[1174] Ibid., xliii, 46, (1626).
[1175] State Papers, Dom., xxxiv, 85, (1626); and lvi, 66, (1627). We have no figures which enable us to even guess at the financial loss caused by the Dunkirkers during the first half of the seventeenth century, but M. Vanderest (Hist. de Jean Bart. 1844), himself a native of the town and having access to its archives, estimates the pecuniary injury they caused to England during forty years of warfare, from 1656, at 350,000,000 livres. Nor does this computation appear to take into account the higher value of money during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
[1176] State Papers, Dom., lxx, 8 and 9.
[1177] Ibid., clxii, 41, 82.
[1178] Ibid., cccxxxi, 7.
[1179] State Papers, Dom., cccxxxiv, 16. Stradling to Nicholas.
[1180] Autobiography of the Rev. Devereux Spratt. London, 1886. It need hardly be said that the jealousies of Christian princes were a large factor in causing the immunity in which these barbarian states so long rejoiced. Spratt was captured while crossing from Cork to Bristol.
[1181] It does not come within the design of this work to describe the operations of fleets at sea, but, in this instance, I must venture to question Mr Gardiner’s depreciatory estimate of William Rainsborow as a commander. Mr Gardiner considers that such success as was obtained was due neither to Rainsborow’s skill nor to the efficiency of his men, but to the existence of civil strife, disorganising what might have been a united opposition, between the old and new towns of Sallee, situated opposite each other on the right and left banks of the river Regreb (Hist. of England, viii, 270). When Rainsborow arrived off Sallee on 24th March with four ships, he found that they drew too much water to close in effectually with the town. Instead of wandering off helplessly to Cadiz and spending his time in ‘shooting and ostentation,’ as Mansell did to Malaga under adverse circumstances, Rainsborow, while he sent to England for lighter vessels, organised a blockade with the boats of his squadron. So far as I know he was the first of our commanders to recognise—and almost invent—the possibilities of boat work on a large scale, in which English seamen afterwards became such adepts, and it appears rather that his readiness and resource under unexpected and unfavourable conditions should alone be sufficient to relieve his memory from the charge of want of skill. That this patrol duty was no child’s play is shown by the fact that in one night’s work thirty men were killed and wounded in the boats (John Dunton, A True Journal of the Sallee Fleet. London, 1637). In June he was joined by the Providence and Expedition, which made the task easier; but for the previous three months, riding on a dangerous lee shore, in a bad anchorage, and exposed to the heavy Atlantic swell, using the ships by day and the boats by night, he never relaxed his bulldog grip on the place, in itself a proof of fine seamanship. That the end came more quickly from the existence of civil war is very certain, but I think no one who reads Dunton’s account (he was an officer of the flagship), and Rainsborow’s own modestly written Journal (State Papers, Dom., ccclxix, 72), can doubt that the result would eventually have been the same, seeing that the blockade grew closer day by day until at last every vessel which attempted to pass in or out was captured or destroyed. In August, when the enemy were already crushed, two more ships joined him, and he was then quite strong enough to have dealt with both the old and new towns, had they been united, or to have gone on, as he desired to go on, to settle accounts with Algiers. It should also be remarked that Rainsborow anticipated Blake in attacking forts with ships, the Providence being sent in within musket range of the castle and coming out unscathed from the contest. Looked at from another point of view, and compared with the French attempts against Sallee, Rainsborow’s ability and success stand out just as clearly. In 1624 M. de Razilly was sent down with a squadron, but permitted himself to be driven off by weather; in 1629 he came again, and, after lying off the port for three months and negotiating on equal terms with these savages, had to depart without having obtained the release of a single French captive. A surely significant contrast!
That Charles was satisfied with Rainsborow does not, perhaps, prove much, although he offered him knighthood and did give him a gold medal and chain and make him captain of the Sovereign, a post then of high honour. But Northumberland, a very much better judge was equally well pleased, and in 1639, strongly recommended him to the burgesses of Aldborough as their member. Northumberland, not then Lord Admiral, but paramount in naval affairs, is also entitled to a measure of the credit of success; for had Rainsborow been dependent on the energy and intelligence of the Principal Officers of the Navy for the supplies which enabled him to keep his station he would probably have fared but badly. And doubtless many of the men who under him worked with such courage and devotion had formed part of the demoralised and useless crews who were such objects of scorn to Wimbledon and his officers before Cadiz in 1625. The only difference was in the commander.
[1182] State Papers, Dom., cccclix, 8, 60.