In the battle which followed, the wind blew Blake’s leading ships into the midst of the enemy. A stout fight was stubbornly maintained against tremendous odds; but the Dutchmen were overwhelmingly strong, and by evening two English ships had been captured, one had been burnt, another had blown up, and the remainder, under cover of the darkness, had staggered into Dover for safety. And now the Channel is full of Dutch ships, and their admiral, in the arrogance of victory, has hoisted a broom at his masthead to signify that he has swept the narrow seas clean! No wonder Blake is sick at heart; no wonder he writes himself down failure, and begs to be relieved of his command. But to-morrow he will be himself again. The Council will refuse to supersede him; they will cheer him with tokens of their confidence; they will immediately set about repairing their errors, and will speedily give him a fleet adequate to the work which they expect him to do. They know full well the splendid courage and the unswerving fidelity of their admiral, and they repudiate the “insufficiency” which, with the modesty of the truly brave, he ascribes to himself.
And now, before we relate the story of his subsequent exploits, let us learn something of his earlier career. As a young Oxford scholar he coveted a fellowship, but his appearance offended the artistic eye of the warden of his college and he was passed over. When the Civil War broke out he was forty-three years of age, and his sentiments were strongly republican. Joining the Parliamentary army, he was entrusted with the defence of a post at Bristol, which was then besieged by the Royalists. The town was yielded by the governor after a feeble resistance, but Blake resolutely held on to his post for twenty-four hours after the capitulation was signed. He was compelled to yield, and narrowly escaped hanging; but the eye of the Parliament was now upon him, and before long he found himself entrusted with the defence of Taunton town.
The place was wholly without defences. It had no forts, no walls, and only a meagre garrison of eighty men. Nevertheless, it was a most important strategic post, situated at a point on which all the main roads converged, and Blake saw that it must be defended at all costs. He worked like a Trojan, and inspired his men to similar efforts. Roads were barricaded, breastworks were thrown up, guns were mounted, houses loopholed, and the Royalists, unable to carry it by storm, were forced to invest it and wait for famine to do its deadly work. The little garrison grew terribly hungry, but Blake was as blithe as a lad on a holiday escapade. When only one pig remained, he had it driven about the town and whipped from time to time, so that its squeals might delude the besiegers into the belief that he still possessed a whole herd of porkers. When the Royalist captain sent in a ragged messenger to treat for terms, Blake dismissed him with a new suit of clothes! Taunton never yielded. After the battle of Naseby the siege was raised, and Blake emerged from his heap of ruins a man of mark. He had delayed a whole army in the west, and had enabled the Parliamentary army in the Midlands to win the decisive battle of the Civil War.
When the second Civil War broke out, part of the fleet declared for the king, and, under Prince Rupert, the “mad Cavalier,” was giving much trouble. A fleet was fitted out to meet this new danger, and, somewhat inexplicably, Blake was chosen as one of the generals-at-sea. Probably Cromwell thought that the man who could defend Taunton town could defend anything. Blake knew little more about naval matters than the Duke of Medina Sidonia; but he was a born sailor, and before long he was a master of seamanship in all its intricacies. Rupert was a most difficult man to catch; but Blake cornered him at last, and at Cartagena drove his ships ashore and set fire to them. For this exploit Blake received the grateful thanks of Parliament and a sum of one thousand pounds.
Blake had now to meet a much more powerful foe than Rupert. The Dutch and the English, old allies against Spain, were now at daggers drawn. Ill-feeling between the two nations had been long rife; now it came to a head. Holland swarmed with Royalist exiles, and the Government showed them much friendship. A Commonwealth envoy was murdered, and the Dutch Government would give no satisfaction for the outrage. Further, and beyond all, the two nations were rivals in trade, and the Dutch were going ahead every day. The bulk of the carrying trade of the world was in their hands; they waxed fat and kicked. The heads of the Commonwealth knew that war with Holland would be popular, and in spite of Cromwell’s opposition they proceeded to provoke it. A Navigation Act was passed, aimed directly at Dutch trade. Henceforth no goods were to be imported into England unless they came in English ships or in those of the country which produced them. This hit the Dutch hard, and war began.
Under Van Tromp, a genuine son of the Vikings, who had risen from cabin-boy to admiral, the Dutch sent to sea a magnificent fleet of one hundred sail, which the raw English navy could scarcely hope to beat. The first shot was fired off Dover in May 1652, and you already know something of the course of events up to that bitter day in November of the same year, when Blake was beaten by a largely superior force of the enemy, and wrote despairingly to the Council of State to suggest that he should be retired on account of his “insufficiency.” You know, too, what their answer was. They were true to their promise, and by the middle of February 1653 Blake was provided with more than seventy sail, ready to renew the contest.
He had not long to wait for a chance of retrieving his credit. Tromp, with ninety ships, was returning with the home-coming fleet from the Indies, and Blake was scouring the Channel looking for him. On Friday, February 18, Blake sighted him; but Tromp took him at a disadvantage, and he had to bear the brunt of the fighting with his single division of twelve ships, the remaining divisions under Penn and Monk being then at a considerable distance from the scene of the battle.
The battle raged fiercely round the Triumph, and Blake was in the utmost peril. He himself was severely wounded, and large numbers of his men fell around him. Four ships were captured, and the end seemed near, when Penn and Monk arrived. At once the fight assumed a different complexion, and the captured ships were retaken before nightfall suspended the battle. Neither side could yet claim the victory, and the loss of both, though very great, was fairly equal. In the night Tromp slipped off; but he was followed, and the battle was resumed. The “four days’ battle” ended on Sunday the 20th. Five Dutch ships had been sunk and four captured, as well as some thirty or forty merchant vessels. Tromp, however, got the remainder away safely by dint of clever seamanship. The Dutch had been beaten, but they were by no means dismayed, and immediately began to make preparations for a renewal of the struggle.
While Blake was making a slow recovery from his wound news arrived that the Dutch were again at sea. Before, however, he could reach the fleet a great battle had been fought. He and his squadron did not arrive till late in the afternoon, but their coming turned the victory into a rout. Tromp’s vessel was boarded; but to save her from falling into the hands of his foes, he blew her up, and by a miracle saved both himself and his ship. Another English victory followed, in which the gallant Tromp was killed, and then the war was brought to a close. Holland paid a war indemnity, and agreed that the English were masters of the sea. Henceforth the Dutch might only pass through the Strait of Dover by the kind permission of England. Blake and Monk received the thanks of Parliament, gold medals, and gold chains valued at £300. A few weeks’ rest restored Blake to health so far as to enable him to return to the fleet, and all was ready for his next exploit.
Cromwell, now dictator, turned his attention to Spain, which was the most dangerous trade rival of the English Puritans in America. Accordingly, in 1654, he sent out two fleets, one to the Mediterranean under Blake, the other to the West Indies under Penn and Venables. Blake had a general commission to protect British commerce, and this he interpreted as permission to attack the Barbary pirates, who levied blackmail on all the commerce of Europe passing their shores. Scores of luckless merchantmen bound for the Levant were boarded and rifled, and their crews carried off as slaves. Possibly the compilers of the English Church Litany had the sufferings of thousands of their fellow-countrymen in mind when they wrote, “That it may please Thee to show Thy pity upon all prisoners and captives.” Blake ran into the harbour of Tunis in spite of fleet, castles, moles, batteries, and musketeers, and in a few hours nine vessels of the pirate fleet were in flames, and he was outward bound, congratulating himself on a good work well done. This gallant exploit made the British name a terror in the Mediterranean. He now visited the chief ports of the western Mediterranean “to show his flag” and everywhere he was received with fear and trembling.