The outburst would have been serious had it been general. It was confined to a small section of the naval force, was due to dissensions relating to men rather than principles, and gives small countenance to the view that the Navy repented the part it had taken. The loyalty of the majority and the speedy penitence of the minority were the best tests of the temper in which the Parliament was judged by those who upheld it afloat; and if the disaffected minority loved Rainsborow and his employers little they showed that they liked Charles Stuart less.

CHARLES I
1625-1649
PART II—ROYAL AND MERCHANT SHIPPING

The Royal Ships in 1625.

When Charles I inherited the crown, his fleet consisted of 4 first, 14 second, 8 third, and 4 fourth rates;[1068] of these 1 first, 7 second, 6 third, and the 4 fourth rates were comparatively new ships, the oldest being the Prince, launched in 1610. The others were originally Elizabethan, had been repaired, rebuilt or patched up more or less effectively at various times, and of them the Lion of 1582 was the most ancient. The recent accessions were, for reasons previously noticed, more commodious and better seaboats than their predecessors, but the King had yet to learn that the mere possession of a naval framework in the shape of hulls, spars and guns was of little use without efficient crews, and adequate knowledge and honest effort on the part of the subordinate officials on whom fell the responsibility of preparation and equipment. Whether due to a desire to save the royal ships as much as possible, to want of men to man them properly, or to their generally inefficient state, the expeditions of 1625-7-8 included a very large proportion of armed merchantmen. In 1625 there were twelve men-of-war and seventy-three merchantmen;[1069] in 1627 fourteen of the former, of which three were small pinnaces and eighty-two of the latter[1070]; and in 1628 the second Rochelle fleet, which Lindsey commanded, was made up of twenty-nine King’s ships and thirty-one merchantmen.[1071] But under Lindsey, ten of the royal ships were of the class known as ‘whelps,’ just built, and measuring 180 tons each, and ten were pinnaces of 50 tons or under, so that only nine vessels of the real fighting line were with him. We shall see that the owners of merchantmen, who could neither escape the calls made on their ships nor get paid for their services, by no means valued the honour thus thrust upon them.

Charles, like his father, felt a keen interest in the Navy. In the case of James I it was prized more as an imposing appurtenance of his regal dignity than from any statesmanlike appreciation of its importance; in that of his son the evidence goes to show that, while vanity was sometimes a ruling motive,[1072] he was also fully alive to the weight a powerful fleet gave to English diplomacy. The State Papers show that he exercised a constant personal supervision in naval affairs, sometimes overruling the opinions of his officials in technical details of which he could have possessed no special knowledge. No new vessels were built during the first years of the reign. Theoretically, with the assistance of the hired merchantmen available, the Royal Navy was sufficient for the duties it was called upon to perform. Practically, it was found that even those that were seaworthy were too slow under sail, as were also the merchantmen, to deal with the plague of Dunkirk privateers and Moorish pirates, who swarmed in the narrow seas, and who almost blockaded the coasts except for large and heavily-armed ships.

A chief article of accusation brought by the Parliament against Buckingham was that he had neglected his duty in taking few or no measures against these enemies, but if all the charges made against him had as little foundation, his reputation would be higher than it now stands. The Channel squadron had been increased, two special expeditions had been sent out after them, and any prizes likely to prove fast sailers had been taken into the Royal service for the purpose of being so employed, but as the Turks and Dunkirkers, built for speed, could sail at least twice as fast as the English, it was only under exceptional circumstances that one was sometimes captured. In 1624 the Captain of one of the Commissioners’ new and improved ships indignantly reported that some Dutch men-of-war he met had deliberately and contemptuously sailed round him. This was square rig versus square rig. Remembering that the Turks undoubtedly were lateen-rigged, that the Dunkirkers probably used some modification of it, and that this is still the most effective spread of canvas known for light vessels of moderate tonnage, we need not wonder that the lumbering English third and fourth rates, built for close action, could never get near them. During the Rhé voyage sixty English ships chased some Dunkirkers, but only one pinnace could overtake them, and that of course could not venture to attack.[1073] But there were also other causes. In 1634 Pennington wrote to the Admiralty that he had just met a fleet of seventeen Dutch ships,

‘all tallowed and clean from the ground, which is a course that they duly observe every two months, or three at the most ... which is the only cause which makes them go and work better than ours; whereas our ships are grounded and graved two or three months before they come out, and never tallowed, so that they are foul again before we get to sea with them, and then they are kept out for eight or ten months, whereby they are so overgrown with barnacles and weeds under water that it is impossible that they should either go well or work yarely ... all men-of-war, of what nation soever, whether Turk or Christian, keep this course of cleansing their ships once in two or three months but us.’[1074]

Therefore the first additions to the navy were small, fast-sailing vessels, built or bought with this object, and the master shipwrights were several times called upon to furnish designs of ships especially adapted for chasing the privateers. Their first suggestion, in December 1625, was for a cruiser whose length, over all, would have been nearly four-and-a-half times her breadth, and this is noticeable as a marked step in the tendency now existing to increase the proportion between length and beam.[1075] Again, in March 1627[1076] they proposed ‘a nimble and forcible ship of 339 tons to meet the Dunkirkers;’ but in this case the length was rather less than four times the beam, and eventually pecuniary necessities compelled the government to be content with vessels of a smaller model, called ‘whelps,’ contrived for sweeps as well as sails, and whose length was nearly two-and-a-half times the breadth. In merchantmen the keel was still only about two and a half times the beam.[1077] Although English ships were slow, they were strong. Nathaniel Butler, a naval captain, attributed their sluggishness as compared with the Dutch to their being ‘so full of timber ... we building ours for seventy years, they theirs for seven;’ and Northumberland, in 1636, described some of them as ‘so clogged with timber’ that there was no room for stores.[1078] Modern builders would probably ascribe their want of speed to faulty lines rather than to excess of material; but if it was a defect it was one of which we reaped the full benefit in the first war with Holland, when the Dutch ships, splendidly as they were fought, were riven and sunk by the more solid and more heavily armed English men-of-war long before their crews were beaten.

The Navy List.