CHAPTER XVI.

THE NAVY OF THE COMMONWEALTH AND THE FIRST DUTCH WAR.

To students of the seventeenth century it must always appear remarkable that the period of the Commonwealth should have witnessed, in a State already exhausted by civil war, a striking increase in naval power and a vast extension of the range of naval operations. The fundamental cause is to be found in that change in the political conditions of the time which substituted France and the United Provinces for the declining Power of Spain as England's real foes. This change carries us back to the beginning of the Stewart period, but the historian of the Commonwealth navy need not look so far behind him. On the side of ship-building, his investigations should begin with ship-money, for it was in the ship-money fleets that the foundations of success in the First Dutch War were laid. But for naval administration he need only go back to 1642, when the winnowing fan of revolution purged the floor ; and the history of naval action does not seriously begin for him until 1648, with the partial revolt of the Parliamentary fleet.

The period of the Commonwealth undoubtedly saw a notable advance in the purity and efficiency of naval administration. The moral exaltation of the times, which raised the standard of duty, and created an atmosphere unfavourable to corruption, contributed to this result. But perhaps too much stress has been laid upon considerations of this kind, and too little upon the complete transformation of administrative methods accomplished by the Great Rebellion. Under Charles I the higher government of the navy had been in the main aristocratic. It was in the hands of great personages absorbed in other business and cut off by their want of professional knowledge from the effective supervision of naval affairs. But the Civil War tapped a new reservoir of administrative ability. Parliament was now learning the art of government and appropriating large territories hitherto outside its province. The supreme control of naval affairs passed to a parliamentary "Committee of the Navy," whose members were frequently changed; and subordinate to this committee were the " Commissioners of the Navy "-a body of experts charged with the management of executive detail. Under this system the activity of the Parliamentary Committee made effective supervision possible ; and as most of the Admiralty staff, like the combatant members of the service, cast in their lot with the Parliament, the new Government could take over a going concern, while the old vicious traditions of Court influence and the sale of places came to an end.

Under the Stewart monarchy the numerical growth of the navy had been associated with an almost incredible administrative inefficiency. The King's service was " shunned as a serpent " ; and there was always the greatest difficulty in obtaining men. Wages were lower than in the merchant service, and they were not punctually paid ; the arrangements for supplying victuals were inconceivably bad; the want of proper clothing was a standing grievance ; and there was no satisfactory organisation for dealing with the great amount of sickness caused by the horrible conditions of life imposed upon the seamen. The revolutionary Governments went a long way towards setting these things right. Both the Long Parliament and the Commonwealth disposed of large resources; they were not, like Charles I, straitened for supplies and hampered by constitutional restrictions ; and they had the strongest motives for contenting the seamen, and so retaining them in their due obedience to the authority of Parliament. Thus there was for a time, and especially during the Civil War, a great improvement in the punctuality of payment, although subsequently complaints about overdue pay became frequent again. The same motives which led to an improvement in pay led also to. the provision of better victuals. But in this department also the Commonwealth failed to maintain the standard of the Long Parliament. Complaints began to be frequent about 1650 ; and in the years 1653 and 1654 the expressions used recall the palmiest days of maladministration. In 1655 a State victualling department was substituted for victualling by contract ; but the new method had scarcely a fair chance. On the eve of the Restoration things were as bad as they could be.

Although much was done under the Commonwealth to improve the condition of the navy, the more serious evils could not be eradicated all at once. The administration could not be manned from top to bottom with new men ; nor did the mere substitution of a parliamentary for a monarchical government kill the old abuses. John Hollond, writing in 1638, ascribes many of the disorders of Charles I's reign to insufficient payment. Men had to buy their places in the first instance, and then, for want of sufficient means from the King, they were " necessitated... either to live knaves or die beggars-and sometimes to both." When pay was small, and still more when it was unpunctual, pursers, gunners, boatswains, and clerks were driven to " daily embezzlements, thefts, and, purloinings." But Hollond also attributes abuses in part to the laxity of discipline from above, for everyone was entangled in the same net. No man suffered as an officer " for any kind of delinquency in his place, though he hath been convicted of direct stealths, burglaries, etc." because the higher officers knew that their inferiors, like themselves, could not live upon their pay; so that the whole service came to be engaged in a vast conspiracy to lower the standards of public duty. The Commonwealth abolished the sale of places, and within certain modest limits increased the scale of pay; but it failed to keep up punctuality of payment, and it inherited an army of officials already debased by systematic corruption. As Pepys was to discover later, the tone of a public service can be permanently raised only by the long-continued pressure of authority. The Puritan movement deeply affected English habits of thought, and therefore in the long run influenced conduct ; but its immediate effect upon the generality of men is often overestimated. The minor officials of the navy adapted themselves readily enough to the new fashion of religious speech; but the spiritual revival failed to renovate a public service which had degenerated in obedience to the laws of its environment. The charges of corruption which Hollond brings against the naval administration of the Commonwealth are supported by other evidence, although he omits to record the conscientious efforts made by the higher officials to put down abuses.

Rupert sailed from Helvoetsluys on January 11, 1649, with eight ships under his command ; but they were all miserably undermanned, and nothing but speedy success made it possible for them to keep the sea. If he could have cooperated effectively with Ormonde, Rupert might have rendered a really great service to the Royalist cause ; but either his equipment failed him. or his genius was ill suited for the more sustained efforts by which the issues of war are really decided. The dashing cavalry leader who had plundered the Parliamentarians speedily mastered the art of destroying commerce upon the sea. He established himself without difficulty at Kinsale, and during his voyage thither, and after his arrival, captured so many prizes that his financial difficulties were for the present removed. He also relieved the Scilly Islands, which Sir John Greenville was holding as the headquarters for Royalist privateers. But the serious issues of the war lay with Ormonde, and Rupert failed to support him, although urged to render assistance by blockading Londonderry or Dublin. The opportunity was missed ; and before long the greater resources of the Commonwealth, both by sea and land, were brought effectively into play. The defensive scheme of the Commonwealth against Ormonde was Cromwell's invasion of Ireland, and an element in that scheme was the elimination of Rupert's fleet, On May 22 Blake arrived off Kinsale and blockaded the harbour, thus clearing the way for Cromwell, who landed in Dublin on August 15. During the whole of the summer the commanders of the Commonwealth kept a close watch upon Rupert, and at the same time prevented communication between Munster and the Continent, and intercepted privateers cruising under letters of marque from Charles II. The work was useful work, but it strained the resources of the fleet to the utmost ; and in October, when the blockading squadron was driven off by a storm, Rupert with seven ships escaped to the open sea. His course now carried him very speedily outside the range of the Irish squadron. On December 1 news came that he was capturing English merchantmen off the coast of Spain ; and soon afterwards he made his way with a number of prizes to Lisbon, where he was hospitably received by King John IV, and allowed to sell some of his prizes in order to arm and equip the rest with the proceeds, thus increasing his force to 13 ships.

The final extinction of Rupert's squadron as a fighting force was for the present deferred. In Toulon he succeeded in increasing his force to five ships ; and with these, " conceiving all disasters past, he fixed his resolution to take revenge on the Spaniard," who had furnished Blake with a naval base. The hunting-ground of the Elizabethan pirate-captains still retained its glamour for the seamen of the next generation; and, with the Azores as his goal, he was able to man his ships, and sail westward, capturing English and Spanish prizes indiscriminately on the way. Though it was Rupert's intention ultimately to support the King's cause in the West Indies, his ships' companies cared only to spoil the Egyptians. They refused to leave Spanish waters, and the chance of achieving anything was lost. During the rest of 1651 the squadron lingered off the Azores ; in the spring of 1652 it cruised off the coast of Guinea and the Cape Verde Islands ; nor was it until the summer of 1652 that Rupert reached the West Indies-six months after Ayscue's-fleet had secured Barbados for the Parliament. Political results could no longer be achieved ; and meanwhile the fleet had been steadily deteriorating. In 1651 the flagship and another vessel were lost ; early in 1652 the crew of the Revenge mutinied and carried her over to the Parliament ; in September of the same year Prince Maurice and two ships were lost in a storm. In March, 1653, Rupert returned to France with his own ship and a few unseaworthy prizes. His squadron was now finally broken up, and the Royalist party ceased to command naval power.

From this time the system of convoy was entirely remodelled ; and first Hall, and then Appleton and Badiley, were employed in escorting the Levant trade.

The destruction of the naval power which the Royalists had acquired by the mutiny of May, 1648, is the most important episode in the period of Commonwealth naval history which precedes the outbreak of the First Dutch War ; but the command of the sea was of high value to the Commonwealth elsewhere as well as in the Mediterranean. The fleet intercepted arms and stores destined for Ireland, and cut off communication between Charles II in Scotland and his friends in Holland. Cromwell's invasion of Scotland would have been scarcely feasible at all, had not his army been furnished with supplies landed from the fleet which accompanied its march. It was to the command of the sea also that the Commonwealth owed its ability to wind up so speedily the affairs of the monarchy, and to assert its sovereignty over the whole of the dominions of the House of Stewart. The Stilly Islands, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands-all of them nests of Royalist privateers-were successively reduced during 1651, mainly by an exertion of naval force ; and in 1652 Ayscue's fleet ensured the submission of the West Indian Islands and of the plantations on the mainland of America. The Commonwealth was at last supreme, not only over the whole realm of England, but over her dominions beyond the sea.

The geographical advantages of England over the United Provinces were in 1652 seconded by the possession of what was, on the whole, a better fleet. The Dutch claimed that in comparison with their own the English had but a small navy. It was true that the United Provinces possessed more ships; but they were not able at any given moment to put more ships into the fighting line, and they were also relatively deficient in large vessels. Owing to the fact that their great struggle with Spain had shaped itself as a land war, the number of ships actually fit for sea had sunk as low as fifty, and the deficiency had to be made good by hastily arming merchantmen. In England, on the other hand, during the years 1649-51 forty-one new ships had been added to the navy list, though before these additions the navy of the Long Parliament was already the strongest navy which the country had ever possessed. The English ships were more solidly built than the Dutch, being " full of timber " ; an English sea-captain had expressed the difference by the phrase, " we building ours for seventy years, they theirs for seven." The sandy character of the Dutch coast also affected the size of their ships. Thus, when the rival navies came to action upon the open sea, it was found that the English ships could stand battering better than the Dutch ; and, where the former were only crippled, the latter were sunk outright. The English ships were also more heavily armed, and were certainly better provided ; and, although the Dutch had a larger number of merchant ships to draw upon for the service of the State, the English merchant ships were larger and carried more guns. The manning of the fleets was a difficulty upon both sides , but the English officers and men were much more experienced in the actual business of war, for the Dutch navy had seen little real service since 1609. When the war broke out, the seamen Ayscue and Penn had just returned from long cruises, the former from America and the latter from the Mediterranean ; while the soldier Blake had already accumulated a large naval experience in his dealings with Rupert. Moreover, among the higher English officers political divisions had ceased to affect naval efficiency, whereas in the United Provinces the perpetual conflict between the great merchants and the House of Orange had been fanned into fresh flame by the ambition of the Stadholder William II. As a result of this, an attempt had been made to purge the Dutch navy, and to introduce into it officers who were not professional seamen. The counterpart of this in the English navy was the employment of military officers ; but under seventeenth century conditions their experience of fighting could easily be applied to the sea.

In contrast to the comparative precision and effectiveness of the English naval direction, the Dutch administrative methods were singularly ill-adapted to put forth the whole strength of the nation upon the sea. Even in the days of the stadholderate the naval organisation of the Seven Provinces had been extraordinarily loose, and local feeling had succeeded in expressing itself in five distinct and separate Boards of Admiralty. The only real link between the Boards was the Stadholder, who as Admiral-General presided over each Board. Thus, when in 1650 the stadholderate was abolished and the powers of the Admiral-General passed to the States General, an organisation already loose suffered a kind of disintegration. The appointment of officers of ships, hitherto made by the Admiral-General on presentation of the Boards of Admiralty, was now transferred to the States General, the members of which were at once more susceptible to local pressure, and more ignorant of naval affairs. It must also be remembered that, of the seven Provinces represented in the States General, four had no direct interest in the navy. The only influence counteracting this tendency to disorganisation was the preponderance of the Province of Holland, which contributed five-sixths of the fleet and controlled three of the five Admiralty Boards.

For the Dutch everything was at stake-their carrying trade, their import and export trade, their fisheries, and their colonial trade-and therefore they could be satisfied with nothing less than absolute naval supremacy. England, on the other hand, with a naval force almost as great, was risking far less commercially; and the result of this disproportion of risks is to be seen in the fact that the Dutch prizes taken durin'g the war amounted to something like double the value of the whole ocean-going mercantile marine of England. The solitary advantage enjoyed by the Dutch was a better banking system, supported by greater financial resources ; and even this was to a certain extent neutralised by the jealousies of the Provinces, and the difficulty of adjusting between them the burden of the war. Moreover, the finance of the Republic was based upon its commerce, and Ralegh's comment, made a generation earlier, had lost none of its point : " If...they subsist by their trade, the disturbance of their trade (which England only can disturb) will also disturb their subsistence." On the other hand, at no previous time had England been able so easily to bring her whole financial resources into play. The revolutionary Government had already emancipated itself from the vicious traditions of the subsidy, and had organised the whole power of the country for war ; it was free from the constitutional limitations which had proved a hindrance to heavy taxation in the past; and the irresistible force of its veteran army could be applied at every point of the national life.

He was ordered to resist any attempt to exercise the right of search, and it should also be observed that he neither received nor gave any instructions upon the important point of striking the flag.

Meanwhile, although negotiations were still going on in London, the English Government also was busily preparing for all eventualities. The news of the decision to fit out the 150 ships reached Westminster on March 5 ; and the first of the Orders of the Council of State designed to meet the new situation was dated March 8. The arrangements made included the reinforcement of the summer guard, the building of ships, and the purchase of ordnance. The nature of the emergency compelled the Government once more to rely in part upon armed merchantmen. On March 13 the Council required from all the ports a return of ships of 200 tons burden and over, fit to carry guns, and ordered the owners of them to get them ready for sea. The opening of hostilities might perhaps have been delayed if the two navies had not come into premature collision over the question of the flag. The action off Folkestone on May 19, 1652, was then and afterwards supposed to have been the result of a premeditated attack by the Dutch fleet. It is, however, now certain that the conflict was due to a misunderstanding between Tromp and Blake. The news was received by the Dutch Government with something like consternation ; but the English Commission of Enquiry reported that Tromp had deliberately provoked the conflict, and against this it was impossible for the advocates of reconciliation to make any headway. Nor was it in England only that the tide of popular excitement was rising. The Dutch Government had always to reckon with the possibility of a revolution in favour of the House of Orange, if they should appear to be sacrificing the national honour of which the Stadholders had always been so jealous. Accordingly, on June 30, the final rupture took place, and the Dutch ambassadors withdrew. One of them remarked just before their departure : " The English are about to attack a mountain of gold ; we are about to attack a mountain of iron."

When on July 11 Tromp started on his pursuit of Blake, he was without any certain information of the English admiral's whereabouts, and was prepared to " search the whole of the North Sea, even as far as Shetland " ; and it was off Shetland that he found him, fresh from the inglorious exploit of breaking up the herring fleet. But once more the weather befriended England. On July 25, a few hours after Tromp had succeeded in locating the English fleet, a great storm blew up from the south-west, converting the Shetlands into a dangerous lee shore for the Dutch, while they served to shelter Blake, who was north-east of them, from the fury of the gale. On the morning of the 26th Tromp could only muster 34 warships out of 92 and one fireship out of 7. Most of the missing ships ultimately reached Dutch ports in safety, but at the time they were supposed to have been lost, and it was therefore decided to make for home.

The next action in the war was due to considerations of a différent kind. On his return from the North Tromp had been suspended ; and the command of his fleet had been given to Vice-Admiral de With. Towards the end of September de With found himself reinforced by Ruyter, and set free for a moment by the safe arrival of the homeward-bound fleet from Spain and Italy from the necessity of protecting trade ; he was therefore tempted to strike directly at the English war-force in the hope of overwhelming Blake and obtaining command of the sea. For such an enterprise the force at his disposal was inadequate ; but this was not realised at the time, and on September 25 he appeared at the back of the Goodwins, intending to attack Blake as he lay at anchor in the Downs. The weather, however, made the operation impossible, and the action was not fought until September 28, when Blake took the initiative, and with sixty-eight sail encountered the Dutch fleet of fifty-seven ships off" the Kentish Knock, one of the most easterly of the sands which guard the mouth of the Thames, The fight began about five in the afternoon, " continuing till it was dark night." The resistance of the Dutch, strenuous and fierce as it was at the beginning, was beaten down by sheer weight of metal and accuracy of fire. They lost two ships in action and their fleet was further weakened by the withdrawal of about twenty more, most of them commanded by captains from Zeeland, who were hostile to the domination of Holland, which de With represented. On September 30, therefore, de With decided to return home, under the erroneous impression that Blake's fleet had been strengthened by the arrival of sixteen large ships on the preceding day.

The two fleets came into action off Dungeness about three in the afternoon of November SO. The fight was stubbornly maintained with what a contemporary account describes as "bounteous rhetoric of powder and bullet " until the combatants were separated by the darkness, when Blake, completely outmatched, retreated to Dover Road under cover of night, and the next day returned to his anchorage in the Downs. The Dutch had succeeded in taking two ships; besides this, one had been burnt, three blown up, and many others severely damaged. Besides his inferiority in force there was another cause for his defeat-" much baseness of spirit, not among the merchantmen only, but many of the State's ships." The defence of the defaulting captains was that they "had not men enough to ply their tackle"; and the evidence of the want of seamen about this time makes this very probable.

The effect of their victory off Dungeness was to transfer to the Dutch the control of the Channel ; and the great highway of Dutch trade once more swarmed with ships. English prizes were taken almost at pleasure, and a projected attack on the Thames itself was only abandoned for want of pilots. It was at this time, according to the popular fable, that Tromp hoisted a broom at his masthead to indicate that he had swept the English from the seas. There is of course no good authority for crediting so steady and sober-minded a seaman as Tromp with any such melodramatic proceeding. The year 1652 also closed badly for England elsewhere than in the Channel, for the Dutch established a decisive superiority in the Mediterranean, with the result that, early in 1653, the English Levant trade was at their mercy ; and their understanding with Denmark led to the closing of the Sound against England, and the detention of English merchant ships bringing " Eastland commodities " from the Baltic. This cut the English navy off from the main source of its supply of hemp, tar, and certain kinds of timber and plank, but the starvation of the dockyards was averted, as naval stores came in slowly from various places in spite of the measures taken to intercept them, and the naval administrators of the Commonwealth displayed much ingenuity in opening new sources of supply.

It was not until the middle of February, 1653, that Blake's reorganised fleet of from seventy to eighty sail was fully manned ; but it was ready in time to dispute Tromp's passage through the Channel, as he returned in charge of the homeward-bound merchantmen from the Mediterranean, and to compel him to fight the three days' action of February 18-20, generally known as the battle " off Portland." Tromp had a fleet of about seventy-five sail, but he had to cover from 150 to 200 merchant-ships, and to fight a rear-guard action. Moreover, the Dutch were now to experience the enormous disadvantage of fighting far from their base. The English fleet was fresh from port and fully supplied with ammunition and stores; while Tromp had had no opportunity of replenishing his magazines since the action off Dungeness, and was therefore obliged to husband his resources. It was only by a magnificent display of judgment and seamanship that he was able to draw off his convoy homeward. Four Dutch ships of war were taken and five sunk, and it was claimed that as many as fifty merchant-ships were taken, but the information on this point cannot be accepted as entirely trustworthy. One English ship was sunk, one burned by accident, and three disabled.

From March to May, 1653, there was a lull in the major operations, but the silent pressure of naval war was beginning to be severely felt on both sides. It proved impracticable in the long run efficiently to protect trade in the Channel, and the Dutch merchant traffic was being diverted to the long and dangerous route round the north of Scotland. The imperious necessity of protecting commerce on its newly chosen route at first drew Tromp to the north with convoys. The English fleet followed, but failed to meet him. The next encounter took place nearer home on June 2 and 3 off the Gabbard Shoal, east of Harwich. Tromp had with him 98 men-of-war and six fireships, while the English fleet numbered 100 men-of-war with five fireships; but the English ships were altogether superior in size and weight of metal, and the calmness of the sea was all to the advantage of the heavier English guns. Administrative deficiencies also prepared the way for disaster, for after the first day's fighting the Dutch found themselves short of powder; and on the second day the English fleet was reinforced by Blake, with thirteen fresh ships. Although Tromp was able to effect a retreat, he lost twenty men-of-war, all of which had fallen to the enemy as prizes ; and the English fleet could now blockade the Dutch ports, reduce to a standstill such trade as remained, and even plan-although not carry out-a landing of troops.

On the side of the United Provinces there was as yet no thought of giving up the conflict. A successor to Tromp was found in the person of Opdam, a land officer, of whom a contemporary wrote : " Never having sailed anywhere but on the canals of Holland, he was obliged to make up by his goodwill and courage for the naval experience in which he was deficient." But much the same might have been said of Monck on his first appointment ; and Opdam was to have Ruyter as his Vice-Admiral. So considerable was the revival of energy and confidence, that nothing but want of provisions prevented the Dutch fleet from attacking the mouth of the Thames and endeavouring to block the river by means of sunken ships. But at the end of October de With's fleet, riding off the Texel, encountered a furious gale from the north-west, by which half of it was destroyed or dismasted. The rest of the history of the war is concerned only with small captures on both sides.

If the naval operations of the First Dutch War are viewed as a whole, something of the nature of a progressive evolution may be detected in the strategical conceptions by which they were governed. It has been pointed out that this may be regarded as the first modern naval war, because it presents for the first time "vast concentrations of naval force merely for naval operations," as distinguished from enterprises like those of Cadiz and Re-or even from that of the Spanish Armada itself-in which naval force was employed to escort and cover a land expedition. But although in this sense it was a modern war, the employment and distribution of naval force was not determined by modern rules. The war begins, not with an attempt to secure the command of the sea by striking at the enemy's fleet, but with an eager attack upon Dutch commerce, which ignored altogether some of the considerations that weigh with modern naval strategists. When Blake sailed to the north with a large fleet to do what a large fleet was not required for, he left Ayscue exposed to annihilation, and nothing but the accident of a change of wind saved him from destruction. In regarding the destruction of Dutch commerce as the primary object of the war, the instincts of the English seamen of that day were not altogether at fault, for the trade of the Dutch Republic was its life. What they did not at first realise was that the best way to attack commerce was to find out and destroy the enemy's fighting fleet. On the other hand the instructions to Tromp and his despatches to the States General at the opening of the war suggest that the Dutch seamen were already thinking upon more modern lines. When Tromp followed Blake to the north, he had evidently grasped the idea that the best way to protect the herring-fleet and to put the homeward-bound merchantmen out of danger was to find and fight the fleet that threatened them.

Another controversial question connected with the tactics of the First Dutch War is the battle formation of the fleets. At the beginning of the war the current conception of the way to fight an action was that expressed in Lindsey's Instructions of 1635, and again in a slightly different form in the instructions given to Penn in 1648- an assault by the admiral, vice-admiral, and rear-admiral upon the corresponding ships of the enemy, the other ships to " match themselves accordingly as they can," and " to secure one another as cause shall require." Under this system the commanders would manœuvre for the wind, and, having gained it, would bear down upon and thrust themselves through the hostile fleet, the ships of each squadron rallying round their own flagship. The action would then resolve itself into a general mêlée in which individuals would perform prodigies of valour ; but there would be no attempt at concerted action on any important scale. Of such a kind was the first battle of the war, fought off Folkestone on May 19,1652. The conflict was unpremeditated ; there is no satisfactory evidence of a regular battle formation ; and, after battle was joined, there appears to have been a general mêlée, the ships being crowded together at short range. It was only to be expected, however, that the experience gained from the first continuous series of fleet actions at sea would lead to a development of tactical conceptions ; and in this war a remarkable advance is noticeable towards the establishment of the line ahead as the inevitable battle formation of fleets.

The action off the Gabbard on June 2, 1653, appears to have impressed contemporaries somewhat differently from the earlier battles of the war. The older phrases are not used to describe it, and an eye-witness observes of the English fleet that the ships "did work together in better order than before, and seconded one another." The action off Scheve-ningen on July 31, 1653, was also described as " a very orderly battle." These references to a better order are the way in which the contemporary accounts reflect what was not far short of a revolution in naval tactics. The way for this had been prepared by the reorganisation of the English navy which had taken place just before the battle of Portland. In the earlier actions of the war the presence of large numbers of armed merchantmen would have been fatal to orderly fighting ; for the merchant captains, who were always trying to save their ships in action and could not be trusted to obey a simple order to engage, would scarcely have been able to carry out fighting instructions which required concerted action of an elaborate kind and at the same time exposed individual ships to greater risks. The reorganisation of 1653, which placed the hired merchantmen in the charge of officers chosen by the State, was a condition precedent to the adoption of a tactical system in place of promiscuous fighting.

The new tactical system was imposed upon the navy when on March 29, 1653, the Generals-at-sea-Blake, Deane, and Monck-issued the first Fighting Instructions which aimed at the line ahead as a battle formation ; and it was under these instructions that the action off the Gabbard was fought. They required the ships of each squadron, so soon as the signal to engage was given, to " endeavour to keep in a line " with their own flag-officer, unless he should be disabled ; in which case his squadron " shall endeavour to keep in a line with the admiral, or he that commands-in-chief next unto him, and nearest the enemy." That an attempt was made to carry this out in practice appears from an account of the action of June a sent from the Hague, stating that the English " put themselves into the order in which they meant to fight, which was in file at half cannon-shot."

The idea of the single line ahead is, no doubt, to be found in the Fighting Instructions of 1653 ; but, if practice rather than theory is considered, the transition from promiscuous fighting to the single line ahead would appear to lie through an application of the system to squadrons rather than to fleets. However this may be, recent investigation has effectually disposed of the notion once current among historians that the new system was borrowed from the Dutch. The line ahead and its applications were English from the beginning, and there is no satisfactory evidence upon which the Dutch admirals can be credited with initiating the change.

After the destruction of the Plate fleet Stayner and Mountagu with several of the larger ships went home ; but Blake, undertaking a new departure in naval warfare, maintained the blockade of the Spanish coast all the winter through. Not long after Stayner had rejoined him in the spring, news reached him that the silver-fleet from America had got as far as Santa Cruz in TenerifFe. On April 20, 1657, he arrived there with 23 ships, to find the fleet moored in the harbour under the protection of the castle and a number of smaller forts and entrenchments. The harbour was not an easy one to get out of, especially as the breeze was off the sea, and Blake had to take great risks. He stood into the bay with the flowing tide, intending to destroy the ships and forts, and come out when the tide turned. Any miscalculation in point of time might have meant a grave disaster, but Blake's confidence in his guns was not misplaced. By three o'clock in the afternoon every Spanish ship was sunk, blown up, or burnt, without serious loss to the English fleet, which drew off on the ebb as its commander had intended. The legend is now rejected that the retirement was assisted by an almost miraculous change of wind.

In the year 1657 the English military and naval forces found a new objective, and in alliance with France they were directed against Mardyk and Dunkirk. The share of the navy in this enterprise was limited to the maintenance of a fleet of twenty-six ships off Dunkirk to cover the military operations and to cooperate with the besieging army. In March, 1659, also, an English fleet under Mountagu was ordered to the Sound, to arrange, and if necessary to enforce, in conjunction with the Dutch, such a peace between Denmark and Sweden as should prevent the Baltic becoming a Swedish lake. The experience of the Dutch War had shown how important free access to Eastland commodities was to both the great naval Powers.

Meanwhile the tide of events was beginning to run strongly towards a Restoration. The revolutionary Governments of the period of the Commonwealth had been based upon military power, and except for Monck, who combined the parts, it may be said that the Restoration was effected by soldiers and not by seamen. But no opposition came from the navy. Mountagu's resolution in favour of the King was adopted on May 3, 1660, at a Council of War, without a dissentient voice; and Pepys tells us that " all the fleet took it in a transport of joy." On May 12 the fleet sailed from the Downs, and on the 25th it reappeared with the King on board ; and thus the weapon of naval power first forged by the Stewart House passed into its keeping again. But in the interval this weapon had acquired a keener temper and had been wielded by stronger hands. England as a military State, disposing of a veteran army, must in any case have exercised an important influence upon the system of States to which she belonged. But England, armed on land, was also armed at sea, and a period which had begun with the ineffective expeditions of Charles I's reign, ended with intervention everywhere, supported by a naval and military force which seemed almost irresistible. Thus the Commonwealth may be regarded as a period of transition between the naval tradition of Elizabeth and the modern conception of the English navy. It is curious to find this most strikingly expressed by a statesman who during the impressionable years of youth had himself watched the great conflict between the English and the Dutch for naval supremacy. Shaftesbury, who served under Cromwell, and who was still a young man at the Restoration, had been nourished in a period of revolution upon the ideas of the future, and he put one of these into words when he said to the Pension Parliament : " There is not so lawful or commendable a jealousy in the world, as an Englishman's of the growing greatness of any Prince at sea."