Overseas Facilities
THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NAVY had no overseas bases or dockyards equivalent to the worldwide network of facilities available to its successors. The great overseas yards – the likes of Gibraltar, Malta, Halifax, Bermuda, Simon’s Town, Hong Kong and Singapore – were acquired through colonial expansion and warfare in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In any case, seventeenth-century Britain had no imperative to create such a network. There were colonies in the Americas and the Caribbean, but the few warships stationed there needed hardly any dedicated facilities (although a wharf was hired for the navy at Jamaica in the 1670s1). There was hardly any‘imperial’ presence to the east, and what there was remained the preserve of the English East India Company, as it would (in theory) for another two centuries. When strategic commitments necessitated the deployment of fleets in distant seas, the usual response was to enter into ad hoc agreements with friendly states. Stores were purchased locally, and no formal supporting infrastructure was put in place. Thus Blake used Oeiras Bay (Portugal) and Cadiz in 1650, Cadiz and Cagliari in 1654–5, and Lisbon in 1656–7. The generally friendly disposition of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany meant that their ports were usually available to British fleets: Leghorn was used extensively from the 1650s to the 1670s, and again in the 1690s. The intermittent wars against the Barbary regencies of North Africa led to the use of bases which were well placed for operations against the corsair harbours, giving the British experience of three ports that they would eventually possess outright: Port Mahon, Malta and Gibraltar. More permanent logistical arrangements, such as storehouses, hulks and administrative staff, were put in place at these locations. Finally, from 1662 to 1684 Britain owned Tangier, and it made a sustained but ultimately unsuccessful effort to transform this colony into the main base for its Mediterranean operations.
TANGIER
Tangier came into English possession as part of the marriage dowry of Charles II’s queen, Catherine of Braganza, and was formally occupied by the king’s garrison on 30 January 1662. The Committee for the Affairs of Tangier, created later that year, included most of the great naval figures of the age, including the Lord High Admiral, James, Duke of York; Prince Rupert, the Duke of Albemarle and the Earl of Sandwich; and three members of the Navy Board, including Samuel Pepys. Tangier’s potential development as a naval base was thus high on the agenda, and on 30 March 1663 the contract for building a large mole, or breakwater, was signed between the Earl of Teviot, governor of Tangier, and Mr (later Sir) Hugh Cholmley, a Yorkshire engineer who had worked on Whitby harbour. This was to run for 400 yards east-north-east, then 200 yards east-south-east. By 1665 it was long enough to take a gun battery which proved vital to the defence of the town against the Dutch, and by 1668 it provided almost (but not quite) enough depth of water to accommodate a Fourth Rate frigate.2 However, the cost of the mole soared; from its inception to 1676, its cost was estimated at over £260,000.3 Building was constantly interrupted by bad weather. The mole was breached at least thirty times, most disastrously in 1668 and 1674.4 Moreover, Tangier itself was isolated, was sometimes besieged by the surrounding Moors for long periods, and lacked both hinterland and infrastructure. In any case, although it was considered a feasible base for naval operations against Algiers, it was too far to the west to be of much use in wars against Tripoli and Tunis, so that even when it was capable of being used as a base the alternatives at Leghorn, Port Mahon and Malta were often preferred.
With the mole incomplete, Tangier remained dangerously exposed to wind and tide, and the ground was so foul in the ‘wild roadstead’ that serious damage was often done to ships’ anchors.5 Even so, British ships and fleets began to use it regularly from the late 1660s onwards. Frigates escorting merchantmen into or out of the Mediterranean called as a matter of course.6 Sir Thomas Allin’s fleet took on a month’s provisions there in 1669, but only after an unseemly quarrel with the garrison victualler, who argued that his stores were not intended for naval use (this kind of‘demarcation dispute’ proved to be a perennial problem in the colony).7 A hulk arrived in January 1672, having been moved from Port Mahon, but this did not survive long. Another was provided in 1680, and a master attendant, Captain John Beverley, was appointed in 1675. By the late 1670s it was possible to careen individual frigates successfully within the Tangier mole, and Admiral Sir John Narbrough briefly used it as the main base for his Mediterranean fleet in 1679.8 Nevertheless, throughout the 1670s and early 1680s admirals bemoaned the poor facilities at Tangier, especially the absence of a covered storehouse and fresh water cisterns.9 The virtual abandonment of Tangier in favour of better facilities at Gibraltar from 1680 onwards was one of the factors that sealed the colony’s fate. The vast cost of maintaining Tangier and its vulnerability to Moorish attack played their parts, but a confidential list of arguments for its destruction also included its unsuitability as a naval base.10 A fleet went out in 1683 under Admiral Lord Dartmouth, evacuated the town, and over the winter of 1683–4 the fortifications and the mole were systematically demolished.
Tangier from the sea, by Wenceslaus Hollar, showing the incomplete mole (at left).
(©TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM)
Grand Harbour, Malta. British warships usually moored in front of Fort St Angelo (centre) or in Kalkara Creek to the left of it; the Maltese galley fleet was based in the creek to the right of the fort.
(AUTHOR’S PHOTOGRAPH)
PORT MAHON, LEGHORN AND MALTA
Mahon had the advantages of a central position in the western Mediterranean, a commodious harbour and a safe anchorage, although it could be difficult for a large fleet to enter or exit the harbour quickly. It was used as the main base for the fleets of Lawson (1664), Allin (1664–5, 1668–70) and Spragge (1670–2) during wars against Algiers, and from 1670 it had a naval agent and victualler, namely Richard Gibson, a trusted ally of Pepys who had been a clerk at the Navy Office. A careening wharf was leased below the town of Mahon, although it proved more difficult to find adequate storage facilities, and the supplies available in the island were limited. The Spanish authorities also proved to be capricious and at times made life difficult over such matters as granting pratique and the construction of new storehouses. Gibson returned to England with Spragge’s fleet at the end of 1671, and although Mahon was used again by Sir John Narbrough for operations against Algiers in 1677–9, it was not favoured by his successor Herbert and remained neglected until it eventually came under direct British rule in 1708.11
Livorno (Leghorn) was an important port of call for most naval convoys that passed into the Mediterranean, and could also offer cleaning and victualling facilities for British fleets. It had a permanent naval agent, and in the 1670s this was Sir Thomas Clutterbuck of Warkworth, who had previously acted as the English consul in the town.12 But Cosimo III de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, proved to be erratic and inconsistent in his attitude to British use of the port, particularly in 1674–5, when it was used as the main base for Sir John Narbrough’s fleet in the ongoing war against Tripoli. The Grand Duke’s harbour authorities proved uncooperative, and in any case, the war between France on the one hand and Spain and the Dutch on the other meant that naval stores were in short supply, as the combatants had largely exhausted them.13 Both Tangier and Port Mahon were too far to the west to be realistic alternatives. In April 1675, therefore, Narbrough proposed using Malta instead, informing the Navy Board that he thought it ‘the best port in the Mediterranean for cleaning ships for that service’ (meaning the war with Tripoli).14 The Admiralty sanctioned the use of Malta on 9 May, and a month later authorised the transfer of the Tangier hulk, the Europa, to Malta, along with almost £5,000 worth of stores, which were shipped from England. Despite this, shortage of stores bedevilled the fleet’s time at Malta.15 Nevertheless, with permission from the Grand Master and the Knights of St John, Narbrough used Malta as his base for operations against Tripoli from the summer of 1675 until March 1676, when peace was concluded.16
CADIZ, LISBON AND GIBRALTAR
Despite their distance from the theatres of operations against the Barbary corsairs, Lisbon and Cadiz were often used by British fleets. Like Livorno, and unlike Tangier, they had large populations and stockpiles of all the sorts of supplies a fleet needed, as well as large natural harbours that could accommodate several ships at a time for cleaning and revictualling. Lisbon had already been used as the victualling base for Blake’s fleet in the 1650s and resumed this role in 1677–8 and 1684–5, when the future Admiralty secretary Phineas Bowles went out as storekeeper and muster master. Bowles experienced great difficulty in acquiring suitable storehouses and had frequent disputes with the Portuguese authorities, problems that finally led the Admiralty to abandon Lisbon in favour of Gibraltar. Similar problems with the local authorities were often experienced at Cadiz. Sir Thomas Allin’s fleet cleaned and re-stored there several times in 1664, and again in 1670.17 Sir John Narbrough’s fleet used it in 1678, and in August 1679 Arthur Herbert’s fleet was given licence to careen his ships in Puntal, north-east of the Bay of Cadiz.18 But such arrangements depended wholly on the connivance of the local governors, and despite the payment of judicious bribes their attitude to the British was rarely consistent.
The same was true of the local authorities at Gibraltar, but over the course of the period it became increasingly the preferred harbour for fleets operating within and just outside the Straits. It had been a potential target for outright annexation by Britain as early as the 1620s, and again in 1656 when General-at-Sea Edward Montagu seriously contemplated an assault on it.19 Gibraltar was used as an anchorage by the Earl of Sandwich’s fleet in 1661, and again by Sir Thomas Allin’s squadron in 1664, when his captains voted 5–3 to use it in preference to Cadiz.20 The Spanish were willing to sell anchors and yards, and Gibraltar proved to be a good anchorage for careening, although the governor could sometimes be prickly.21 By 1680 Admiral Arthur Herbert was convinced that Gibraltar was infinitely preferable to Tangier as a base for stores and careening. It had a new mole, completed in 1670 at a fraction of the cost of Tangier’s, and in any case its waters were generally calmer than those at Tangier. It was also considered preferable to Cadiz, on the grounds that ships could get back on station against Algiers more quickly if they refitted at Gibraltar; Cadiz was also wracked by occasional outbreaks of plague. Consequently, he bribed the governor, moved the hulk from Tangier, and in 1681 gained permission to build storehouses and a forge there.22 Gibraltar remained Herbert’s favoured base until his fleet returned home in 1682, and in 1685, following the abandonment of Tangier, it became the chief base for the small squadron that continued to operate against the corsairs of Salé (Sallee) in Morocco. A naval agent, Jonathan Gauden, was based there, but he was distinctly unimpressed with his posting, describing it as ‘dull’, ‘a hole’ and ‘this land of oblivion’; even so, he soon took the opportunity to line his own pockets through a wheat trading venture.23 Gibraltar continued to serve as Britain’s main base in the area until the Salé squadron was withdrawn to home waters in 1689. The considerable experience of the harbour that captains had gained in the 1680s meant that when Gibraltar was eventually captured in 1704, it was by no means terra incognita to those who took it.24
Cadiz in the seventeenth century. A regular port-of-call for British warships and merchantmen, despite frequent difficulties with the local Spanish authorities.