The Mediterranean and Global Operations
OPERATIONS AGAINST THE CORSAIRS
THE ACTIVITIES OF THE Barbary corsairs had been of concern to the British kingdoms for many decades.* They frequently plied off the south-west coasts or Ireland, and by 1641 there were anything up to 5,000 British captives held in North African corsair strongholds. Even so, the government’s response had been patchy, concentrating primarily on attempts to redeem the captives. Major naval squadrons were sent out to the Mediterranean in 1620 and 1637, but there was a lack of resources and political will for more sustained operations in that theatre. From 1641 onwards Parliament was more responsive to the interests of merchants trading in the Mediterranean and thus became more proactive towards the questions of redeeming the captives and restraining corsair activity,1 but the successive demands of civil wars and the first Anglo-Dutch war continued to limit its freedom of manoeuvre. In October 1654, though, the general-at-sea Robert Blake was sent to the Mediterranean with orders to pressurise the corsairs. He arrived off Tunis in February 1655 and in April burned a squadron of nine Tunisian galleys in the harbour of Porto Farino. The Dey of Tunis remained recalcitrant, but his counterpart at Algiers was awed by the example and hastily made peace.2
The activities of Blake’s fleet established a precedent for sustained operations against the corsairs, and even after his main fleet returned home in 1657, ten ships under John Stokes remained behind to act against them, securing a treaty with Tripoli in 1658.3 After the Restoration, Charles Il’s acquisition of Tangier provided an even more substantial vested interest in the Mediterranean, and fleets were maintained there on a near-permanent basis, other than during the Anglo-Dutch wars. In 1661 the Earl of Sandwich went out with orders to obtain a peace treaty with Algiers, employing all means up to and including a bombardment of the town, but Sandwich withdrew without completing his mission.4 Nevertheless, the conflict against the corsairs was maintained by a squadron under Sandwich’s former second-in-command, Sir John Lawson, and in 1662 he obtained treaties with Algiers, Tripoli and Tunis.5 The withdrawal of the squadron over the winter of 1663–4 led to an increase in corsair activity, but Lawson returned to the Mediterranean in the summer of 1664, and his successor in the command, Thomas Allin, made a new treaty with the Algerines in October.6
Allin was given command of a new Mediterranean squadron in October 1667, but did not actually sail until August 1668, when his force consisted of nine ships, a fireship and a ketch.7 He made two unsatisfactory visits to Algiers before returning home in April 1669. Allin left for the Mediterranean again in July 1669, this time commanding a much larger fleet that consisted of three Third Rates, eleven Fourths, four Fifths, three fireships, two ketches and a storeship; the fleet was large enough to justify both a vice- and a rear-admiral, respectively Edward Spragge and John Harman. Allin arrived off Algiers in September, determined to punish alleged Algerine breaches of the treaty terms. He conducted a series of desultory operations, with some successes against individual enemy vessels, before returning to England in November 1670.8 Spragge, his successor in the command, had a far more successful campaign. On 8 May 1671 he attacked the Algerine fleet in the well-protected anchorage of Bugia Bay. A total of ten ships were destroyed, and this outcome led to a revolution in Algiers and the signing of a new peace treaty by the incoming regime.9 Spragge’s fleet returned home at the beginning of the third Anglo-Dutch war in 1672.
In 1674 Sir John Narbrough was sent out to the Mediterranean to pursue a war against Tripoli, which had broken the terms of the peace. He maintained a blockade of Tripoli throughout 1675, and on 14 January 1676 his men carried out a successful attack on four ships in Tripoli harbour. A peace was finally signed in March, and Narbrough returned home in September.10 His absence emboldened the Algerines, and in 1677 Narbrough was sent back to the Mediterranean, this time in command of a much larger fleet that at one time totalled thirty-five ships. Narbrough’s strategy of parading his fleet before Algiers proved largely ineffective, and he was recalled in the summer of 1679.11 His successor, Arthur Herbert, had a much smaller force (usually of about nine ships), but, ironically, he achieved far greater success, for his ships roved more freely and had a string of victories over individual Algerine ships or small squadrons. Eventually, in April 1682, the Algerines agreed to make peace.12 That left just one corsair regency which continued to give trouble: Salé (Sallee) in Morocco. From 1684 to 1689 operations against it were conducted by a small squadron of about half a dozen ships, based initially at Lisbon and then at Gibraltar and under the command successively of Cloudesley Shovell, Henry Priestman and Henry Killigrew.
THE ANGLO-DUTCH AND ANGLO-SPANISH WARS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
The wars against the corsairs had established the principle of a semipermanent British naval presence in the Mediterranean and the importance of defending maritime trade in that lucrative sea. However, an exception was made during the Anglo-Dutch wars themselves. When the first war began in the summer of 1652, two small squadrons under Captains Appleton and Badiley were retained in the Mediterranean. Appleton was immediately blockaded in Livorno (Leghorn), and in August 1652 Badiley’s four ships were attacked by a much larger Dutch force off Elba, losing one ship before Badiley eventually brought his remaining vessels into the island’s chief port. There they remained through the winter of 1652–3, until on 4 March both of the tiny squadrons ventured out against the Dutch blockade. The subsequent action was a disaster; five of Appleton’s six ships were lost, leaving Badiley no option but to withdraw with his four. The defeat meant that the Mediterranean was abandoned for the duration of the war.13
The same thing happened in the second and third wars, but this time the withdrawal from the Mediterranean was the result of a conscious strategic decision to concentrate almost all available ships in the main fleet in the North Sea. Moreover, the precedent provided by Appleton and Badiley seemed to suggest that there was simply no point in maintaining a token force in the Mediterranean. Thus in both 1664 and 1672 the squadrons operating against the corsairs were withdrawn as soon as hostilities against the Dutch became imminent. Allin fought a brief engagement with a Dutch convoy off Cadiz in December 1664 before returning home, but thereafter no ships at all were maintained permanently in the Mediterranean for the duration of either war. The despatch in December 1665 of a small squadron under Sir Jeremy Smith established the precedent which was then followed in each of the remaining campaigns of the wars, namely rapidly convoying as much of the Mediterranean trade as possible during the winter, thereby allowing the escorts to return home by the spring to rejoin the main fleet.14 This strategy culminated in the last action of the Anglo-Dutch wars, the duel between the Tiger and the Dutch Schakerloo at Cadiz on 23 February 1674; the smaller Dutch ship put up a ferocious and gallant defence before surrendering after a two-hour cannonade.15
Following the conclusion of the first Anglo-Dutch war in 1654, Cromwell’s new Protectorate sent a fleet back to the Mediterranean under Robert Blake. In addition to its operations against the corsairs, this initially took an aggressively anti-French stance, preventing the union of two squadrons destined for an invasion of Naples and forcing one of them into Italian harbours.16 However, the target of Blake’s operations changed even before Cromwell signed a treaty with France (October 1655) and embarked on open war with Spain (March 1656). In August 1655 he intercepted an outgoing Spanish merchant fleet but decided not to attack it, a decision for which he was criticised.17 In March 1656 Blake sailed against Spain with a larger fleet. In September a detached squadron under Richard Stayner achieved the ‘holy grail’ of intercepting the incoming Plate fleet, capturing two of the seven galleons and sinking two others, though the amount of bullion that eventually reached England did not match the over-optimistic expectations. In the following spring Blake learned that another Plate fleet had taken refuge at Santa Cruz in the Canaries. Although the sixteen ships lay under in a heavily fortified harbour, Blake and Stayner launched an audacious attack that destroyed the entire fleet. The treasure was safe ashore, but as long as it remained on Tenerife it was useless to the Spanish war effort, which faltered dramatically. It proved to be Blake’s greatest and last victory, for he died on the return voyage.18
THE ANGLO-DUTCH AND ANGLO-SPANISH WARS IN THE CARIBBEAN AND NORTH AMERICA
The first Anglo-Dutch war saw no fighting in the Caribbean. In 1654, though, Oliver Cromwell embarked on war with Spain, and one of the central planks of this policy was the assumption that such a war could pay for itself following successful seizures of Spanish colonies and treasure fleets. In December 1654 a large amphibious force set out under the command of Admiral William Penn and General Robert Venables. In April 1655 the army was put ashore on Hispaniola, but the attack was humiliatingly repulsed by local Spanish troops. Already ravaged by disease, the demoralised force managed to wrest control of Jamaica in May before returning to England in disgrace.19 Penn’s successor, William Goodson, carried out a series of raids on Spanish possessions before returning to England early in 1657. The naval presence in the Caribbean was then scaled down, but if anything the reduced forces achieved even greater success. Christopher Myngs, commanding on the station in 1659, captured anything up to £300,000 worth of bullion at Coro (now in Venezuela), but the haul had mysteriously vanished by the time the ships returned to Jamaica, and Myngs was charged with embezzlement. The charges against the most popular and successful captain in the navy were quietly dropped, and Myngs returned to command in the Caribbean in 1660, retaining the post after the Restoration. The war against Spain ‘beyond the line’ continued: Myngs carried out a series of bold attacks on Cuba, taking Santiago in 1662 and leading an attack on Campechuela in 1663.20
The outbreak of the second Anglo-Dutch war in 1664–5 saw the Americas become an important theatre of conflict. Well before hostilities officially began, in August 1664, an expedition under Colonel Richard Nicholls, a member of the Duke of York’s household, captured the Dutch colony at New Amsterdam, which was renamed New York in honour of Nicholls’s patron. A Dutch squadron under Michiel de Ruyter cruised in the Caribbean briefly in April-May 1665, but the initial British strategy centred on the use of local buccaneers to attack Dutch possessions. St Eustatius was taken in July 1665, followed by Tobago and Surinam later in the year, and in January 1666 the charismatic Welsh buccaneer Henry Morgan led a force to attack Curacao, though he found the coast of Spanish Honduras a more tempting target and diverted there instead.21 The outbreak of war between Britain and France early in 1666 dramatically raised the stakes in the theatre. The French recaptured St Eustatius and seized St Christopher, Tobago and Antigua, leaving only Jamaica, Barbados and Nevis under Charles II’s control. An attempt to retake St Christopher in July 1666 was destroyed by a hurricane which claimed the life of the expedition’s commander, Lord Willoughby, the governor of Barbados.22
Over the winter of 1666–7, and on its own initiative, the province of Zeeland sent out an expedition of seven ships under Abraham Crijnssen which retook Surinam in February and Tobago (from their nominal French allies) in April. Crijnssen then sailed for Guadeloupe, where he rendezvoused with a squadron of ships belonging to the French West India Company. Finally, though, a major British naval force was mobilised in the area, and twelve ships under Captain (later Sir) John Berry, a Devonian with considerable Caribbean experience, set up a blockade of St Christopher. Early in May 1667 the Franco-Dutch force attacked Berry’s squadron in what became known as the battle of Nevis. The French manoeuvred poorly and withdrew, Crijnssen’s attack on Berry’s flagship was repulsed, and the Zeeland squadron then sailed for Virginia, where it sailed boldly up the James river and caused significant damage to trade, also burning the warship Elizabeth (whose captain, John Lightfoot, was allegedly ashore, dancing at a wedding). But Crijnssen’s voyage north left control of the Caribbean effectively in Berry’s hands, allowing the British to retake Antigua and Montserrat. In June 1667 a substantial squadron of six warships and two fireships arrived from England under the command of Sir John Harman. Leaving Berry and his squadron of hired ships behind at Nevis, Harman attacked Martinique, destroying almost two dozen French ships, and then sailed on to retake Surinam (October). His efforts were in vain, though, for when he returned to Barbados in November Harman learned that the peace treaty signed in Europe three months earlier had confirmed Surinam in Dutch possession.23
During the third war, there were no major operations in the Americas until the autumn of 1672, when Zeeland again sent out a mission of its own, this time commanded by Cornelis Evertsen. Britain responded by sending out two frigates, the St David, which led an expedition that captured Tobago in December 1672, and the Garland, which arrived at Barbados in February 1673.24 In the summer of 1673 Evertsen’s force combined with an Amsterdam squadron and launched unsuccessful attacks against Martinique, Montserrat, Nevis and St Christopher before successfully retaking St Eustatius. The Dutch fleet then sailed north to attack Virginia, capturing seven local ships and destroying ten others in the Chesapeake on 10 July 1673.25 They continued northwards to retake New York before detaching a small squadron which launched a successful attack against the Newfoundland fishery.26 The experience of the second and third wars in the Americas seems to have led to a greater strategic appreciation of the theatre. The brief Anglo-French war of 1666–7, and the fighting that culminated in the battle of Nevis, suggested that the French posed a greater threat to British colonies in the Caribbean, while Louis XIV’s colonies presented more lucrative opportunities for conquest than those of the Dutch. When an Anglo-French war was seriously contemplated in 1678, a squadron of fifteen ships of the line (including two Third Rates) was proposed for the West Indies, foreshadowing the significant deployments made to that theatre from the 1690s onwards.27
THE ANGLO-DUTCH WARS IN THE EAST INDIES
No state naval forces were deployed in the East Indies during the first and second Anglo-Dutch wars. Although the Commonwealth’s rulers had made much of the East India Company’s (EIC’s) long-standing grievances during the preliminaries before the war, they refused their requests for direct naval assistance, and the EIC’s small local forces were defeated by the ships of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in three separate engagements.28 The ‘imperial’ government in Whitehall acquired a rather more direct interest in the east in 1661, when Bombay was handed over to Charles II by the Portuguese as part of Catherine of Braganza’s dowry. A royal squadron was sent out to take possession (which the Portuguese governor of Bombay steadfastly refused to give up), but no permanent naval presence was maintained in the east thereafter, and in 1668 Charles sold the unprofitable crown colony to the EIC for £50,000.29 When news of the outbreak of the war reached the East Indies in October 1665, the VOC quickly recaptured Pulo Run, which it had handed over to the EIC only a few months earlier in belated fulfilment of the terms of the Peace of Westminster (1654) that had ended the first war.30 The EIC attempted to fight the war through surrogates, successfully encouraging the Sultan of Gowa to declare war on the Dutch in 1666 by inventing fictitious naval victories in the North Sea, but the sultan then received no substantive support from Britain and went down to a crushing defeat. At sea, the VOC remained unchallengeable, as it had been in the first war.31
At the outbreak of the third war in 1672, a substantial French naval force was already in the East Indies, acting on behalf of the new Compagnie des Indes Orientales against its Dutch equivalent, the VOC.32 This captured São Thomé on the Coromandel coast in July 1672 but was almost immediately blockaded there by the Dutch, and eventually surrendered lamely in September 1674.33 Elsewhere, most of the naval operations in the East Indies were carried out, as in the first two wars, by the armed merchantmen of the English and Dutch East India companies, the EIC and VOC. A major action was fought north-east of Madras on 1 September 1673 between ten English EIC ships and thirteen Dutch VOC vessels; this resulted in a crushing defeat of the English, primarily because several of their captains displayed ‘arrant cowardice’.34 The operations with the greatest longterm significance, and the most input from the navy proper, centred on the island of St Helena. This had been settled by the EIC in 1659, but in December 1672 a VOC squadron of four ships arrived at the island, forcing its surrender on New Year’s Day. St Helena was a crucial staging post on the routes of the outward- and homeward-bound East Indies fleets, and news of its capture crossed with the sailing of a powerful outward-bound fleet of ten EIC ships, escorted by four royal warships and two fireships. The force was commanded by Captain Richard Munden of the Fourth Rate Assistance. Munden’s fleet arrived off St Helena in May, not knowing that it had fallen to the Dutch, but immediately set about recapturing the island. After a brisk initial resistance, the Dutch surrendered within hours, and soon afterwards Munden’s ships secured three valuable prizes from the VOC’s unsuspecting retoorvloot.35 Munden was knighted and showered with royal bounty money, but died in 1680 at the age of only thirty-nine.
The battle of Livorno, or Leghorn, 1653, after which Britain abandoned all pretence of maintaining a naval presence in the Mediterranean during the Anglo-Dutch wars.
(NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM, GREENWICH)
This Van de Velde drawing of the capture of Tobago may not convey a sense of the Caribbean, but does give a good impression of a small-scale amphibious attack. On the left, the Fourth Rate St David, lying ay anchor, bombards the Dutch fort. While to the right of the drawing a flotilla of small boats makes its way inshore with the landing parties.
(NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM, GREENWICH)
* See Part Ten, Chapter 43, p235.