The Main Fleet
THE SIZE OF THE FLEET
BY ANY STANDARDS, the fleets of the age were vast. By the late eighteenth century any fleet of more than thirty to thirty-five ships was felt to be too large to be effectively controlled, and Nelson fought at Trafalgar with only twenty-seven. But in 1653 the fleet that fought at the battle of the Gabbard consisted of 105 ships. At Lowestoft in 1665 James, Duke of York, commanded a hundred ships, of which three were First Rates, eleven Seconds, fifteen Thirds and thirty-four Fourths; a year later, Prince Rupert and the Duke of Albemarle commanded a fleet of ninety-three ships, manned by 23,322 men and mounting 5,042 guns.1 These were some of the largest single fleets ever to put to sea under the British flag during the days of sail. Thereafter fleets became smaller, mainly because hired ships were no longer employed and most of the small prize Fourth Rates had been discarded. In the third Anglo-Dutch war, too, one of the three squadrons was provided by the French; consequently, there were only fifty-two British ships at the battle of Solebay in 1672.2 A similar arrangement was followed in the early years of the Anglo-French war that commenced in 1689, when the Dutch provided one of the squadrons, so that only fifty-six British ships fought at Barfleur in 1692.3 Lesser fleets were set out at other times. Even after the end of the first Anglo-Dutch war, the Commonwealth kept a large number of ships at sea every year, partly for defence against Royalist attack, partly to support its operations against Spain and her allies. In 1659 Montagu had forty-five ships under his command in the Baltic. A substantial fleet of fifty ships was briefly set out in 1668 as part of Charles II’s obligations under the ‘Triple Alliance’ that he had just signed with Sweden and the Netherlands. Another large fleet was fitted out in 1678, when Charles stood on the brink of war with France.4 Finally, in the autumn of 1688 a fleet of thirty-seven ships was set out to defend against William of Orange’s invasion.
Prince Rupert of the Rhine (1619-82), Duke of Cumberland, who commanded the remnants of the royalist fleet in 1648-53 and the main battlefleet in 1666 (jointly with the Duke of Albemarle) and in 1673.
TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM)
THE COMMAND OF THE FLEET
Traditionally, command of the fleet had been the prerogative of the Lord High Admiral, as when Lord Howard of Effingham commanded against the Spanish Armada in 1588. James, Duke of York, fulfilled this role in both 1665 and 1672 (becoming the penultimate Lord High Admiral to do so5), but on both occasions, concern for the life of the heir to the throne led to his recall after one campaign. James’s successors were men of unimpeachable social rank, political influence and military and naval experience: Edward Montagu, Earl of Sandwich, for the second part of the 1665 campaign; Prince Rupert and George Monck, Duke of Albemarle, in 1666; and Rupert again in 1673. The dual command of Rupert and Albemarle followed the Commonwealth’s precedent of granting the chief command to two or three generals-at-sea serving simultaneously in the same fleet (and usually in the same ship), and this pattern was repeated in 1690–1 and 1693, albeit only as a temporary expedient.6 The offices of Vice-Admiral of England, held successively by Sandwich (1661–72), Rupert (1672–82), the Duke of Grafton (1682–8) and Arthur Herbert (1689–90), and of Rear-Admiral of England, created for Herbert in 1682, were honorific positions under the Lord High Admiral and did not automatically confer entitlement to command.
The commanders-in-chief also served as admirals of the Red squadron of the fleet, and nominally commanded the admiral’s division of that squadron. Consequently, they had up to eight subordinate flag officers: admirals of the White and Blue, and vice- and rear-admirals in all three squadrons. When the White squadron was allocated to the French or the Dutch, only five flags were allocated to British officers, in addition to that of the commander-in-chief. The smaller fleets set out in 1668, 1678 and 1688 were not large enough for subdivided squadrons, and therefore had only two subordinate flag officers, a vice- and a rear-admiral. Regardless of their number, all subordinate flag officers had a degree of discretion in their commands and sometimes called meetings of the captains in their squadrons or divisions. Naturally, they were all expected to lead their ships in action, and one proof of the ferocity of the Anglo-Dutch wars is the attrition rate among flag officers, which was on a scale that would never be repeated. Ten flagmen fell in battle between 1652 and 1674, including one general-at-sea (Deane) and two full admirals commanding squadrons (the Earl of Sandwich and Sir Edward Spragge); their Dutch counterparts were decimated even more terribly.7
The later office of‘captain of the fleet’ was largely unknown in this period, though its origins can be traced to the appointment in 1665 of Sir William Penn as ‘great captain commander’ to the Duke of York. Although Penn effectively acted as the duke’s chief of staff, his appointment was more to do with resolving awkward questions of precedence in the choice of flag officers for that campaign than with creating a precedent for a new post.8 The experiment was not repeated, although two captains were appointed to the fleet flagship in 1672–3. During the 1660s most flag officers served as the captains of their own ships, but during the second war some squadron flagships acquired a ‘second captain’, who eventually came to be known as a flag captain; this was extended to all the flagships in the third war. These officers ran the flagship, leaving her embarked flag officer free to exercise overall control of his division or squadron. Until the end of the second Dutch war, flag captains were usually very experienced officers; John Harman filled the role for the Duke of York in 1665, Sir Thomas Allin for Prince Rupert in 1666, and both would soon be commanding fleets in their own right. In later years, more junior officers were sometimes appointed as flag captains, particularly if they had some connection with the admiral they served. At Barfleur, Thomas Gardner served as flag captain to George Rooke, vice-admiral of the Blue. Gardner had been a captain for only three years, but was known to be one of Rooke’s clients.9 The unwritten rule that the senior flag captain would fill any vacancy in the ranks of flag-officers seems to have dated from 1665, when the Duke of York appointed John Harman to a vacant flag, much to the disgust of at least one other candidate for the place.10 A slightly different case was that of John Narbrough, whose seniority and experience made him an obvious candidate for a flag in the 1673 campaign. The position was given instead to the Earl of Ossory, soldier, courtier and a great favourite of the king, but Narbrough agreed to serve as Ossory’s flag-captain with the explicit assurance that he would be promoted to the first available flag. When such a vacancy occurred at the very end of the 1673 campaign, Narbrough became rear-admiral of the Red.11 The principle was well established by 1688, when the flag-captain to the admiral of the fleet was given a rear-admiral’s flag for just one day to preserve his rights before the post was given to someone else.12
THE COUNCIL-OF-WAR
Decision making in the seventeenth-century navy was markedly more consultative than it became in the eighteenth. Captains often consulted their warrant officers, and sometimes their entire crew, before taking important decisions, such as whether or not to engage a stronger enemy. Admirals could call on the advice of the council of war, and the Earl of Sandwich thought this ‘the constant practice of generals, and the best and wisest proceedings, many persons of experience and fidelity being likelier to conclude the best than one’.13 The council actually consisted of two separate bodies: a council of all captains, and a smaller, elite group of flag officers. In practice, the full council met less often, and was usually convened immediately after a meeting of the elite council, whose decisions it invariably ratified.14 The council gave legitimacy to an admiral’s actions, but it could be something of a double-edged sword. A determined admiral could impose his own will on the council, using it to give legitimacy to a course of action that he had already chosen. The Duke of Albemarle called a council of flag officers on 1 June 1666, when a much larger Dutch fleet had been sighted, and (according to him) this took the decision to engage; but this was a ‘gloss’ on Albemarle’s part, as his own bullishness persuaded his subordinates to take on overwhelming odds. He called another council of flag officers on 3 June, at which the decision to retreat was taken.15 Conversely, an indecisive admiral could hide behind the ‘authority and shelter’ of his council, as Sandwich put it.16 In 1688 the vacillating and inexperienced Lord Dartmouth was won over by stronger personalities on his elite council, most of whom had covert reasons for wishing to ensure that the fleet did not put to sea to intercept William of Orange’s invasion armada.17
The destruction of the Earl of Sandwich’s flagship, the Royal James, at the battle of Solebay on 28 May 1672 is vividly portrayed in this great painting by Willem Van de Velde the Younger. The Royal James flies the admiral’s flag of the Blue squadron at the main. The fireship Vrede is shown making her fatal attack, with her crew escaping by boat in the right foreground. In the left background, de Ruyter’s flagship De Zeven Provincien engages the Sovereign.
(NATIONAL MARITIME MUSUEM, GREENWICH)
A two decker off Dover, flying the royal standard; apparently painted by Jacob Knyff to illustrate the arrival in England of James, Duke of York’s second wife, Mary of Modena.
(PRIVATE COLLECTION)
INSTRUCTIONS
Fighting and sailing instructions were drawn up just before the start of a campaign. These seem to have remained in force until they were superseded by an entirely new set, but it was possible for admirals to issue additional instructions to clarify or amend the main set, as Rupert and Albemarle did in 1666.18 Otherwise, formal instructions were not automatically issued to the admirals commanding the main fleet. Even when they were at sea, they were usually somewhere within the area of the southern North Sea, and able to correspond with higher authorities ashore. Sir William Penn and the Earl of Sandwich, successive commanders of the fleet in 1665, were given a set of instructions, but these contained the all-important proviso that they could change their station if they received intelligence that necessitated it.19 The close proximity of the main fleet to the seat of government meant that the latter often interfered rather too closely in the disposition of the former. Lord Dartmouth was given no explicit instructions by King James II in 1688, beyond an injunction to deploy the fleet ‘as you in your discretion shall judge most conducing to our honour, and the safety of our dominions’ to prevent the anticipated Dutch invasion.20 In practice, Dartmouth received a stream of letters from the king containing explicit (and sometimes contradictory) advice on how he should employ his ‘discretion’; and this from a king who, as the admiral commanding the fleet, had complained bitterly in 1665 and 1672 about the constant interference and contradictory advice that he received from those on shore (notably his elder brother).21
FLAGSHIPS
In practice, admirals had little discretion in the choice of flagships. The most prestigious ship available became the flagship of the fleet: in the first Dutch war this was the Resolution, formerly the Royal Prince, and in the second it was the Royal Charles. Little is known of the arrangements for accommodating flag officers, but they clearly required a large amount of cabin space; the grandest ship of the navy, the Sovereign of 1637, was comparatively little used as a flagship because she lacked adequate space for an admiral and his retinue. Prince Rupert eventually used her in 1673, but only because of the perceived inadequacies of his original choice, the Royal Charles.22 Otherwise, one First or Second rate was normally allocated to each division of each squadron of the fleet, and she usually became the flagship of that division; if two Firsts or Seconds were in the same division, the flag officer invariably took the newer ship, and sometimes a new Third Rate was preferred to an old Second. Admirals often had to change flagships in the middle of a battle if their original command became disabled, with all the risks that such a move entailed. The Duke of York moved from the Royal Prince to the St Michael during the battle of Solebay in 1672, while at the battle of the Texel in the following year Sir Edward Spragge moved from the Royal Prince to the St George, which was soon equally shattered, and was in a long boat en route to his third flagship of the day, the Royal Charles, when he was killed.
This sketch of‘a sea fight between Dutch and English fleets’ gives some indication of the amount of smoke that clouded many sea battles, and the use of boats to convey instructions, to transport flag officers from a damaged flagship to a new one, and to take part in their own miniature engagements.
(© TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM)
ADMIRALS’ SECRETARIES
The men who commanded the main fleets during the second and third Anglo-Dutch wars were great figures in other spheres too, notably the court and politics, and thus already had secretaries of their own, who simply transferred their activities afloat during a campaign. The Duke of York’s secretary, Sir William Coventry, was one of the leading politicians of his day, but he still served as de facto admiral’s secretary during the 1665 campaign. It was this easy transition from land to sea service and vice versa, quite different from the rigid demarcations of later years, that gave Samuel Pepys his first experiences of the navy. He had been serving as de facto secretary to his kinsman Edward Montagu for some time before Montagu went to sea in 1660, taking Pepys with him when he commanded the fleet ordered to Holland to bring back the newly restored King Charles II. By coincidence, Pepys had begun his diary just a few months earlier, and was thus fortuitously in exactly the right place at the right time as an eyewitness, observing and recording the king’s return at first hand.23
Pepys eventually returned to sea once more as an admiral’s secretary, in 1683–4 when he went with Lord Dartmouth in the fleet designed to evacuate and demolish Tangier. This was an exceptional case, intended by Dartmouth to give his friend a direct insight into the expedition and the state of the navy; Pepys had already served one term as secretary of the Admiralty, and was reappointed to the same position shortly after his return from Tangier. But others used their service as admirals’ secretaries as a springboard to greater offices ashore, especially from the 1680s onwards when (as in the case of Pepys at Tangier) it became more usual for an admiral to employ a secretary specifically for the duration of his service at sea. Phineas Bowles, who already had a long career behind him in various parts of the naval administration, served as Lord Dartmouth’s secretary in 1688 and then as Admiralty secretary in 1689–90. Josiah Burchett, Bowles’s clerk in the 1688 fleet, served as secretary to Admiral Edward Russell in 1691–3 before becoming Admiralty secretary in 1694, an office that he continued to fill until 1746. The position of Admiral’s secretary was no comfortable sinecure. Quite apart from the considerable workload, it exposed the incumbent to real dangers: both Sparrow, the secretary to the generals-at-sea in 1653, and Albemarle’s secretary Sir William Clarke in 1666 were killed in battle.
Van de Velde the Younger’s painting shows an action between an unidentified British two-decker and a Barbary two-decker. The latter is on fire amidships and flies a dark flag at the main. A Barbary galley with a broad red pendant at the masthead is sinking in the right foreground.
(NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM, GREENWICH)