Anchorages and Naval Bases
THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE BRITISH archipelago dictated that the navy needed to maintain some facilities in outlying parts of the islands. Even in peacetime, warships operated for the protection of trade off the coast of Ireland and in the Western Approaches, and these were sustained by small facilities at Plymouth, Kinsale and Milford Haven. In wartime, the fleet often had to operate away from its dockyards in the Thames and Medway, as well as from its chief rendezvous at the Buoy of the Nore, and needed to make use of suitably large bays on the east coast of England. The most commonly used anchorages were Solebay, the Gunfleet, Yarmouth Roads and Hollesley Bay off the East Anglian coast, and Bridlington Bay in Yorkshire. Undoubtedly the busiest anchorage was the Downs, between the Goodwin Sands and the Kent coast.
PLYMOUTH
In both peace and war, Plymouth served as a base for ships assigned to defend trade entering or leaving the Channel and the more local coastal trades of the West Country, as well as serving as a harbour of refuge for fleets or convoys leaving or returning to England. The term ‘Western Squadron’ was in use by 1650, and this was supported by a rudimentary infrastructure ashore. There was no dock, but a hulk, the Spanish prize Elias, was moored in the Cattewater from 1657 to 1684, and storehouses were rented on the Lambhay. Tentative proposals were occasionally put forward to expand Plymouth into a fully fledged dockyard, but these all focused on the Cattewater area, not on the Hamoaze site where the new yard was finally established in 1690. Throughout the period, it proved difficult to maintain a sufficient stock of naval stores at Plymouth, partly because of the limited nature of the hinterland, partly because providing money to such a distant facility was always a low priority in London. In 1673–4 the patience of local tradesmen finally ran out. They refused outright to supply the navy until their previous bills were settled, and the refit of the frigate Swan had to be abandoned.1
Kinsale harbour, showing the two forts that guarded it: James Fort (1604) to the west, and Charles Fort (1677) to the east.
For most of the period, the naval facilities at Plymouth were in the charge of a naval agent and a storekeeper, who earned a salary of £150 a year after the Restoration. There was also a clerk of the cheque, who earned £40.2 Henry Hatsell, naval agent from 1652 to 1661, was a prominent figure in Interregnum politics in Devon and exercised considerable operational control over the ships of the Western Squadron. He was succeeded by John Lanyon, who served from 1661 to 1674, when he was succeeded by his uncle Philip. Although not as influential as Hatsell, they were both significant figures: John Lanyon was also a victualling contractor for Tangier and was well known to Pepys, while Philip served as prize commissioner at Plymouth (1664–7) and also as overseer for the construction of the Royal Citadel.3 That great fortress, begun in 1665 and completed by the mid-1670s, was designed both to protect the harbour and to overawe a town that had been resolutely Parliamentarian during the civil wars. Other defences existed on St Nicholas Island and at ‘Mount Batten’, a two-storey gun tower built in the 1650s to guard the Cattewater, and both of these were improved in the 1670s.4
Bridlington Quay, with the sheltered anchorage of the bay to the right.
(© TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM)
Dover in the late seventeenth century.
(©TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM)
MILFORD HAVEN, KINSALE AND LEITH
Milford Haven was used occasionally by the frigates and smaller ships assigned to Ireland or to convoy work in the Bristol Channel, and a store of victuals was maintained at Pembroke. Barlow fetched up there in 1661, albeit thanks to a huge navigational error by which his ship had mistaken St George’s Channel for the English Channel, and praised both the harbour and the local ale, which, he said, was the best he had ever drunk in his life.5 During the second Anglo-Dutch war, the Sixth Rate Martin was based at Milford Haven to defend South Wales and its valuable coastal trade in coal from attacks by Dutch privateers.6 Despite widespread recognition of the admirable qualities of the vast natural harbour, it was too remote both from urban centres and from the seats of action during the Dutch wars to become a major facility. The defences of the harbour were rudimentary: two blockhouses had been built at the entrance to the haven in the reign of Henry VIII, who presumably remembered that it had been the location for his father’s successful invasion,7 and another old battery at Pater (later the site of Pembroke dockyard) guarded the approaches to Pembroke itself, but nothing else was done until the eighteenth century. Leith was little used by the navy during the period, but in November 1660 Pepys encountered the navy agent there, Captain John Strachan, who had served in that capacity since before the civil war.8
Kinsale was used much more extensively, and served as a base for the small number of warships that served the Irish coast. It seems to have been brought into use in 1654, when it became clear that compelling the ships stationed off Ireland to return to Bristol for repairs and revictualling was impractical.9 Kinsale also became an important harbour of refuge for warships and merchantmen crossing the Atlantic, which invariably made their first landfall at Cape Clear and then often anchored in Kinsale harbour before beginning the final leg of their voyage up the English Channel. Following the Spanish landing at the town in 1601, a large fort was built on the west side of the harbour (James Fort, completed in 1604), and this was supplemented by the much larger Charles Fort, built in 1677–8. The navy maintained storehouses in the town and some ship repair facilities; an area still known as ‘The Dock’, across the harbour from Kinsale itself, had a grid on which ships could be grounded for minor repairs.10 The town was served by a clerk of the cheque and a master shipwright. William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, served as victualler and clerk of the cheque at Kinsale in the mid-1660s, an appointment that he owed to the influence of his father, Admiral Sir William Penn. His conversion to Quakerism seems to have taken place while he was serving in that capacity.11
THE EAST COAST ANCHORAGES
British strategy during the Anglo-Dutch wars hinged on frequent, but brief, forays into the North Sea or to the coast of Holland. After a few days or weeks at sea, and regardless of whether or not it had encountered the enemy, the fleet needed to revictual and refit. Returning to its yards took too long, so the fleet came to rely on a number of anchorages along the east coast. At these pre-determined rendezvouses, victuals could be either obtained locally and stored ashore or brought round from the Thames in fleets of small victualling ships. Reinforcements could be directed to these anchorages to await orders, and messages from the government or the naval administration could be directed there, safe in the knowledge that the recipients were bound to return there within a reasonable timeframe. The choice of which anchorage to use hinged on weather conditions, on intelligence of the enemy and on the intentions of the admirals. In April 1665 Bridlington Bay was appointed the fleet’s rendezvous if it was separated by a southerly storm, Southwold Bay (or Solebay, as it was more commonly known) for a northerly.12
Personal preference also seems to have played a part in the choice of anchorages. During the Dutch wars, Solebay was favoured over some of the potential alternatives, like the Buoy of the Nore, because it offered a fleet more open sea, did not have dangerous sandbanks behind it, was close to the supplies at Harwich yard, could defend the collier fleets from the Tyne and Tees, and was nearer to the enemy than most of the alternatives. By the 1670s it also had a watering place dedicated for the use of the navy.13 Blake’s fleet was in Solebay in August 1652 before moving back to the Downs, and returned there in June 1653. The fleet was at Solebay at the beginning of June 1665 when the Dutch were sighted, and after achieving a stunning triumph in the battle of Lowestoft that followed on the third, it returned to the bay on the eighth. But the one great objection to Solebay was the openness of the roadstead, and within days this led to a decision to divide the fleet for refitting. Most of the ships went to Hollesley Bay, which had calmer water. Many went to the Buoy of the Nore, some to Harwich and a few directly to Chatham.14 However, Southwold remained the anchorage of choice for the rest of the 1665 campaign. In 1666 Prince Rupert and the Duke of Albemarle preferred to operate from the mouth of the Thames, although their fleet returned to Solebay in mid-August and remained there until the end of the month.
The fleet used Yarmouth Roads several times during the first Anglo-Dutch war, and a commissioner, the local merchant and shipowner Major William Burton, was appointed at Yarmouth itself. The Restoration authorities did not repeat the experiment, perhaps because of Yarmouth’s known enthusiasm for the Commonwealth (and Solebay was rather nearer to staunchly Royalist Lowestoft), but from 1665 to 1667 Richard Gibson served as victualler there; he moved on to become a clerk to Pepys at the Navy Office, and eventually served as Pepys’s chief clerk at the Admiralty in the 1680s.15 Bridlington Bay was used on a number of occasions when the fleet moved northwards, or if the winds made it easier to reach when returning from the Dutch coast. It was usefully close to the major port and royal arsenal at Hull, and Yorkshire farmers proved very willing to supply the fleet with victuals, albeit at good Yorkshire prices. The bay was used by the Earl of Sandwich’s fleet in August 1665 and by the combined Anglo-French fleet for ten days in August 1672. The Gunfleet, off Harwich, was used relatively little during the Anglo-Dutch wars, but was selected in October and November 1688 as the anchorage for Lord Dartmouth’s fleet, ordered to prevent the anticipated Dutch invasion. The Gunfleet offered more shelter than Solebay, which was arguably too exposed so late in the year, but it proved to be a fatal decision; the difficulty in a strong easterly wind of moving out around the treacherous sandbanks that protected the anchorage made it impossible for Dartmouth’s fleet to intercept William of Orange, and thus effectively changed the course of British history.16
THE DOWNS
The Downs was the fulcrum of England’s maritime trade. Ships returning home moored there to send word of their arrival, to land passengers and to await a favourable wind to take them into the Thames. Ships sailing for foreign parts took on their final orders or supplies and waited for a favourable wind to take them down the Channel. Warships made regular use of the Downs for largely similar reasons, but also came there to protect the anchorage itself, or to gather a merchant convoy together. In wartime, the Downs was the natural anchorage for any fleet sailing from the North Sea into the Channel, or vice versa. Blake’s fleet anchored in the Downs several times in 1652 as part of his strategy to intercept Dutch naval and merchant fleets attempting to run the Channel, and took on victuals from Deal; the anchorage also played host to the fleet of Rupert and Albemarle in 1666. Deal grew steadily in population through the seventeenth century.17 Pepys’s brother-in-law, Balthasar St Michel, served as muster-master at Deal in the 1670s, when the town was also served by a dedicated yacht (the Deal) and, from 1677, a yawl, which was tasked with transporting letters and with acting as a de facto lifeboat.18 (This was one of the first uses of a yawl in naval service; the type was originally indigenous to Deal, and was developed there for servicing the ships in the Downs.19) Officers in transit to and from their ships often had to stay in Deal and put up in houses or inns in the town; by the 1680s the most salubrious quarters were to be found with one widow Bowles, who accommodated the likes of the Duke of Grafton and Admiral Arthur Herbert.20 An agent and storekeeper was also based at Dover, where the old monastic hospice, the Maison Dieu, had been used as a naval victualling storehouse since Tudor times. Thomas White, appointed to the role in 1665, earned a salary of £100 a year.21 The anchorage was protected by a line of venerable fortifications, notably Dover Castle in the south and Henry VIII’s artillery forts at Sandown, Deal and Walmer.