. On the other hand, the English naval officer was commonly, in the ordinary sense of the word, ignorant, but he was thoroughly broken to the sea life, and, if he did not write about his business, he knew it. Moreover, lads who were sent into a ship simply to learn, and had no claim to promotion as a matter of right, were not likely to grow up with the exclusive class jealousy of the French officer. It must be remembered that the King's Letter boy only differed from other boys in the manner of his entry into the ship, and because he was to be treated on the footing of a gentleman. His right to be promoted depended, not on his King's Letter, but on the amount of his service and on his capacity to prove himself fit for promotion. Any other member of the crew who had done the service and possessed the necessary qualifications was equally capable of receiving the king's commission. In practice, no doubt, the lad who had sufficient interest to obtain the King's Letter was more likely to have the interest to secure promotion than another. In practice, too, the service needed to qualify for the rank of lieutenant was sometimes given more in show than reality. The corruption and favouritism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries allowed of many abuses. One of these was the habit of permitting the names of lads to be borne on ships' books while they themselves were at school or in the nursery; but this is only one of the innumerable instances in which fact and theory failed to square, and, however ill the original scheme was carried out, the intention of the Duke of York was secured in essentials. It came to be understood that nobody could be an officer in the English Navy who had not served an apprenticeship in a king's ship, and that, when once an officer, he was regularly in the service of the king. No doubt this could not be done at once. During early years, and before a sufficient number of apprentices had been trained, it was necessary to continue the old practice of appointing men from the outside. Here, as is so often the case, the old overlapped the new, but the foundations had been laid, and it is perfectly accurate to say that the British naval officer, in the modern sense of the word, dates from the reign of Charles II.

There was nothing accidental in the decision of the Duke of York. We know again from Pepys, that in the early days of the duke's administration there was much talk of breeding men to the sea, and making the sea service as honourable as the land. The appointment of Darcy was undoubtedly decided on with this very intention, and the subsequent history of the Royal Navy may be held to show that the duke builded better than he knew. It was long before his work was complete. Half-pay, that is, payment when not on active service, was first given in 1668 to a limited number of flag-officers. Other ranks only got it by degrees. But the principle was established. When once a king's officer was in the king's service for life, it followed that he had a claim to support when not employed. Before the reign of Charles II. no such right had been recognised, therefore there was then no regular service.

Another change, which had become a sheer matter of necessity, was the establishment of a permanent code of discipline. Hitherto each admiral, on being appointed to his office, had issued his own set of regulations. By use and wont there had arisen what was called "the Custom of the Sea." What remained to be done was to give expression to this custom, with the needful improvements and developments, in a statute, if that name can be applied to a set of orders promulgated by an administrative and not a legislative authority. Mention has been already made of "The Laws of War and Ordinances of the Sea, Ordered and Established by the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England" in 1652. This may, in a way, be said to be the first rough draft of the Queen's Regulations and Admiralty's Instructions. Oddly enough, the code is in thirty-nine Articles, a number which one would think a Puritan Parliament would be likely to avoid. A great part of it deals less with discipline and the duties of officers and men than with exhortations to fight well and prohibitions against holding relations with the enemy, or with "malignants." It is, however, explicit on two points: first, on the course to be taken with prizes, and then on the duties of captains engaged in convoying merchant ships. The prizes are not to be pillaged, and the captains engaged on convoy duty are ordered to protect the merchant ships, and to abstain from making profits for themselves. Valour against the enemy and obedience to command are enforced in repeated clauses, and the majority of them end with this formula, or some variation of it: "upon pain of death or such other punishment as the offence may deserve."

When the Duke of York drafted his own orders for the general maintenance of discipline, he no doubt had the Parliament's laws and ordinances before him. Some of its phrases were adopted, and one of them continued in use into this century—that, namely, which forbids unlawful and rash oaths, cursings, execrations, drunkenness, uncleanness, and other scandalous acts in derogation of God's honour and corruption of good manners. But there was much in the document drawn up by the Parliament which would have been out of place in the duke's instructions. Moreover, it was so much more a general exhortation to good discipline and hard fighting than a body of regulations, that the larger part of it was dropped. The Duke of York himself issued two sets of orders, which were meant to go together and complete one another. The first contains the "general instructions" addressed to each captain, and consists of forty-four Articles. The second is headed, "Orders Established for the well governing of His Majesty's Ships, and Preservation of good order among the respective Commanders, Officers, and Seamen serving His Majesty in the same."

The general instructions are calculated to produce a somewhat unfavourable impression of the moral qualities both of the ships' companies and the workmen in the dockyard. From first to last the captain is instructed to be constantly on watch against those who will defraud the king if they can, and is threatened with dire consequences if he is himself guilty of fraud. The forty-third Article addresses him in language which would be considered now highly insulting to any gentleman. He is told that when his ship is paid off, he shall not have any part of his pay till the principal officers of the navy are persuaded of his honesty; and there is a rider to the effect that if his misdeeds escaped detection at the time, and were afterwards discovered, the duke will take care that he is duly punished. To judge from these instructions, what the Government was chiefly anxious to secure in the case of a captain was, that he would go early to his ship, leave her as little as possible, and be vigilant in putting a stop to that practice of defrauding the king which "has become a frequent (though insufferable) abuse." There is something almost pathetic in the indignant "though insufferable" which breaks into the wording of this clause. Other Articles throw a light on the discipline and organisation of the time. Thus, Article XV. orders the captain to rate no man A.B. until he has had five years' sea service, and no man a midshipman who has not had seven, and is able to navigate, except by special orders. The exception provides for the case of Mr. Thomas Darcy and others. By Article XXII. he is ordered to demand the salute within the four seas, and under no condition to give a salute anywhere unless he is sure it will be returned. Article XXXIX. is particularly valuable, because it tells us what was then considered the training required to form a seaman gunner. The captain is told to take care "that for the first month the men be exercised twice a week, to the end that they may become good firemen, allowing six shots for every exercising. That the second month they be exercised once every week, and after that only once in two months, allowing six shots to every exercising." This does not necessarily mean that the men were not exercised at the guns except when they were firing at the target. By Article XL. we learn that there were many complaints that captains carry merchandise. This they were forbidden to do, unless it be "gold, silver, or jewels." A great deal is heard of this complaint and this regulation during the reign of Charles and his brother. There will be occasion to come back to it, for the purpose of showing how ill and how little it was obeyed.

"The Orders Established for the well governing of His Majesty's Ships" are but ten in number. They are a series of rapid prohibitions of such offences as swearing (this was a dead letter), drunkenness (very partially obeyed), sleeping on watch, breaking leave, and so forth. It is noteworthy that the penalty attached is in most cases loss of pay. There are, however, exceptions. First, Article III. declares that if any man receiving the pay of a seaman, or less, is found guilty of telling a lie, he shall be hoisted to the forebrace with a shovel and broom tied to his back, and the crew shall cry, "A liar, a liar!" Flogging, which was afterwards so common in the navy, is only mentioned once in Article VIII., as the punishment due, according to the Custom of the Sea, for certain dirty acts, which are specified with an explicitness of language impossible to quote.

Alongside of the organisation of a regular service and the establishing of a code of discipline there was much other work to be done. The first and the most important was to settle the system of administration in the civil branches and the dockyards. During the Commonwealth and Protectorate the navy had been governed by Commissioners of the Admiralty, a Commission for discharging the office of Lord High Admiral at sea, and by other Commissioners for executing the duties of the Navy Office. With the Restoration there was an inevitable desire to restore the old prevailing system of the monarchy. The duke took his office as Lord High Admiral and gathered all its power into his own hands. At the same time, the Navy Office was replaced on the old footing, with one significant change. Two Commissioners were added to the Navy Board, John, Lord Berkeley, and Penn, with general powers of supervision and control. Sir W. Coventry, who was also Secretary to the Duke of York, was added as a third Commissioner in 1662. There were also Commissioners of Dockyards at Chatham, Harwich (a post suppressed in 1668), and Portsmouth who did not belong to the Board. During the first days of his rule the duke was compelled by necessity to go on with the machinery left him by Cromwell. Until the arrears of the navy were paid off, no new start could be made. So soon as this was done, the duke re-established the old order. The regulations which he issued were not in the main new, but were a repetition of those promulgated by the Earl of Northumberland when he was made Lord High Admiral in 1638. The duke prefixed to them a letter which is of considerable interest. From it we learn that the necessity for removing from the navy officers of dangerous principles and replacing them by new men had introduced many into the king's ships who were incompetent. The officers were therefore ordered to get reports from the captains as to the conduct of their subordinates, in order that those who were shown to be unfit might be removed. Then follows the body of the orders. Although they made a very small book when published under the name of the "Œconomy of the Navy Office" in 1717, they are longer than they need have been if mere repetition had been avoided, and a more businesslike arrangement had been adopted. The officers are first to do everything jointly and then to do it separately, and many of the articles are but echoes of one another. As these orders are but a re-issue of Northumberland's, they contain no notice of the functions of the two Commissioners, but we learn from them at great length and very explicitly what the functions of the Treasurer, Surveyor, Comptroller, and Clerk of the Acts were and continued to be until the reorganisation carried out by Sir James Graham. The introduction which is addressed to the Board as a whole is minute, but the essential clause of it is the XVIIIth. It instructs them that they are to watch and check one another, "and so all may inspect each other's actions by their general power as officers, there being no difference in their trust, though otherwise a distinction in their places and particular duties and employments." What they were to check and inspect will be best shown by the functions of each officer, but it must be understood that whatever any head of a department could do in his own place, all could do in any department for the general service.

The first of these officers in dignity was the Treasurer of the Navy. As his name shows, he was responsible for the financial management. It was his duty to make a statement of accounts for others to pass—that is to say, to accept as accurate in so far as their own departments were concerned. It was he who solicited for "Privy Seals"; in other words, he drew the money from the Lord High Treasurer. He made a yearly report to the Lord High Admiral of the state of all the departments in the navy. He was forbidden to pay bills by which the king or the party to whom the same was due might be "damnified," and he was ordered to be present at all payments and to charge himself fairly with all abatements, etc.