It usually happens in statesmanship that administrative or executive development on any particular line is due rather to circumstances than intention, and the history of the republican Navy is an illustration of this rule. At the close of the civil war it was proposed to reduce the naval establishments, and measures were being already taken to that effect when the Rainsborow mutiny occurred. The escape of Rupert from Kinsale with the fleet, of which three of the revolted ships formed the nucleus, together with the encouragement his presence at sea gave to individual privateering, necessitated an immediate and large increase in the Navy, which then had to protect the trade routes as well as chase or blockade him. Rupert’s career made it obvious that the area of the civil war had widened, and that henceforth it would be the duty of the Navy to deal with the enemies of the republic at the circumference of the circle, its internal foes being helpless without aid from abroad. How little those in power anticipated the changes a few years were to effect in our maritime strength, and how doubtfully they regarded the means available to contend even with Rupert, they themselves frankly tell us. In June 1649 they congratulated themselves that they had a fleet at sea such as they scarcely hoped for or their enemies expected, but ‘how the Commonwealth will be able to continue the same in successive years is not easy to evidence.’[1272] But the episode of Rupert was followed by the more expensive Dutch and Spanish wars, both of which required the existence of large fleets at sea and an ample reserve, and their sequel in the prolonged visits of Blake and his successor, Stokes, to the Mediterranean, from which we may date the reappearance of England as a European power.
The crucial difficulty of finance, which had wrecked the designs of Charles I, presented fewer obstacles to Parliament and the Protector. By means of the monthly assessments, delinquents’ compositions, sale of lands, excise, and other methods, the sum of £95,000,000 is declared to have been raised between 1642 and 1660.[1273] This gives an average of upwards of five and a quarter millions a year, against far less than a million a year raised by Charles, and, even allowing for the cost of the army and the debts incurred during the civil war, enables us to understand the comparative ease with which the heavy naval expenses were met at first by the government, and why outbreaks of discontent on the part of the men were few, and at once easily appeased by the payment of wages which had been allowed to become too long over-due. The financial system of the Commonwealth was reckless and improvident, inasmuch as it largely consisted in living on capital by the alienation of private or corporate property which, if confiscated, should have been held to the profit of the state; but probably no system of taxation alone could have met the demands of the army and Navy during those years. Not only the naval but every other branch of the administration was overwhelmed with debt in 1660.
The Dutch War.
By far the most important event of the interregnum was the Dutch War, since our success in that struggle shaped the future course of English commercial development and, in its results, caused English fleets to be henceforward influential factors in continental politics. Although the conditions were, in reality, not at all unequal, an attack made on the richest and greatest maritime power in the world by a nearly bankrupt state which, with the exception of the passable success of 1596, had failed in every important naval enterprise undertaken since 1588, and which in that year had only succeeded—so far as the fruits of victory were concerned—by the chance of wind and wave and the aid of the very nation now assailed, must have seemed to many contemporaries a more than hazardous venture. When success seemed to be definitely inclining towards this country, the Weekly Intelligencer of 7th June 1653 soberly remarked that ‘our generals ... were the first who have made it known that the Dutch are to be overcome by sea.’ The relative position of England and the United Provinces was very similar to that of England and France at present or recently—on the one hand a country with a great commerce and a great navy, but a navy which, in the nature of things, could only bear a percentage relation to the vast pecuniary interests it was required to protect and the extent of sea it was called upon to traverse; on the other a power which, with far less at stake commercially, had for years been expending on its naval establishments a sum which must have equalled or exceeded the total value of its merchant marine,[1274] whose fleets had been yearly increased, and whose seamen had been freshly trained by ten years of warfare. How ruinous the war was to Dutch commerce may be measured from the fact that between 27th July 1652 and 8th March 1653 Dutch prize goods were sold, probably much below the normal market values, for £208,655, 3s 11d.[1275] For Holland then, as would be the case for England now, it was not sufficient to merely hold her own, for anything short of absolute maritime supremacy is ruin to a nation whose existence depends on an unlimited carrying trade and the unchecked export and import of material. The Dutch did not hold their own, but their flag was by no means driven off the seas, and the Dutch navy certainly not incapable of further action, when the miseries undergone by a teeming population brought the republic to its knees in 1654.
Many circumstances and conditions coincided in weakening the position of the United Provinces. Their share in the thirty years’ war, being almost entirely confined to land operations, had resulted in attention being devoted to the army at the expense of the navy, which had seen little real service since the conclusion of the truce with Spain in 1609. The country was distressed by the economies rendered necessary by the heavy public debts, and was yet suffering from the results of a great commercial crisis experienced in 1646-7.[1276] While in England faction was, for the time, crushed, in Holland the attempts of the stadtholder William II in 1650 and 1651 to seize supreme power had given rise to personal and political animosities which had outlived their author, and which are said to have had a disastrous influence on the way some of the higher Dutch officers did their duty. But it was on the side of the personnel and administrative systems of the two countries that a comparison is so favourable to England. The naval organisation of the Dutch republic was directed by five distinct admiralty boards, each exercising separate control, preparing its own ships, appointing its own officers, and depending for co-ordinate action on the limited, and frequently disputed, authority of the states-general. As might have been expected, this system failed even to curb the Dunkirkers, from whom the Dutch suffered nearly as much as did the English[1277].
Never, on the other hand, so far as administration was concerned, had England been better prepared for war. Instead of officials who, as in the preceding half-century, owed their posts to court influence, to purchase, or to seniority, the work was in the hands of men chosen for business aptitude and who, in most instances, had given proof of higher qualifications on the field of battle or in parliamentary committees. Of the latter class was the Admiralty Committee; but the Navy Commissioners, and especially those Commissioners in charge of the dockyards, on whom fell most of the duty of organisation, were officers who had been taught by actual warfare. Prompt, capable, honest, and energetic, sparing themselves neither in purse nor person, and frequently bringing religious fervour as a spur to their daily service, they conveyed to war on another element the same thoroughness and zeal which had made them victorious on land.
Victory in the civil war had only been gained when a weak and hesitating commercialism, scared at its own audacity, and longing for a settlement that would secure its own liberties at whatever sacrifices of the hopes and consciences of others, had been steel-edged by Puritan vigour. The men of that stern mental and moral creed were now in authority throughout the kingdom and wielding its resources. Pitted against a nation of lower ideals, sleekly prosperous, whose national genius had for years tended more and more to take the one groove of trade, unwrought and unpurified by the searchings of soul that all thinking Englishmen must have gone through in those years, all the spiritual elements of success were on the side of England.
Never, before or since, were the combatant branches of the Navy so well supported. As a rule our seamen have had to beat the enemy afloat in spite of the Admiralty ashore, but here they had every assistance that foresight and earnestness could give. As a result of the political troubles of 1650 and 1651 many of the oldest and most experienced of the Dutch captains had been dismissed as adherents of the house of Orange, and their places filled by men of whose cowardice and incapacity bitter complaints were made by their admirals. The English captains were officers practised by years of sea experience, or soldiers who brought their traditions of hard fighting to bear in a fresh field. The United Provinces had perhaps four times as many seamen as a reserve to draw upon; but, ill paid and ill fed,[1278] devoted to peaceful pursuits, and frequently discontented with the mercantile oligarchy governing them, the men, although once in action they fought well, did not give that almost enthusiastic service which characterised the Englishmen.
The news sheets of 1652-3 usually take the goodwill of the men for granted, and this silence is itself significant; but occasionally actual references are made, and these references, even if inventions, may be taken as indicative of the spirit with which the men were reputed to be imbued. They had for the Dutch that hatred their fathers felt for Spaniards, and, for the first time for many years, they found themselves well treated[1279]—comparatively punctually paid, properly clothed, well fed, cared for when sick or wounded, and promised advantages in the shape of prize money never previously allowed. What wonder they served the Commonwealth, during its earlier years, as the crown had never been served since the days of Elizabeth?
In number of ships England, even at the outbreak of the war, was not so ill-matched as has been supposed. ‘You never had such a fleet as in the Long Parliament,’ said Haselrig on one occasion,[1280] and political necessities had as yet prevented any decrease in the strength maintained up to 1648. During 1649-51 the magazines were kept well supplied and forty-one new ships were added to the Navy list, practically doubling its effective; besides these were the hired merchantmen in pay, or recently discharged, and manned by trained crews accustomed to work together. According to some accounts the Dutch navy had been allowed to fall to so low a number as fifty men-of-war, and, although merchantmen were taken into the service, their crews, hurriedly got together and new to their surroundings, were no match, so far as skill went, for their opponents. Throughout the war the Dutch, although they possessed many more ships, never succeeded in sending to sea any materially larger fleets than ours. Fifteen hundred prizes are said to have been taken from them during the war, a number at least double the whole ocean-going merchant marine of England.[1281] If they possessed more vessels a far larger proportion of them were unfit for battle, and if ours were slower under sail they were more solidly built and more heavily armed, advantages which told in days when tactics were elementary, and when, for the first time for a century, English seamen tried to fight yardarm to yardarm.[1282] Yet another circumstance was most fortunate for England; for a greater part of the year the prevailing winds gave us the weather-gage and the choice of attack. Dutch merchant fleets returning from the westward had to run the gauntlet of the south coast, and some of the most desperate actions of the war were fought on account of—and hampered by—considerations for the safety of these convoys. If they took the long and dangerous route round Scotland, they were still liable to capture when almost within sight of home. It will be seen, if these views are correct, that almost the sole advantage held by the United Provinces was one of finance, and that, although it might have caused political difficulties or revolt under a monarchy, had no immediate influence in a country held down by a victorious army.