A Short History of the Royal Navy, 1217 to 1688

by David Hannay

As Sandwich stood to the south on his way back to England, where he anchored at Solebay, he crossed the Dutch fleet steering to the coast of Norway to bring off the ships at Bergen. De Ruyter was in command, and John de Witt accompanied him. They arrived off Bergen at an exceedingly convenient moment for their countrymen. The Danish governor had come to the conclusion that there was no reason why he should not do for himself what he had been told to do with the co-operation of the English. He attempted to extort a hundred thousand crowns from the Dutch by threats to sink them with his cannon unless they paid him this amount of blackmail. The arrival of De Ruyter, and the presence in the fleet of the greatest statesman in Holland, brought this greedy ruffian to his senses. The convoy was allowed to go out, and the Danish governor was left to console himself by seizing a few of the guns which the Dutch had landed on the shore for their protection. De Witt turned homeward to Holland with his convoy. In the early days of September the weather became stormy, the fleets were scattered, a portion of the Dutch convoy fell into our hands, but the bulk got safe back to Holland.

It was now September, and the time was approaching when, according to the practice of the seventeenth century, it was no longer safe to keep the great ships at sea. The fleet then must shortly be laid up, and could no longer serve to take Dutch convoys, even if any had been coming home so late in the year. On the whole, the result of the summer's fighting had not been satisfactory. It is true that we had gained an undoubted victory over the enemy, but his fleet had not been destroyed. Amid the ringing of bells and public rejoicings, the more sagacious men in the employment of the English Government were well aware that the Dutch would soon be at sea again. The prizes taken from the enemy had fallen much short of the expectations of the Court. In spite of large grants from Parliament, the king was greatly embarrassed. He had hoped that the war would support itself, but this expectation, which has seldom been realised, was disappointed in this case also. Sandwich was not well received on his return, and among the courtiers there was a general inclination to accuse him of want of energy. Sir William Coventry, who, as the Duke of York's secretary and a Commissioner of the Navy, had many means of securing a hearing, was one of the most severe of the earl's critics. A mistake made by Sandwich on his return home laid him open to the attacks of his enemies. His flag-officers made him a petition that "in regard of their having continued all the summer upon the seas with great fatigue, and been engaged in many actions of danger, that he would distribute amongst them some reward out of the Indian ships."

The Indian ships were that part of the convoy from Bergen which had fallen into his hands in consequence of the storm. Sandwich thought the request reasonable, and wrote a letter to the king, asking for his approbation. With his usual good-nature, Charles consented. But before his approval reached Sandwich, the admiral had distributed as much of the coarser goods as were theoretically valued at £1000 for each flag-officer, and had taken £2000 worth for himself. Whatever the motives of Sandwich may have been, his action was undeniably illegal, and was not less ill-advised. It was a standing and well-known rule that no prize taken from the enemy was to be touched until it had been condemned by the Admiralty, and that a distribution of the shares was to be made on a regular system. Even the king's personal consent would not have justified Sandwich in breaking the law. But the way in which he acted was sure not only to embroil him with the Admiralty, but to arouse a very natural indignation among the captains and the seamen. They said that the prizes were being plundered for the exclusive benefit of the admiral and flag-officers, and it cannot be denied that on the face of it they were right. The merchants interested in the East India Company were no less indignant than the captains and seamen. They complained that the Indian goods distributed to the flag-officers would be thrown on the market at a cheap rate, and would spoil the sale of those that they themselves had brought from India. The outcry on all hands was loud, and the king was beset with complaints. According to the regular practice of all his family, he threw over the servant of whose action he had just approved so soon as it seemed likely to cause him any personal inconvenience. The goods distributed to the flag-officers were seized at the ports by orders of Albemarle, who, partly by virtue of his office as Lord General, and partly on the ground of the immense services he had rendered at the Restoration, exercised a vast irregular influence during the early years of King Charles's reign. The Duke of York, who, as Lord High Admiral, had good ground for considering himself personally insulted by an insolent intrusion on the rights of his office, was furious. Sandwich was dismissed from his command, and had no further employment in this war, though he retained sufficient influence with the king to be appointed to diplomatic missions abroad.

This is the most favourable version of the story for Sandwich, and is, even so, an ugly symptom of the dry-rot beginning to spread throughout every branch of the public service. The sailors of the fleet were months in arrear of their pay. The victualling service was thoroughly bad. Even when food was supplied, it was of most inferior quality, and there were loud complaints that, such as it was, it was not always forthcoming. When Sandwich returned from the coast of Norway to Solebay, his provisions were exhausted, although he had only been a few weeks at sea. At such a time a zealous commander-in-chief would surely not have seized the opportunity to enrich himself irregularly. Sandwich, judged by the standard of the time, was not a dishonourable man, yet we see that he went out of his way to grasp at a little money. His recorded conversations with Pepys leave no doubt that Sandwich was distinctly influenced by a desire to fill his own pocket. He told his kinsman that it was better to take the money, and then get the king's consent to keep it, than to trust to obtaining what the king had promised he should have. Another remark of his throws a curious light on the morality of the time. He told Pepys that the King of Denmark was "a blockhead," for not seizing the opportunity of plundering the Dutch fleet at Bergen, since he owed the States a great sum of money. These were the principles of a swindler, and a man who took such a very lax view with regard to the conduct of others was not likely to be severe to himself. As a matter of fact, we learn again from Pepys that the £2000 worth of goods the earl had adjudged to himself were sold to a London merchant for £5000. When, then, Pepys observed, as he did about this time, that, however poor the king might be, his principal officers always took care to provide money for themselves, he was making a very accurate remark on the morality of the time. It is not wonderful, when we consider the example that was set them, that the captains and seamen, who had raised such an outcry over the favours shown to the flag-officers, were themselves accused of plundering the prizes. Plunder, in fact, was the general rule of the service. It raged from top to bottom. The men at the head enriched themselves by misapplications of money on a large scale. The subordinates pilfered and wasted. It follows, as a matter of course, that the money voted by Parliament for the war, which in the hands of the Commonwealth's Council of State or of Cromwell would have been more than sufficient, failed entirely to meet the expenses of the second Dutch war. Neither need we doubt that Pepys was very well informed when he said that the Court looked forward to another meeting of Parliament with reluctance, and stood in some awe of the wrath that members were likely to feel upon discovering what had become of their money.

The difficulties which the Government had created for itself by mismanagement were materially increased by the plague, which raged all through the year 1665. It reached not only the dockyards on the Thames, but the ports on the east coast, the Channel, and even the fleet. Between the disorganisation produced by the great pest and the vices of its own administration, the Crown was all but within reach of bankruptcy by the close of the year. At harvest-time the workmen in the dockyards had been so long left without pay that numbers of them went into the fields to work for the farmers in order to escape starvation.

The winter months suspended the operations of the war, but with the return of spring efforts were made to get the fleet to sea. As Sandwich had been discredited, and since the Duke of York was so ready to co-operate with those who were so concerned about his personal safety, it was necessary to find another leader. The king must have been allowed to have made the best choice he could when he put his fleet into the hands of Monk. The Lord General had a reputation and an influence which made it certain that he would be obeyed by all. He had much experience of war at sea, and he had the energy of a great commander. By desperate efforts a fleet of seventy-seven sail was collected in the Downs in the course of May. Rupert was joined in command with Monk. The prince had shown a decided reluctance to serve with Sandwich, but he could not refuse to act with the Lord General.

The Dutch had exerted themselves strenuously to meet the English on equal terms, and a fleet of from eighty to a hundred ships was collected and ready for sea under Michael de Ruyter. Our enemy had some faint prospect of assistance from France in this campaign. In 1662 John de Witt had succeeded in making a convention with France, by which the two countries agreed to help one another in case either of them was attacked by a third Power. The case contemplated by the treaty had arisen when England declared war on Holland in 1665. The States General called on Louis XIV. to fulfil his obligations. The French king shuffled and hung back. He hated the Dutch, partly because they were Republicans, and partly because he knew them to be the most formidable obstacle in the way of the realisation of his plans for the conquest of the Spanish Netherlands. At last he could no longer evade making at least a show of fulfilling his promises without absolute disgrace, and he therefore promised to send a squadron to co-operate with the Dutch against the English.

When, therefore, Monk began to collect his command in May, he had to face the possibility that he would be called upon to deal with the united Dutch and French fleets. The movements of Michael de Ruyter were consistent with the supposition that he was manœuvring to join the French. He stood across to the coast of England, and kept in the neighbourhood of the Straits of Dover. A rumour that the French fleet was coming up Channel worked so strongly on the fears of the Court, that it was induced to take a measure which might well have proved fatal to the English fleet. Rupert was despatched into the Channel with twenty ships selected from the other squadrons, to look for the French, and Monk's force was thus reduced to fifty-seven vessels.

Some changes in the commands were made necessary by this separation. Sir Christopher Myngs, who had been vice-admiral of the Red Squadron, accompanied Rupert as second in command. The ships which remained with Monk were still divided into three squadrons. Sir Joseph Jordan succeeded Myngs as vice-admiral of the Red, and his rear-admiral was Sir Robert Holmes. The Blue Squadron was commanded by Sir George Ayscue as admiral, with Sir William Berkeley as vice, and John Harman as rear. Sir Jeremiah Smith was admiral, Sir Thomas Teddiman vice-admiral, and Captain Utber rear-admiral of the White.

This division of the English fleet seems to have taken place just before a spell of thick weather and heavy wind from the S.W., which forced the Dutch off the coast. Being afraid that the wind would sweep him back too far into the North Sea, De Ruyter anchored on the shallows of the Flemish coast somewhere between Ostend and Dunkirk. This was at the very end of May. On the last day of the month Monk was at sea, on his way from the Downs to the Gunfleet, when his look-out frigates brought him the news that the Dutch were at anchor in his neighbourhood. Monk, with the instinct of a general, saw at once that, being superior to him in number, and in his immediate neighbourhood, the Dutch might force on a battle to his disadvantage if they once got the weather-gage. The then direction of the wind from the S.W. gave the weather-gage to him, and, with a boldness which would have horrified the admirals of the next two generations, he decided to fall on while it was still in his power to select his point of attack, and thus to compensate for his general inferiority of numbers by concentrating a superior force at a given place.