[1064] Reasons, &c., dated 17th June. The officers who sign threaten, unless terms are made with the King, to blockade the river.
[1065] Various authorities give 9, 10, and 11 ships; the discrepancies may most probably be explained by supposing that one or two of those which left the Downs turned back before reaching Holland.
[1066] Clarendon, IV, 574, ed. 1888.
[1067] Warburton, Memoirs of Prince Rupert, III, 262.
[1068] Supra [p. 207]. The Speedwell was lost in November 1624, after this list was drawn up. There were also some worn out Elizabethan ships remaining, the Crane, Answer, Moon, and Merlin, which the compiler did not consider of sufficient importance to include.
[1069] Pipe Office Accounts, 2425.
[1070] State Papers, Dom., lxvii, 47.
[1071] Pipe Office Accounts, 2428.
[1072] E.g. the Sovereign of the Seas, which, until she was cut down, was the largest most ornate, and most useless ship afloat.
[1073] State Papers, Dom., lxxi, 65. These remarks must be read in conjunction with those relating to the lack of victuals and stores, and want of competent and willing service on the part of officers and men, made in Part I, and for which Buckingham’s incapacity was principally responsible. But his incapacity was, in this matter, not the only nor even the main factor, since, when in 1627 he applied to Gyffard, Sir Sackville Trevor, and Hervey for suggestions as to freeing the narrow seas from pirates, they agreed that the existing vessels were too slow to catch any but others of their own type (State Papers, Dom., liv, 9, 11-13). In October 1625, the Channel squadron consisted of ten English men-of-war and merchantmen and four Dutch ships, a larger force than had probably ever been employed before for merely protective duties. The conditions were as bad or worse, after his death.