The two great shipbuilding years of our period were 1666 and 1679—the first accounted for by the Second Dutch War, and the latter by the Act of 1677 for thirty new ships to which I have already referred[292]. How much was done during the Restoration period to strengthen the navy on its material side can be realised by a comparison made in tabular form in Pepys's Register of Ships[293]. In 1660 the navy consisted of 156 vessels, in 1688 of 173; but a comparison of numbers gives no adequate idea of relative strength. In 1660 there were only 3 first rates as against 9 in 1688; second rates, 11 at both dates; third rates, 16 against 39; fourth rates, 45 against 41; fifth rates, 37 against 2; sixth rates, 23 against 6—shewing that the tendency had been to build bigger ships. In 1660 there were only 30 ships of the first three rates, but in 1688 the number was nearly doubled, rising to 59. Another feature in the table is the development of the fireship and the yacht[294]. In 1660 there were no fireships in the navy; in 1688, 26. In 1660 there was one yacht, and in 1688 there were 14. The strength of the fleet may also be tested in another way, by comparing tonnage, men, and guns[295]. In 1660 the tonnage was 62,594; in 1688, 101,032. In 1660 the number of men borne on the sea establishment was 19,551; in 1688,41,940. In 1660 the total number of guns was 4,642; in 1688, 6,954.
In connexion with guns, the important achievement of the period was the systematising, under the methodical hand of Pepys, of the arrangements for determining the number and type of the armament of each rate, and the number of men required to work it. In 1677 he drew up a 'general establishment' of men and guns[296], and this was officially adopted as 'a solemn, universal, and unalterable adjustment of the gunning and manning of the whole fleet[297].'
Let me now sum up briefly our general conclusions.
In the light of the facts which I have endeavoured to set out in these lectures, the old notion that the naval administration of the Interregnum was pious and efficient and that of the Restoration immoral and slack appears crude and unsatisfying. But there is this element of truth in it—that vigorous efforts for the regeneration of the navy were to a certain extent rendered abortive by the corruption of the Court and the lowness of the prevailing political tone. Able and energetic reformers were baffled by want of money, and this was due partly to royal extravagance and partly to unsatisfactory relations with Parliament, which suspected peculation and waste. Discipline also was undermined by the introduction into the service of unfit persons, who obtained admission and were protected from the adequate punishment of their delinquencies by the interest of persons of quality at Court. Further, an atmosphere was created which enervated some of the reformers themselves. It is remarkable that in spite of these drawbacks so much should have been accomplished. The facts and figures contained in the naval manuscripts in the Pepysian Library go a long way to justify the claims made by Pepys on behalf of the administrations with which he himself was connected, and particularly on behalf of the Special Commission of 1686, which, as he says, 'raised the Navy of England from the lowest state of impotence to the most advanced step towards a lasting and solid prosperity that (all circumstances considered) this nation had ever seen it at.'[298] The characteristic vices of the Restoration, as he describes them, are all there—'the laziness of one, the private business or love of pleasure in another, want of method in a third, and zeal to the affair in most'—but except during the period 1679 to 1684 there was no abject incompetence and some steady progress. Even Charles II understood 'the business of the sea,'[299] 'possessed a transcendent mastery in all maritime knowledge,'[300] and when he was acting as Lord High Admiral transacted a good deal of naval business with his own hand[301]. James II was a real authority upon shipbuilding[302], took an interest in the details of administration[303], recognised the importance of discipline, and might have restored it if destiny had not intervened. But much more is to be attributed to the methodical industry of their great subordinate, and to his 'daily eye and hand' upon all departments of naval affairs. His vitality of character and variety of interests appear in the Diary, but from his official correspondence we get something different; for in a document which is so true to human nature as the Diary, it is almost inevitable that the diarist, although sufficiently self-satisfied, should be quite unconscious of his strongest points. We should expect business habits in a Government official, but in his correspondence Pepys exhibits a methodical devotion to business which is beyond praise. We have here sobriety and soundness of judgment; a sense of the paramount importance of discipline, and the exercise of a steady pressure upon others to restore it in the navy; a high standard of personal duty, which permits no slackness and spares no pains; and a remarkable capacity for tactful diplomacy. The decorous self-satisfaction of the Diary has been replaced in later years by professional pride; and an outlook upon business affairs which had always been intelligent, has become profoundly serious. The agreeable vices of the Diary suggest the light irresponsible cavalier. The official correspondence suggests that Pepys was a Puritan at heart, although without the Puritan rigidity of practice or narrowness of view. In his professional career he exhibits precisely those virtues which had made the naval administration of Blake's time a success—the virtues of the Independent colonels who manned the administrative offices during the First Dutch War. The change is that from the rather dissolute-looking young Royalist painted by Lely about 1669 to the ample wig and pursed official lips of the later portrait by Kneller[304].
It is not surprising that a man so observant, so experienced, and so absorbed in the navy should have drawn the moral of the naval history of his own time. In his Memoires of the Royal Navy[305], the only work which he ever acknowledged[306], Pepys states the essential 'truths' of the 'sea œconomy' of England, which are as valid to-day as when he wrote them down—'that integrity and general (but unpractised) knowledge are not alone sufficient to conduct and support a Navy so as to prevent its declension into a state little less unhappy than the worst that can befall it under the want of both'; 'that not much more (neither) is to be depended on even from experience alone and integrity, unaccompanied with vigour of application, assiduity, affection, strictness of discipline, and method'; but that what is really needed is 'a strenuous conjunction of all these.' For himself he claims due credit, for it was 'a strenuous conjunction of all these (and that conjunction only)' that redeemed the navy in 1686.
An anonymous admirer[307] wrote of Pepys as 'the great treasurer of naval and maritime knowledge,' who was 'aequiponderous' to his colleagues 'in moral, and much superior in philosophical knowledge and the universal knowledge of the œconomy of the navy.' Modern eulogies are phrased more simply, but we may fairly claim for this great public servant that he did more than anyone else under a King who hated 'the very sight or thoughts of business'[308] to apply business principles to naval administration.