the surveyor sick, the clerk restrained of his liberty, one of his clerks absent, the clerk of the deliveries out of town and his clerk absent, the master gunner dead, the yeoman of the ordnance never present, nor any of the gunners attendant, and the stores for ordnance empty.[1230]
Outcries, such as we have been also used to hear in this generation, against their delays in serving the ships with guns and ammunition, were loud and continuous, and, in 1639, it was proposed to return to the original arrangement made by Henry VIII, and allow the naval authorities to supply themselves with these necessaries. It is an illustration of the meditative and weighty caution with which official wisdom can be trusted to move onward from change to change that it was not until a few years ago that the alteration suggested in 1639 was made. Finally we read that ‘the accountant nor other officers keep no books, and the ancient officers and clerks are adverse to all new propositions which meet their inveterate frauds and defects.’[1231] The parliamentary leaders seem at first to have doubted how far Browne was to be trusted, since on 30th Dec. 1645 it was ordered that his works, which had been managed by deputies, should be given back to him.
Salutes.
Besides producing dangerous international friction, the matter of saluting was a cover for theft and an excuse for waste at home. The Lord Admiral seems to have been the only person whose reception was according to distinct forms, and for him the royal standard was to fly at the main, yards to be manned, and on his approach within musket shot of the ship the trumpets were to cease, and ‘all who carry whistles are to whistle his welcome three times, and in the intervals the crew to cheer.’[1232] Butler notices the fondness of the English for making a noise as a mark of deference, and the expenditure of powder in this way was described as the ‘main excuse of gunners’ frauds,’ and as causing the waste of at least a thousand barrels of powder a year. Every one stood closely on his honour in the matter of salutes, and in 1631 Pennington was fired on from Pendennis Castle for not striking his flag. No occurrence was of too little consequence to be thus signalised. In one gunner’s accounts we find: One faucon when the master’s wife went ashore.... One minion the master commanded to be shot off to a ship his father was in.... We shot two faucons in healths and three when Master Newton went ashore.’ Of another gunner it was remarked: ‘He cannot write, yet presents the account here enclosed, in which you see the King’s powder spent in salutations of ketches and oyster boats.... I shall shortly send far greater and fouler examples of powder purloined by the last.’[1233]
The hired merchantmen in the royal pay had as much self-respect on this question as men-of-war, and saluted towns on entering and leaving harbour, the captain’s brother, and ‘the captain’s friends for their farewell’ in orthodox service fashion. The large ones had, in some respects, the advantage of the smaller men-of-war, since the captain of one of the latter, in accounting for his consumption of ammunition, said that ordinary traders ‘scorned to strike to a whelp,’ and he had to force them to their duty. The result of all this firing was that in the two and a half years, ending on 30th June 1627, out of 653 lasts of powder issued to the various forts, there had been 300 used in saluting.[1234] Nor were these proceedings devoid of danger, since the repeated orders that guns should be fired with blank charges were still disregarded, and there are several instances mentioned of persons on shore being struck from vessels saluting at sea. The admirals were equally sensitive about their dignity, and when Lindsey commanded the fleet of 1635, the question of his flags appeared to weigh most on his mind. On 1st May he complained that he had not enough flags and was not furnished with a standard; the next day he repeats his wants, adding that he would like a kitchen ship, and a week afterwards he thinks himself ‘a little maimed,’ still lacking the standard. In April 1647 the Navy Committee called attention to the great expense caused by the constant saluting, and ordered that it should entirely cease among men-of-war except at their first meeting with each other, or with an admiral. A merchantman’s salute might be answered in the proportion of one for every three, or three for every five, shots fired by the trader. If these regulations were obeyed it was only temporarily.
Among foreign powers the Dutch were the chief victims to the requirements of maritime decorum, here complicated by the dispute about the dominion of the narrow seas. In July 1626 the captain of Deal Castle fired at a Dutchman which came into the roads with colours flying, and made the master pay ten shillings, the cost of the shot. In his report of the affair he says, ‘The rather did I it because I have heard it imputed that we have lost the jurisdiction of the narrow seas.’ Six years later a man-of-war having been sent to Calais to fetch the body of Sir Isaac Wake, her captain had the audacity to force the French to strike their colours to him.[1235]
When Lindsey went to sea in 1635, his instructions ran that his ‘principal care’ was to make foreign fleets perform their ‘duty and homage,’ and if they refused, to make them answer for their ‘high contempt.’[1236] Remembering the state of Lindsey’s fleet, not only in the absence of the standard that he deplored so sadly, but in more urgent essentials, such as men, provisions and stores, it was perhaps fortunate that Richelieu evaded the trial, and that the Dutch were content—for the time—to salute all day long if Charles so pleased. Northumberland, the next year, was told to insist on foreign ships yielding homage in Calais and other harbours, if out of range of the forts.[1237] Wiser than his master, if he did more than look into the French ports, he did nothing to provoke a collision. Moreover Northumberland may have felt that he was hardly in a situation to enforce compliance. Lindsey mentioned in his journal that, in two days, eleven ships lost masts and topmasts, with only ‘strong winds’ blowing, but had not thought the circumstance deserved comment, although his vice-admiral, the old Elizabethan seaman, Sir William Monson, was not so reticent. Northumberland’s fleet was equally ill found, and on his return he charged the Principal Officers with giving him ships leaky and out of repair, fitted with defective masts and yards and bad cordage. Some, he said, were too old to be worth repairing, and the new ones required girdling to make them fit for sea.[1238] What the Earl thought of his men and stores has been already related.
However, English captains continued to carry matters with a high hand, and in 1637, Stradling meeting a Dutch squadron which did not salute with sufficient promptness, reported: ‘The captain of the rear-admiral I have taken out of his ship and sent to Plymouth.’ As time wore on the Dutch, seeing that Charles had enough to occupy his attention at home, became more independent, and in 1639 they were searching English ships and taking Spaniards out of them, a change from their former submissive attitude. Parliament, however, carried on the claim to the salute. In 1647 a fleet of Swedes, 15 in number, passing down Channel refused to lower their topsails to Captain Owen in the Henrietta Maria. Owen kept up a running fight until Batten came up, and the Swedish fleet was taken into Portsmouth.
Prize Money.
A precarious source of crown revenue was that obtained from the prize tenths. In the two years ending with May 1626, seventy-three vessels had been taken and proceeded against in the Admiralty Court, and Bristol paid £7604 between 1628 and 1631. It was not until the civil war that the crew of a ship belonging to the state had any fixed proportion of the proceeds, but by a Council order of October 1626 ‘a competent reward’ was to be given to the captors. On the other side seventy-seven vessels, of 100 tons and upwards, were taken by the enemy between 1625 and 1628, so that the balance of profit was hardly with us. In another paper we are told, the, presumably net, proceeds from Spanish prizes between July 1626 and August 1639 came to £38,158, 8s.[1239]