The ‘Glorious Revolution’ and the Beginning of the French War
KING CHARLES II died on 6 February 1685 and was succeeded by his brother James, Duke of York, formerly the Lord High Admiral and commander-in-chief of the fleet in the battles of Lowestoft and Solebay. James made much of his naval credentials, informing his captains of his pride in having been their admiral before he was their king1, and he retained Pepys as secretary of the Admiralty.
THE NAVY IN THE REIGN OF JAMES II AND VII
Shortly before the king’s death, Pepys had presented Charles II with a memorial on the state of the navy, and it was James who acted on its recommendations. A sum totalling £1,200,000 over three years was said to be needed for the repair of the fleet, and the loyalty of the Parliament that assembled in May 1685 ensured that this amount was voted without protest. In 1686 James and Pepys carried out a temporary restructuring of the Navy Board, creating a special commission to oversee the repair programme. This was packed with Pepys’s friends, notably Sir Anthony Deane, Will Hewer and his former brother-in-law Balthasar St Michel. A separate ‘commission for old accounts’, consisting of the members of the old Navy Board who had not been appointed to the special commission, was appointed to tie up the loose ends of the previous administration’s work. With both the right team and the necessary funds in place, Pepys oversaw a remarkably rapid and effective reconstruction programme. Ships were docked and repaired in their turns, and particular attention was given to making good the defects of the ‘thirty new ships’, the routine maintenance of which had suffered from Treasury-inspired budget cuts during the period 1679–84. A number of new facilities were built in the dockyards, and the navy’s commitments at sea were met; the most impressive proof of this was the despatch of a small fleet (commanded by the Duke of Grafton) to Portugal and the Mediterranean in 1687, which renewed the treaties with the Barbary regencies and paid important diplomatic calls at Malta and other ports. The special commission completed its work in the autumn of 1688 and was wound up on 12 October, just before the king’s downfall.2 Pepys subsequently exaggerated the extent of the commission’s achievement in order to denigrate his predecessors and successors, but he had no need to; by any standards, its record was entirely exceptional.3
Meanwhile, the rebellions in 1685 of the Duke of Monmouth and the Earl of Argyll triggered two brief naval campaigns. Argyll had landed at Campbeltown on 22 May and moved on to the Isle of Bute, where his small force was attacked by the Fourth Rate Kingfisher (Captain Thomas Hamilton); Argyll abandoned his positions and was captured by royal forces a few days later.4 Having failed to coordinate his movements with those of Argyll, Monmouth landed at Lyme Regis on 11 June. In anticipation of a long campaign (or of significant foreign support for Monmouth), a substantial fleet was ordered to sea under Arthur Herbert, rear-admiral of England and formerly commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean. It would clearly take some time for this to be mobilised, and in the interim a small squadron of armed merchantmen was formed in the Bristol Channel. The defeat of Monmouth’s army at Sedgemoor on 6 July led to the rapid demobilisation of the fleet and the paying off of the hired ships.5
Pepys’s statistical summary of the state of the navy shortly before he left office for the last time; from his Memoires of the period 1679-89.
(AUTHOR’S COLLECTION)
The king’s most controversial policy was the easing of restrictions on his Catholic co-religionists and their appointment to important public offices. The navy was not immune, and between 1686 and 1688 James appointed Catholics, including some opportunistic recent converts, to some 10–12 per cent of the available commissions (almost exactly the same proportion as in the much larger army).6 The most prominent of these was Sir Roger Strickland, former rear-admiral of the Mediterranean fleet, who converted publicly over the winter of 1686–7; but Strickland came from an old recusant family, and his faith had long been suspect. Strickland’s rise contributed to Arthur Herbert’s spectacular rebellion in March 1687, when he refused to support the king’s pet policy of repealing the anti-Catholic tests, and was dismissed from his offices as a result. Strickland succeeded him as rear-admiral of England, and commanded the augmented fleet in home waters in the summer of 1688. His promotion, and that of other Catholic officers, caused considerable resentment within the officer corps and undid much of the king’s substantial credit within the navy.7
1688: THE CONSPIRACY IN THE FLEET AND WILLIAM’S INVASION
Following the birth of a Catholic Prince of Wales, James Edward, on 10 June 1688, seven leading politicians wrote a letter to William of Orange, King James’s son-in-law and nephew, inviting him to come to England to investigate the supposedly suspicious circumstances of the birth and to protect the Protestant religion. One of the signatories was Edward Russell, a prominent naval captain who had served in the Dutch wars and the subsequent Mediterranean campaigns, although his signature was more useful in representing his powerful family, the Earls of Bedford.8 The message was carried to the Netherlands by Arthur Herbert, disguised as a common seaman. William had less interest in the credentials of the infant prince, or in the well-being of the Church of England, than in pursuing his own agenda against Louis XIV’s France, and the opportunity of gaining control of Britain’s armed forces, particularly her formidable navy, while simultaneously denying them to Louis, was self-evidently a goal worth pursuing, despite the serious risks inherent in mounting a full-scale naval campaign and invasion in the late autumn.
Edward Russell, one of the signatories of the letter of invitation to William of Orange, became the most prominent and successful British naval officer of the 1690s – despite his reputation for acerbity, drunkenness, and untrustworthiness.
By October William had assembled a substantial invasion fleet of well over 400 vessels at Hellevoitsluis in the Maas estuary. To satisfy British sensibilities, command was nominally given to Herbert, but in practice much of the executive authority lay with the senior Dutch admiral, Cornelis Evertsen. James and Pepys mobilised a substantial fleet to oppose the invasion, and gave the command of it to George Legge, Lord Dartmouth. A personal favourite of the king, Dartmouth had commanded the fleet sent to evacuate Tangier in 1683–4 and was also a close friend of Strickland, who was thus retained as second-in-command. But Dartmouth’s appointment outraged Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Grafton, the vice-admiral of England and one of Charles II’s many illegitimate sons. Grafton had expected the command, and took his revenge by becoming one of the leading lights in the conspiracies in both the army and navy.9 In most other respects, too, Dartmouth was woefully inadequate for the role of the new Drake, the saviour of the nation from merciless invaders. In twenty-two years as an occasional naval officer, he had actually spent only twenty-three months in command; most of his eight months in command of a fleet had been spent at anchor before Tangier, and he had never commanded even a division in battle. None of this would have mattered if he had possessed something of the ‘Nelson touch’, but Dartmouth’s entire naval and political career had been characterised by caution and indecisiveness. To make matters worse, throughout the campaign of 1688 he was bombarded with advice from the one man who undoubtedly had the experience and personal courage to lead the British fleet to victory; but sadly for his own prospects of survival, the ideal candidate was disqualified because he wore the crown.10
In mid-October Dartmouth’s fleet moved to the Gunfleet anchorage, off Harwich, a disposition based on the assumption that William and Herbert would attempt to land in the north of England. James, who knew the waters better than Dartmouth, advised him to move further out but did not overrule him.11 Williamite propaganda circulated freely in the fleet, and a number of officers with previous ties to Herbert from his Mediterranean fleet of 1679–83, and with connections to the substantial conspiracy in the army, worked to ensure that the British fleet would not intercept William’s, or even attempt to do so. The strong easterly wind that brought William out of Hellevoitsluis on 1 November kept Dartmouth’s fleet trapped behind the sandbanks of the Thames estuary, and when William landed at Brixham on 5 November, Dartmouth was no nearer than Beachy Head.12 The relative importance of the conspiracy and the weather in thwarting Dartmouth’s efforts to prevent the Dutch invasion has been the subject of some debate, and will probably never be established for certain. Even so, it seems clear that even if no conspiracy had taken place, the British fleet would not have been able to get to sea to intercept the Dutch at the beginning of November, given the wind, the location of its anchorage and Dartmouth’s innate caution; but later in the month it could certainly still have attacked the invasion fleet at anchor in Torbay, perhaps causing irreparable harm to William’s campaign, and the Williamite conspiracy seems to have been the chief reason why such an attack was not made.13 On 13 December Dartmouth surrendered his fleet to William, and nine days later James II and VII fled to France, assisted by the covert actions of a number of loyalist naval officers.14 Several of these became the leading naval Jacobites of the 1690s, commanding French ships or privateers, acting as advisors aboard the flagships and in a few cases eventually settling down to long years of tedious ceremonial duties at the court-in-exile of Saint-Germain.
The embarkation of William at Hellevoitsluis.
THE DOWNFALL OF PEPYS, THE NEW NAVAL ADMINISTRATION AND THE BEGINNING OF THE FRENCH WAR
The flight of King James to France, followed by the proclamation of William and Mary as joint monarchs on 12 February, spelled the end of‘Pepys’s navy’ in the strict sense. He soldiered on as secretary for a few weeks more, finally leaving his desk just before the new Admiralty Board came into being on 7 March.15 In its structure and authority, this marked a reversion to the precedent of 1679–84: Herbert was First Lord, and the board included three others who had served in its predecessor. The Earl of Nottingham, principal Secretary of State, came to play an important role in determining naval policy, and although his interest and involvement bore no comparison with those of his two immediate predecessors, the new King William III was no ignoramus in naval affairs, often intervening directly on matters of detail as well as determining high policy (albeit, like Napoleon, from a soldier’s, not a sailor’s, perspective, and thus sometimes with scant regard for naval realities).16 The new administration’s immediate concern was the imminent war with France. This was declared officially on 7 May, though unofficial hostilities had commenced several weeks earlier, and a significant naval mobilisation, clearly directed against the French, had been ordered as early as 12 January.17 An Anglo-Dutch naval alliance was agreed on 19 April, based closely on the plans put in place for the abortive ‘French war’ of 1678: this specified that the Dutch should provide three-eighths of the ships, with the British having the chief command (despite the fact that their admirals, including Herbert, were rather less experienced than their Dutch counterparts).18
The preference of Charles and James Stuart for large warships, designed for operations in the North Sea, created immediate problems. Their ‘great ships’ were overgunned for Atlantic conditions, and it was claimed that the Sovereign had never been further west than the Isle of Wight in the half-century since her construction. Worse, the ‘thirty new ships’ built from 1678 onwards had almost all been laid up immediately after their launch, and were therefore completely untried.19 Construction of Fourth Rate to Sixth Rate ‘cruisers’ had been neglected, but it had been clear for many years that the French posed a greater threat to merchant shipping entering, leaving or within the Channel than had the Dutch; yet in May and June 1689, with most of the navy’s smaller units deployed in Ireland, there were only two cruisers on duty in the entire Channel.20 Urgent steps had to be taken to remedy the problem. Several dozen merchantmen were hired in the spring and summer of 1689, and construction of small warships began in earnest.21 The same imperative to protect coastal trade led to the re-establishment of a tiny independent Scottish navy in March 1689, when two small warships were hired. However, these were captured after a brief but vicious fight with three larger French vessels on 10 July in the same year, and no more Scottish warships put to sea until three purpose-built frigates were built on the Thames and brought into service in 1696.22
An idealised contemporary illustration of the sailing order of William’s invasion fleet.
THE IRISH CAMPAIGN AND THE BATTLE OF BANTRY BAY
King James landed at Kinsale on 12 March 1689, accompanied by a small army and a French fleet. William responded by despatching a fleet commanded by Herbert, and after several delays and a series of reconnaissance operations the two fleets clashed in Bantry Bay on 1 May. The French fleet, commanded by the Marquis de Chateaurenault, comprising twenty-four ships of the line, mounting 1,264 guns and carrying 6,880 men, was in the bay to land reinforcements for James’s campaign.23 Herbert had some eighteen of the line and a few lesser craft.24 As the British entered the bay, Chateaurenault (who had the weather gage) took his fleet further up towards Bantry town, but by about 10am Herbert’s ships were close enough to open fire. The fleets then tacked and moved slowly down the bay, firing at each other constantly for almost seven hours, until the French tacked again to go back into the bay.25 Both sides claimed the victory. Herbert’s report claimed that he had kept his fleet intact without losing a ship, despite all the advantages that the French possessed. On the other hand, he had lost one captain, and 365 men were killed or wounded.26 Chateaurenault had only 133 casualties, and had achieved his objective of landing 3,000 men and a vast arms shipment which included 16,000 sabres and 100,000 pounds of powder. But he was criticised for not inflicting heavier losses on Herbert, who was publicly honoured by William III and elevated to the Earldom of Torrington.27
Naval operations in Irish waters continued until the final defeat of the French and Jacobite forces in 1691.28 In terms of its long-term consequences, or at least the mythology that grew up around it, the most significant of these was the relief of Londonderry. This was one of only two towns holding out against King James after March 1689, but it took a surprisingly long time to mount a naval relief expedition. It seems possible that George Rooke, commanding the small squadron plying between Scotland and the north of Ireland, overestimated the dangers of breaking into Lough Foyle, or else underestimated the importance of Derry and diverted his forces to other priorities.29 In the end, it was the commander of the land forces, Major-General Percy Kirke, who organised the relief operation. On the flood tide of 28 July, two victualling ships broke the boom across the mouth of the River Foyle while the Fifth Rate Dartmouth diverted the gunfire of the French-manned fort. The relief of the town became a sine qua non of Ulster Protestantism, but in the short term it was more significant in ensuring that William retained a foothold in Ireland, and that James’s army could not cross to Scotland to join up with his supporters there.30
THE BATTLE OF BEACHY HEAD
After Bantry Bay, the new Earl of Torrington commanded the main fleet in the Channel for the remainder of the 1689 campaign, and in doing so mounted the first (albeit brief) blockade of Brest, initiating what would become for over a century the centrepiece of British strategy in wars against the French.31 He was at sea again in June 1690 when the French fleet was seen advancing up the Channel under the command of the Comte de Tourville, a highly experienced and competent admiral. The forces available to Torrington were weaker than they should have been; Killigrew, the admiral of the Blue, was at Cadiz with thirteen ships, and Shovell, his vice-admiral, was late returning with his twenty-five ships after escorting King William to Ireland prior to the battle of the Boyne. On 25 June Torrington’s British and Dutch flag officers decided that their fifty-six ships could not fight a French force that was almost half as large again, and should wait for Shovell, at least, to return. This decision was overruled by Queen Mary II, ruling in London while her husband was in Ireland, and battle was joined off Beachy Head on 30 June.32
The Battle of Beachy Head, 30 June 1690.
The Royal Katherine of 1664, shown here in two positions in an early picture by H Vale, was a veteran of the battles of the second and third Anglo-Dutch war (or to royalists, as in this case, the first and second wars; that fought under the Interregnum did not count). She was still part of the fleet at Beachy Head in 1690 and Barfleur in 1692, and was later rebuilt.
(NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM, GREENWICH)
Knowing full well that his Blue squadron, in the rear, was seriously weakened by the absence of its admiral and vice-admiral, Torrington concentrated his own squadron against Tourville’s rear, and firing commenced between 9.30 and 10.00. The Dutch engaged the French van, and a dangerous gap opened up between them and the two British squadrons. Then, at about one, the van of the Dutch line anchored well short of the head of the French, which permitted Tourville’s leading ships to double them. The wind fell away, which made it difficult for Torrington to come to the relief of the Dutch, and by mid-afternoon, when he finally interposed himself between his allies and the French, the Dutch had lost thirteen of their twenty-two ships. Tourville was left master of the Channel, and Torrington retreated slowly eastwards before him, destroying the damaged ships as he did so (including the Third Rate Anne, run ashore and burned at Pett Level near Hastings) .33 Fortunately, Tourville did not exploit his advantage. Disease was ravaging his fleet; only 344 Frenchmen had been killed in the battle, but 2,800, a tenth of his manpower, had to be disembarked as sick.34 Shortage of supplies, always an issue for the French fleet when it moved into the Channel, also limited Tourville’s options. He attempted nothing more damaging than a raid on Teignmouth before retiring to Brest, and the failure to exploit his success brought down almost as much opprobrium on him as that heaped on his British counterpart.35
Although the outcome of the battle could have been much worse, the outcry against Torrington was vicious enough. The Dutch, who had suffered such heavy casualties, were predictably furious, although in turn Torrington and several of his captains were critical of the poor state of their ships and of their anchoring short of the end of the French line.36 Public opinion in London was also strongly against the admiral, and he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. He addressed the House of Commons in November, and in the written account that he submitted to the house he coined a phrase, and a concept, that would play a large part in naval warfare in later centuries: ‘I always said, that whilst we had a fleet in being, they [the French] would not dare make an attempt [at a full-scale invasion]’.37 Torrington was tried by court martial on 10 December. Many of the captains who made up the court were old friends or connections of his, and the Dutch damaged their case against him by behaving intemperately, perhaps reviving old prejudices in the process. The verdict was hardly in doubt, and the admiral was acquitted, much to the anger of the king and queen. They ensured that Torrington’s exoneration was academic, for they never employed him at sea again. Regardless of the validity of Torrington’s definition of the ‘fleet in being’, the outcome of Beachy Head badly damaged the Anglo-Dutch alliance and demonstrated clearly (as had Bantry Bay) that the French fleet was both a formidable opponent and capable of securing control of the Channel to facilitate an invasion of the British Isles.