We pass now to the time of Charles II.[100] Following up the zeal of the ancestors of his house, Charles showed a very real interest in the Navy. In spite of all his follies, in spite of his libertinism and effeminacy, Charles had one great outstanding series of good deeds to his name in having done more for the English Navy than perhaps any English rulers before him. Navigation and naval architecture went ahead rapidly: the Greenwich Royal Observatory and the Nautical Almanac were founded, the science of astronomy encouraged, and yachting in this country given such an impulse as is still felt to this day.
Fig. 62. Bomb Ketch.
The total strength of the Navy at the Restoration was 156, this number being made up of the following entities: first-rates, second-rates, third-rates, fourth-rates, fifth-rates, sixth-rates, hoys (small sloop-rigged merchant vessels adapted for war purposes), hulks (for transporting horses, &c.), sloops, ketches, pinks and yachts. Sir Walter Raleigh refers[101] to “hoyes” of Newcastle as needing a slight spar-deck addition fore and aft. He speaks of them as being ready in stays and in turning to windward. They drew but little water, and carried six demi-culverin and four sakers. Manwayring defines the ketch somewhat vaguely as “a small boate such as uses to come to Belingsgate with mackrell, oisters &c.” The ketch was a two-masted ship, not necessarily fore and aft rigged as we speak of them nowadays, but with the mainmast stepped well aft.[102] Descended from the Dutch galliot, the ketch was especially used at the end of the seventeenth century as a “bomb-ketch.” The illustration in Fig. 62 is from an old French print in the United Service Museum, Whitehall, where it is called a “Galiote à bombe.” Bomb ketches were first employed by Louis XIV. in the bombardment of Algiers with great success. They were about 200 tons burthen, and built very strongly, so as to bear the downward recoil of the mortars. The reason for the large triangular space left between the mainmast and the bowsprit is to give plenty of room for the mortar to fire. The hold was closely packed with old cables, cut into lengths, the yielding elastic qualities of the packing assisting in taking up the force of the recoil.[103] The stamp used by the Hakluyt Society on their publications is ketch-rigged. About the time of the beginning of Charles II., the fore and aft ketch would be rapidly developing. The pink was also of Dutch extraction. She is—for the Dutch craft have scarcely altered since the seventeenth century—a cutter or yawl-rigged small open boat, and clinker-built.
About 1660 Chatham was the most important of the royal dockyards, Pett being in charge there. Sir Anthony Dean made a report on the state of the Navy in 1674, at the close of the Third Dutch war. As a result the sum of £300,000 was voted by Parliament to build twenty ships as suggested by Sir Anthony. As to the comparative strength of the European nations at this time, the following list is instructive. On April 24, 1675, England had ninety-two ships carrying twenty to one hundred guns and upwards: France had ninety-six ships and Holland one hundred and thirty-six. As we mentioned just now, the shallowness of the Dutch waters prohibited the building of big ships, so that they were unable to build three-deckers, and the largest ships carried no more than eighty or ninety guns. In addition to the figures quoted above, we must add three fireships to the English, four to the French, and forty to the Dutch fleets.
The £300,000 voted by Parliament was really with a view of meeting the increase in the French Navy. It was during the first year of the reign of our Charles II. that young Louis XIV. took the government of the French into his own hands. There was then practically no French Navy in existence, if we except a handful of frigates. But three years before Sir Anthony Deane’s recommendation was approved by Parliament, France had increased her fleet to fifty ships of the line, besides a large number of frigates and small craft. It was during Louis’ regime, in fact, that England had to look, not to Spain, nor to the Dutch for signs of possible trouble on the sea, but to France, which rose rapidly to a position of the first importance as a naval power. Thus, English first-rates were to be built not with a view of the shallow-draught Dutchmen but in order to be able to contend with the fine French fleet whose vessels were the superior to ours in size, though our first-rates were capable of standing an enemy’s battery better than most ships.
English second-rates had the advantage financially of needing fewer men. They drew less water, carried a smaller weight of ordnance, but by reason of the fire from their three decks were able to render a good account of themselves in battle. Fourth-rates served only as convoys, and likewise the fifth-rates. In Pepys’s time England had as many as thirty-six fourth-rates.
We are able to gather a good deal of information respecting naval matters of the time from Pepys’s Diary. In the early part of the reign war with the Dutch had broken out again, and in 1667 the Dutch had actually sailed up the Thames estuary and burnt our ships in the Medway. In spite of the ultimate good results to the English Navy under Charles II., the daring and pluck which had been so conspicuous in the Elizabethan seamen appear to have been not always alive. But what worse evidence could be wished of the condition of the English character of the time when we remember that while a Dutch fleet of eighty ships burned the forts of Sheerness and ascended the Medway as far as Chatham, capturing and destroying our men-of-war, Charles II. “amused himself with a moth-hunt in the supper room, where his mistresses were feasting in splendour”? Under the date of July 4, 1666, Pepys writes in his diary:
“With the Duke, all of us discoursing about the places where to build ten great ships: the King and Council have resolved on none to be under third-rates; but it is impossible to do it, unless we have more money towards the doing it than yet we have in any view. But, however, the show must be made to the world. In the evening Sir W. Pen came to me, and we walked together, and talked of the late fight. I find him very plain, that the whole conduct of the late fight was ill; that two-thirds of the commanders of the whole fleet have told him so: they all saying, that they durst not oppose it at the Council of War, for fear of being called cowards, though it was wholly against their judgment to fight that day with the disproportion of force, and then we not being able to use one gun of our lower tier, which was a greater disproportion than the other. Besides, we might very well have staid in the Downs without fighting, or anywhere else, till the Prince could have come up to them; or at least, till the weather was fair, that we might have the benefit of our whole force in the ships that we had. He says three things must be remedied, or else we shall be undone by this fleet. First, that we must fight in a line, whereas we fight promiscuously, to our utter and demonstrable ruine: the Dutch fighting otherwise; and we, whenever we beat them. Secondly, we must not desert ships of our own in distress, as we did, for that makes a captain desperate, and he will fling away his ship, when there are no hopes left him of succour. Thirdly, the ships when they are a little shattered must not take the liberty to come in of themselves, but refit themselves the best they can, and stay out—many of our ships coming in with very small disableness. He told me that our very commanders, nay, our very flag-officers, do stand in need of exercising among themselves, and discoursing the business of commanding a fleet: he telling me that even one of our flagmen in the fleet did not know which tacke lost the wind, or kept it, in the last engagement. He says it was pure dismaying and fear that made them all run upon the Galloper, not having their wits about them: and that it was a miracle they were not all lost.”