Besides the losses of the Commonwealth Navy in the ships, from 1649 onwards, noted in connection with their names in the preceding list, the following vessels of the old Navy were lost or sold; as well as various prizes dating from the civil war, and merchantmen bought during the same period, not here entered:—

The Bonaventure, Garland, and Leopard were lost to the Dutch, but the two former were burnt and sunk when fighting under the Dutch flag in July 1653. The Merhonour, Defiance, and 2nd Whelp, all three long laid up as useless, were handed over to Taylor in 1650, at a valuation of £700, in part payment of his shipbuilding bill; the 1st Whelp was used for some time as a hulk at Deptford, and the 10th Whelp remained in commission till 1654. The Greyhound was blown up in action with two privateers, in 1656, by her captain, Geo. Wager, when she was boarded and practically taken by 100 of the enemy, who went up with her.[1378] The Henrietta Maria and Happy Entrance were burnt by accident in 1655 and 1658; the Mary Rose was wrecked off the coast of Flanders in 1650, and the Charles off Harwich in the same year.

Whenever ships were lost on the British coasts the authorities did their best to recover the stores, and, in the case of the Charles, men were still engaged in 1660 patiently fishing for her guns. At first Bulmer, a man whose name has been mentioned under Charles I as an inventor in connection with maritime matters, was employed, but it was not until May 1657, after seven years of search, that he triumphantly announced that he had discovered her exact position. He was succeeded by Robert Willis, described as a diver, who was more fortunate in that he did at last recover at least two brass guns, for which he was allowed 20s a cwt. As the Admiralty had been for eight years at the expense of a hired hoy and the wages of the men occupied in work, it might have been cheaper to have allowed the guns to remain under water. The methods used are not alluded to, but, as the diving-bell was described by Bacon in the beginning of the century, it must have been a well-known appliance; and Bourne had described a diving dress on the modern principle in 1578.

One other man-of-war, the Phœnix, belonging to Badiley’s squadron, was captured on 7th September 1652 by the Dutch off Leghorn, and gallantly retaken in November by eighty-two volunteers, under captain Owen Cox, who boarded her at daybreak while at anchor amidst the enemy’s fleet. Cox did not disdain to eke out the lion’s with the fox’s skin, since, in the afternoon, he hired ‘a bumboat or two with good wine to go aboard and sell it cheap;’ the Dutch were consequently keeping a careless watch, but fighting continued below for two hours after the ship was under way. Cox further promised £10 to each man with him, but this was still unpaid in June 1653, and he then tells the Council of State that the men ‘persecute him to fulfil his engagement’; and Badiley wrote that ‘since their exploit they are very turbulent and disorderly.’ Cox was granted £500 for his good service;[1379] he was killed in the action of July 1653, while still in command of the Phœnix.

Piracy.

Complaints of piracy, in the strict sense, are very few during this period, and there is not a single reference to the presence of a Turk in the narrow seas. In face of the Commonwealth Navy there were no more of such incidents as the sack of Baltimore. The French, Dutch, and Spanish privateers, who kept our men-of-war continually on the alert, and occasionally overpowered a smaller one, sailed under some sort of commission, either from their own states or the Stewarts, and did not, therefore, possess that freedom from responsibility which in warfare soon degenerates into savagery. The owners of the Constant Cavalier, for instance, cruising under a commission from the nominal Charles II, had to give a bond for £1000 not to injure his allies or his loyal subjects.[1380] That the Dunkirkers and others found privateering by no means so easy a road to fortune as it had been in the days of Charles I is sufficiently shown by the number of their captured ships taken into the national service, besides the loss of many more not considered suitable for that purpose. Their best opportunity was during the Dutch war, when the cruisers were mostly withdrawn to strengthen the fleets: but even then the government usually managed to provide convoys for the coasting trade. English, Scotch, or Irish seamen taken in a privateer were summarily transported to the plantations.[1381]

In 1656 for some reason, probably the effort to keep the fleets on foreign service at their full strength, the guard round the coasts seems to have been temporarily relaxed, and the result was that ‘the Ostenders and Dunkirkers begin to grow numerous.’ On the east coast they were so successful for the moment that, dreaming hopefully that the old times were about to return, they desired some of their released prisoners to ‘tell the Protector that while he is fetching gold from the West Indies they will fetch his coals from Newcastle.’[1382] Oliver was not a safe subject for threats, and their spoon was certainly not long enough to enable them to enjoy in comfort the meal they proposed sharing with him; at any rate very shortly afterwards the war was carried into the enemy’s country by the blockade of Ostend and Dunkirk, and there are no more lamentations about the number of them at sea, or the mischief they were doing, until the very eve of the Restoration.

The Administration:—The Committees.

The administrative direction of the Navy was, at the beginning of the Commonwealth, placed in the hands of (i.) the Admiralty Committee of the Council of State,[1383] (ii.) the Committee of Merchants of Navy and Customs, and (iii.) the Commissioners of the Navy. The second Committee took no practical part in the administration, was early requested to leave the management to the Navy Commissioners, ‘as formerly,’[1384] and was dissolved in 1654. Warwick’s second appointment as Lord Admiral was cancelled by a parliamentary ordinance of 23rd Feb. 1649, and the first Admiralty Committee of the Council of State took over his duties from that date for the one year for which the Council of State was only itself existent. This Committee was renewed yearly until the Protectorate, when ‘Commissioners of the Admiralty and Navy’ were nominated by act of Parliament, and the control of the Ordnance department was also given them.[1385] Their number varied but was seldom less than twelve or fifteen; they met at first at Whitehall once a week, during the Dutch war once a day, and, from January 1655, occupied Derby House at a rental of £100 a year. Following the fall of Richard Cromwell an act was passed, 21st May 1659,[1386] nominally vesting authority in ‘Commissioners for carrying on the affairs of the Admiralty and Navy,’ but power really remained in the hands of Parliament to which the Commissioners had to submit the names of even the captains they appointed.