there had been the invasion of the Spanish armada, and it had been defeated more by the elements of nature than by anything the English ships had done. But at that time the navy was a scrambling collection of vessels, many of which were only temporarily turned to the purposes of war; while the men who manned them were a miscellaneous gathering of soldiers, seamen, and adventurers. There was nothing afloat that could make the power of England felt farther than her own shores. Discoverers there might he, buccaneers there might be, but properly speaking there was no naval power. This, then, was Blake's task, not to create the navy of England, for that already existed in indifferent form, but to create the naval power of England; to make the world feel that there was a tight little island which meant to assert its place in the political arena, and to make its name respected in regions where hitherto that name was scarcely known. Robert Blake, in fact, was the founder of the naval supremacy of England.
[The following comparison between the eight largest English ships in the year 1646, and eight of the ships of the Baltic fleet in the recent war with Russia, will enable the reader to form some idea of the strength of the Commonwealth navy:—
The remainder of the Commonwealth navy consisted of seventeen
or eighteen smaller ships, carrying from 110 men down to 45 men each.]
Blake's naval employment appears to have originated in this way. During the civil war the navy was only a spectator of the strife. It did not actively interfere, and in general was less violently republican than the army. It was not prepared to destroy the monarchical authority, and probably would have taken the king's side when the parliament showed symptoms of absorbing the whole power of the state. In the summer of 1648 the king was a prisoner at Carisbrook in the Isle of Wight, and various risings of the royalists took place throughout the country. In the spring the Welsh had risen, and had been settled by Cromwell; in July the Scots entered England, and were also settled by Oliver at Preston. A spirit of loyalty was evidently making rapid progress, and the fleet shared in the general reactionary movement. On the 12th July, 1648., while lying in the Downs, the fleet mutinied, declared for ·king, parliament, and covenant; sent for its old admiral, the earl of Warwick, who had given up his command under the self-denying ordinance; and though Warwick succeeded in restoring order, eleven ships under Admiral Batten declared resolutely for the king, and sailed over to Holland to Prince Charles. These revolted ships were the origin of the sea-life both of Prince Rupert and Robert Blake. Young Prince Charles, thinking that the whole of the navy would join the royal cause, placed himself on board, sailed over to Yarmouth, thence to the Downs, and the two squadrons fooled away their time to no purpose. Warwick was incapable, and the royal squadron had no head, until Piince Rupert took command, and carried into his naval career the same impetuous courage that he had exhibited as a soldier. The parliament was soon convinced that a man of equal enterprise must be found to cope with him. That man was Blake, who was taken from the governorship of Taunton, and with Colonels Deane and Popham, invested with the command of the English navy.
Blake undertook his command when he was about 50 years of age, in April, 1649. He was styled sea-general. The term admiral, derived from the French amiral, seems to have originated in the crusades, when the Saracen emirs were styled amiraux, as we find Joinville. But down to Blake's time there had been no proper distinction between the land service and the sea service, and the distinctive titles had not been required. The fleet was divided into several squadrons—one under Deane was stationed in the Downs; another under Popham was stationed at Plymouth; another under Sir George Ascue was stationed in Dublin bay; and Blake himself undertook to encounter Prince Rupert, who had taken up his quarters at Kinsale in Ireland, from which port he appears to have carried on an indiscriminate system of marauding. Here Blake blockaded Rupert, until the latter escaped with seven ships, October, 1649, to Portugal. In the beginning of 1650 Blake was appointed to pursue him, and reached the Tagus. King John, however, declared for Rupert and Maurice, whereupon Blake seized the Brazil fleet which was coming out of the river. In the autumn he also caught the South American fleet coming home, richly laden, and captured several ships. These losses appear to have exhausted the patience of the Portuguese court, and Rupert slipped from the Tagus, and repaired to the Mediterranean. Blake followed him, and at Carthagena in Spain he fell in with some of the revolted ships, and destroyed them. Rupert and Maurice he pursued to Toulon; but the princes once more escaped, passed the Strait of Gibraltar, and sailed to the West Indies. In this expedition into the Mediterranean, Blake was the first English admiral who had appeared on that sea since the crusades. After an absence of twenty months, Blake returned home, having carried the red cross with unsullied honour in the face of Portugal, Spain, and France. He was made warden of the cinque ports, and received the thanks of parliament, and a donation of £1000. Blake's next occupation was to subdue the Scilly Islands, which had been occupied and strongly fortified by the royalists. This was his work of 1651; and here he first discovered the notable fact that wooden ships could be made to attack stone walls with success. His next service was the conquest of the channel islands, Jersey and Guernsey. Here Sir George Carteret still held out for the king and the right of piracy. In October, 1651, Blake was at Jersey, and after a short conflict was master of the island, with the exception of Mont Orgueil and Elizabeth castle. These, however, were soon compelled to surrender, and the English seas were thus cleared of the enemies of the commonwealth.
Blake's proceedings hitherto may be considered as his petty warfare, at least in a nautical sense. He had now to encounter the experienced admirals of Holland. The Dutch at this period were formidable antagonists; they had thriven and prospered under their republican institutions, had a very considerable navy, a large carrying trade, and enterprising mariners, who were quite capable of directing their naval armaments—Van Tromp, De Ruyter, De Witte, and many other able seamen. In December, 1651, the parliament passed the navigation act, which prohibited the importation of goods except in English bottoms—a blow levelled at the carrying trade of the Dutch. This was one cause of the war. Another cause was the right of herring fishing on the coasts of England and Scotland. England claimed the whole, and insisted that the Dutch should pay a lordship. Another cause was the assertion on the part of England of her majesty of the narrow seas. She compelled all ships to lower their flags or a topsail, in acknowledgment of her superiority. The war began in the summer of 1652, with sea fights in the English Channel. There was little decided success till November, when Van Tromp fell upon Blake in the Downs, and gave him a salutary beating, compelling him to take refuge on the Thames. That beating was the foundation of England's naval glory; the best thing that could possibly have happened to Blake or to England. He bent all his energies to reform the navy. True, he offered to resign his command, but the council of state had confidence in him, and left him to do what he conceived best. In the late engagement he had not been supported by his captains, and for this there was a reason. Merchant ships were habitually hired by the government, and converted into men of war, for a longer or shorter period, and these ships were still navigated by the merchant captains. Blake reformed this anomaly, and thenceforth the sea captain was obliged to have a commission from the state. Blake soon had his new fleet under weigh; and in February, 1653, set out in pursuit of Van Tromp, who had gone down the channel with a broom at his mast-head, in token of his intention to sweep the seas-a piece of nautical puppyism that was rather premature. Little did he think what our little admiral—only five feet six-had in store for him. Tromp had gone to the Isle de Rhé, opposite Rochelle, to convoy home a large fleet of merchantmen; and on the 18th February Blake fell in with him, and instantly went to work, his own ship, the Triumph, being the first to engage. The battle of Portland was the great
