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[1652-4 groups, but that the effect produced was not that of a line formation appears from the contemporary accounts. It is expressly stated that the Dutch "lay in a close body" at the beginning of the action off the Kentish Knock; and Gibson's account of the battle off Portland is that "the Dutch fleet in a body bore down upon the generals."

The action off the Gabbard on June 2, 1653, appears to have impressed contemporaries somewhat differently from the earlier battles of the

The older phrases are not used to describe it, and an eye-witness observes of the English fleet that the ships "did work together in better order than before, and seconded one another." The action off Scheveningen on July 31, 1653, was also described as "a very orderly battle." These references to a better order are the way in which contemporary accounts reflect what was not far short of a revolution in naval tactics. The way for this had been prepared by the reorganisation of the English navy which had taken place just before the battle of Portland. In the earlier actions of the war the presence of large numbers of armed merchantmen would have been fatal to orderly fighting; for the merchant captains, who were always trying to save their ships in action and could not be trusted to obey a simple order to engage, would scarcely have been able to carry out fighting instructions which required concerted action of an elaborate kind and at the same time exposed individual ships to greater risks. The reorganisation of 1653, which placed the hired merchantmen in the charge of officers chosen by the State, was a condition precedent to the adoption of a tactical system in place of promiscuous fighting.

The new tactical system was imposed upon the navy when on March 29, 1653, the Generals-at-sea- Blake, Deane, and Monck-issued the first Fighting Instructions which aimed at the line ahead as a battle formation; and it was under these instructions that the action off the Gabbard was fought. They required the ships of each squadron, so soon as the signal to engage was given, to "endeavour to keep in a line” with their own flag-officer, unless he should be disabled; in which case his squadron "shall endeavour to keep in a line with the admiral, or he that commands-in-chief next unto him, and nearest the enemy." That an attempt was made to carry this out in practice appears from an account of the action of June 2 sent from the Hague, stating that the English "put themselves into the order in which they meant to fight, which was in file at half cannon-shot."

It should, however, be observed that the problem of the introduction of the line ahead is not of so simple a nature that it can be regarded as entirely solved by the issue of the Fighting Instructions of March 29, 1653. On the one hand it is usual for fighting instructions to crystallise previous experience rather than to establish a novelty, and the English naval commanders must have been feeling their way towards the new formation before they embodied it in formal instructions. It is probable

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that the influence of Monck was exerted in favour of introducing some of the orderliness of a land battle into battles at sea; but it is not likely that Monck could have carried through a revolution in tactics unless it had been justified by the larger naval experience already acquired by his colleagues of longer service. On the other hand, although the Instructions of 1653 establish the line as a formation for squadrons, it would be premature to conclude upon the evidence at present available that we have here the single line ahead of later naval tactics. It is improbable that such a system would spring suddenly into being in full completeness to replace the older form of fighting; and, if such a revolution in naval tactics actually took place, we should expect it to leave deep marks upon the history of the problem. In the battle off the Gabbard the English fleet consisted of one hundred men-of-war and five fireships; in that off Scheveningen Monck had ninety men-of-war and a number of smaller craft. If these had gone into action in a single line ahead the difference in the forr.ation from that of the earlier battles must have struck the contemporary imagination; and, if so, it would have been reflected in contemporary narratives, which would have teemed with statements supplying positive evidence of the fact. A "very orderly battle" appears a singularly inadequate phrase in which to record so striking and obtrusive a change; and yet the documents at present accessible yield nothing more definite. The one statement which, if true, would be conclusive, that on July 31, 1653, the English fleet was drawn up for battle "in a line more than four leagues long "-rests on questionable authority.

The idea of the single line ahead is, no doubt, to be found in the Fighting Instructions of 1653; but, if practice rather than theory is considered, the transition from promiscuous fighting to the single line ahead would appear to lie through an application of the system to squadrons rather than to fleets. However this may be, recent investigation has effectually disposed of the notion once current among historians that the new system was borrowed from the Dutch. The line ahead and its applications were English from the beginning, and there is no satisfactory evidence upon which the Dutch admirals can be credited with initiating the change.

Three months after the signature of the treaty of peace with the United Provinces England found herself drifting towards a commercial war with Spain; and by the end of the year 1654 the Protector was employed in carrying out the "Western Design." The expedition of Penn and Venables, which sailed in December, was the one irredeemable failure of Cromwell's military career. He had approached the details of the scheme with some of the irresponsible optimism of Buckingham; and the enterprise reproduced most faithfully all the administrative defects which had ruined the expeditions to Cadiz and Ré. Although

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[1654-5 the demeanour of Penn and Venables towards each other during the voyage was reported as "sweet and hopeful," the jealousy between them accentuated the evils arising out of a divided authority. The soldiers were not seasoned regiments, but drafts from different parts of the country chosen by their colonels for foreign service because they were useless at home. The victuals were found to be defective, and the "casualties of diseases. . . that men are subjected to" in the tropics had not been sufficiently taken into account. The troops landed in Hispaniola on April 13, 1655, and marched to attack the city of Santo Domingo; but no satisfactory arrangements had been made to keep open communications with the fleet, and the want of supplies, and especially of water, reacted disastrously upon discipline. The attempt upon the city proved a hopeless failure, and on May 4 the expedition reëmbarked for Jamaica. Here success was cheap and easy, as the total Spanish population did not exceed 1500 persons, and of these not more than 500 were capable of bearing arms. On June 25 Penn set sail for England with his larger ships, leaving the frigates to guard the new acquisition and to look out for prizes; and soon afterwards his example was followed by Venables, with some justification, as he was dangerously ill. An attempt was made to suggest that Jamaica was practically part of Hispaniola; but to the Protector the failure of the expedition stood confessed. He had hoped to command the traderoute of the Spanish treasure-ships, and, as he himself had phrased it, to "strive with the Spaniard for the mastery of all those seas." His great scheme had broken down, like those of Buckingham, - upon the details of administration—and at a prodigious cost in men and money he had acquired only a useless island. Yet, after all, the occupation of Jamaica must be viewed as part of a greater whole. The Dutch War had given England the command of the sea; and thus she was led to take the first step upon the road which was to lead to Empire in the West.

The "Western Design" had grown out of the Protector's relations with Spain: his relations with France led to the adoption as a principle of the maintenance of a permanent fleet in the Mediterranean. When Blake set sail on October 8, 1654, with twenty-four ships of war, his immediate purpose appears to have been to frustrate the expedition which the Duke of Guise was preparing for the conquest of Naples; and it is probable that his presence in the Mediterranean goes far to explain the ultimate abandonment of the project by France. But the expedition was also intended to protect the Levant trade against the Barbary corsairs, to show the flag in the Mediterranean ports, and to continue the reprisals against France. The problem of piracy was a standing perplexity of the English Government in the first half of the seventeenth century, and attempts had already been made to deal with it. Rainborow's blockade of Sallee in 1637, in particular, is for several reasons a

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notable exploit in naval annals. He was the first commander to recognise the value of the boats of a squadron for purposes of blockade; he anticipated Blake in attacking forts with ships; and the proposals made by him on his return home for dealing with Algiers by protracted. blockade anticipated the plan carried out in Charles II's reign under Narbrough, Allin, and Herbert. Blake's dealings with Tunis in 1655 mark another stage in the development of naval operations. Tunis itself was invulnerable; but Blake found nine of the Dey's men-of-war lying in the neighbouring harbour of Porto Farina under the protection of a fort and batteries. On April 4 he made his way into the harbour with fifteen sail, and silenced first the batteries on the moles and then the guns of the castle, "the Lord being pleased to favour us with a gentle gale off the sea, which cast all the smoke upon them and made our work the more easy." Meanwhile, under cover of the fire from the ships, "boats of execution " boarded the Tunisian vessels, and set them on fire one by one. The fleet then warped out again, having inflicted ruinous loss upon the enemy at the trifling cost of twenty-five killed and forty wounded. It was not the first time that a fleet had successfully engaged shore batteries, and the landing of troops had been covered in this way before; but here we have a naval operation pure and simple, in which, without any landing of troops, the fire of shore batteries was overpowered and silenced direct from the sea. In spite of this exploit, Tunis remained obdurate; but, when on April 28 Blake appeared before Algiers, he met with quite a different reception. The treaty of 1646, securing freedom of trade to English merchants, and the exemption from slavery of Englishmen captured after that date, was extended to inhabitants of Scotland and Ireland, and numerous captives were ransomed. Blake's work was completed three years later by Stoakes. In January, 1658, he appeared before Tunis and obtained from the Dey a treaty protecting English trade from interference and giving the warships of each State free access to the ports of the other; and from Tunis he repaired to Tripoli, and obtained for the asking a treaty similar to those which had been made with the other piratical States.

On October 24, 1655, peace was signed with France: a few days earlier, on October 15, the Council had decided upon war with Spain. During the months which intervened between this decision and the formal declaration of war by Spain in February, 1656, a powerful fleet was equipped in the English ports for service upon the Spanish coast, and Edward Mountagu, afterwards Earl of Sandwich, one of the Protector's personal friends, was assigned as a colleague to Blake. His appointment as General-at-sea dates from January 2, 1656; but the fleet of about fortysix sail did not leave Torbay until March 28. The expedition was too late to intercept the treasure-fleet, and nothing could be done at Cadiz, for the Spanish warships had taken refuge in an inner channel of the harbour. Blake and Mountagu were therefore obliged to fall back upon

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[1656-7 their secondary objects; and one of these was to occupy a point in Spanish territory from, which they could control the Straits and intercept any expedition for the relief or reconquest of Jamaica. The first suggestion for the occupation of Gibraltar as a naval base had been made at a Council of War held at sea on October 20, 1625, to decide on the objective of the ill-fated expedition which went to Cadiz. During the winter of 1651 Penn had used Gibraltar as an anchorage when he was watching the Straits night and day for prizes; and Blake himself had already had abundant opportunities of appreciating the importance of the rock which commands what has been called the "Mediterranean defile." Thus it was only a further step upon a road already taken when it was now proposed to seize and occupy Gibraltar. It is probable that the project had been already discussed with the Protector before the expedition sailed, and he recommended it in a dispatch of April 28; but this did not reach the Generals-at-sea until after the idea had been abandoned as impracticable; and a second reconnaissance only convinced them that the place could not be taken without a land force of 4000 or 5000 men. The generals therefore contented themselves with maintaining the blockade of Cadiz. It was in the course of this operation that Richard Stayner, one of Blake's best captains, with only three ships in action, attacked and nearly destroyed the Spanish Plate fleet of eight sail on September 9, 1656. One of the prizes was a great treasure-galleon valued at £600,000, while the total loss to Spain was something like two millions.

After the destruction of the Plate fleet Stayner and Mountagu with several of the larger ships went home; but Blake, undertaking a new departure in naval warfare, maintained the blockade of the Spanish coast all the winter through. Not long after Stayner had rejoined him in the spring, news reached him that the silver-fleet from America had got as far as Santa Cruz in Teneriffe. On April 20, 1657, he arrived there with 23 ships, to find the fleet moored in the harbour under the protection of the castle and a number of smaller forts and entrenchments. The harbour was not an easy one to get out of, especially as the breeze was off the sea, and Blake had to take great risks. He stood into the bay with the flowing tide, intending to destroy the ships and forts, and come out when the tide turned. Any miscalculation in point of time might have meant a grave disaster, but Blake's confidence in his guns was not misplaced. By three o'clock in the afternoon every Spanish ship was sunk, blown up, or burnt, without serious loss to the English fleet, which drew off on the ebb as its commander had intended. The legend is now rejected that the retirement was assisted by an almost miraculous change of wind.

The blow struck at Santa Cruz had great results. The destruction of the silver-fleet, and the interruption by England's sea power of the flow of treasure from the New World, disorganised the military operations of Spain both in Portugal and Flanders. With this great achievement the work of Blake was ended, and he was ordered home; but he died on