English Navy

“ The victories of the United States frigates and sloops taught England that there was on the other side of the Atlantic a growing power which must one day be numerous and wealthy, which would be able to maintain great fleets, and had shown that her seamen could defeat all but the best of the English Navy. ”

“ Though the great achievements of large fleets are apt to monopolise fame, it often happens in the story of our English navy that small squadrons in out-of-the-way places show equal heroism in achieving less important results. Of such services the following are illustrations.
Captain Forrest, of the Augusta, having sailed from Port Royal in Jamaica, in 1758, proceeded to cruise off Cape Francis, a harbour in the island of St. Domingo; he was accompanied by Captains Suckling and Langdon, commanding the Dreadnought and Edinburgh. ”

“ For in 1416, exactly five hundred years before Jellicoe's victory of Jutland, Henry's Parliament passed a resolution in which you still can read these words: "that the Navy is the chief support of the wealth, the business, and the whole prosperity of England." Some years later Hungerford, one of Henry's admirals, wrote a Book of English Policy, "exhorting all England to keep the sea" and explaining what Edward III had meant by stamping a ship on the gold coins called nobles: "Four things our noble showeth unto me: King, ship, and sword, and power of the sea." ”

“ Sea-power not only kept Frenchmen out of England but it helped Englishmen to stay in France and win many a battle there as well. Most of the time the English fleet held the command of the sea along the French as well as along the English coast. So the English armies enjoyed the immense advantage of sea-transport over land-transport, whenever men, arms, horses, stores, food, and whatever else their armies needed could be moved by water, while the French were moving their own supplies by land with more than ten times as much trouble and delay. ”

“ Here the French squadron joined them, their admiral bearing the white flag; the united fleet consisting of one hundred and one sail of men-of-war, besides fire-ships and tenders. Of these the English had sixty-five ships of war, carrying four thousand and ninety-two pieces of cannon, and twenty-three thousand five hundred and thirty men. ”

“ In 1643 this force was raised to 28 warships, 23 merchant ships, and 8 colliers for service on the coast of England, besides 8 men-of-war and 13 hired merchant ships for service on the coast of Ireland. This makes a total of 80 vessels; and when we consider the average tonnage and weight of broadside, it represents a much greater force than was ever under the command of the officers of the great queen. The mere habit of continual cruising together in fleets must have had an instructive effect, of which the English Navy was to reap the benefit in the approaching struggle with Holland. ”

“ John Campbell, "several English transports returning from Quiberon Bay passed through the fleet, and informed the admiral that they had seen the French squadron on the preceding day, standing to the south-east, and distant about twenty-three leagues from Belle-Isle." The intelligence was received by the whole British fleet with acclamations, and every ship prepared for action. The wind also became favourable and every sail was spread to catch the gale. ”

“ It must not be forgotten that hosts of American seafaring men were then by force serving in the British navy, while more than two thousand of them were then in Dartmoor prison in England, whither they had been sent by such of the English captains as were humane enough not to compel an American to fight against his flag. Of the few American seamen who remained to man American ships not many were found to ship on a man-o’-war. ”

“ William III's orders were—after the usual directions to make foreigners pay the customary salute in the English seas—"And you are further to take notice, that in Their Majesties' Seas, Their Majesties' Ships are in no wise to strike to any; and that in other parts, no ship of Their Majesties' is to strike her flag or top-sail to any foreigner unless such foreigner shall have first struck." ”

“ In lat 18° 35′ N., long. 30° 10′ W., sea account, at 8 o’clock in the morning, discovered a strange sail giving chase to us, and fired several guns; she gaining very fast. At half-past 10 o’clock hove to, and was boarded by an officer dressed in an English doctor’s uniform, the vessel also hoisted an English ensign. The officer proceeded to examine my ship’s papers, &c., &c., likewise the letter bags, and took from one of them a letter to the victualling office, London. Finding I had two American officers as passengers, he immediately left the ship, and went on board the sloop-of-war ”

“ If they possessed more vessels a far larger proportion of them were unfit for battle, and if ours were slower under sail they were more solidly built and more heavily armed, advantages which told in days when tactics were elementary, and when, for the first time for a century, English seamen tried to fight yardarm to yardarm. ”

“ I am persuaded they will in process of time gain one step more upon the maxims of the British Navy, and settle it as a prin [Pg 256] ciple that single English ships are not to fight Americans of equal force. Thus much I believe it will be in their power to do. And further I wish them never to go. I hope they will never catch the indolent affectation of seeking Battle against superior force. An English pretension which has been so well chastised in the fate of their two frigates. ”

“ The old monarchy had left the Revolution the materials of a noble fleet. The calculation of James in his Naval History is allowed to be sound. He puts the relative strength of the French and English navies in line-of-battle ships at
The proportion in frigates was nearly two to one in our favour. ”

“ During the evening the English were busy taking men out of the smaller ships to fill up the vacancies caused by death and wounds in the larger, and refitting their damaged rigging. During the night both made their way eastward, within sight of one another's lights, the English on the north side of the Channel, then next them the Dutch men-of-war keeping guard over the merchant ships, which sailed between them and the coast of France. ”

“ Failing in getting387 enough men in this fashion—as, for instance, when the ship was in a foreign port or on the high seas—it was the custom, the every-day custom, to send the press-gang, on board any ship where it was supposed that English-speaking sailors might be found, and there take and carry off all such sailors. ”

“ The demand for good men had far outrun the supply. The existence of the United [473] States added materially to our difficulties, for it supplied our sailors with an English-speaking country to which they could escape. During the later stages of the war the navy was compelled to form its crews with ever-increasing difficulty. It found marines who, when they enlisted, had a security for permanent employment and a pension. ”

“ There are brutes among them, no doubt, but such German naval officers as I have met compare very favourably with their swaggering colleagues of the land service. German sailors are under no misapprehension as to the might and efficiency of the British Navy. It is not they who spread the tale of the British Fleet hiding in ports while German ships proudly sail the North Sea. It is not they who ask plaintively, “Will the British Fleet never come out?” ”

“ Even in peace time we have shown it in that vast, well-oiled, swift-running, noiseless machine called the British Navy. But now our powers have risen with the need of them. The expansion of the Navy has been a miracle, the management of the transport a greater one, the formation of the new Army the greatest of all time. To get the men was the least of the difficulties. ”

“ As the British Parliament is the mother of all popular representative institutions, so the British Navy is the mother of navies. If the records of most [Pg 83] of the great fleets of the world are searched, it will be found that in greater or less degree they owe their birth to the more or less direct assistance of British naval officers, oft times acting with the direct authority of the British Admiralty; while in almost every fleet in the world even to-day may be found ships designed by British brains and constructed of British material by the skilled craftsmen of these islands. ”

“ It was a glorious moment in world-history when British, French, and Americans at last stood side by side. The American Navy led the way, joining the hunt for German submarines with a keenness whetted by having been held back so long. The Army followed, bit by bit, until two million men had gone to Europe, thanks chiefly to the British ships that took them there. The Nation backed both Army and Navy with vast sums of money, which it could so easily afford, and with patriotic work of every splendid kind. ”

“ We are apt to forget when we see an elaborate machine, the immense quantity of mental and physical exertion it represents, the efforts of the united minds perhaps of many successive generations, and the labour of thousands of workmen. I propose briefly to trace the progress which the British Navy has made from age to age, as well as its customs, and the habits of its seamen, with their more notable exploits since the days when this tight little island of ours first became known to the rest of the world. ”

“ They are not only splendid [Pg 12] fighting-ships, but they are well officered and manned."
Here is what Lord Reading, the British Ambassador to the United States said in the course of an address at the Yale 1918 Commencement:
"Let me say to you on behalf of the British people what a debt of gratitude we owe to your navy for its co-operation with us. There is no finer spectacle to be seen at present than that complete and cordial co-operation which is existing between your fleet and ours. They work as one. ”

“ It is seldom that we find it acting alone, and never when a great display of power was required. Yet the Royal Navy was the steel of the lance, the model of discipline and warlike efficiency. The city of London, or so great a subject as the Earl of Cumberland, might show a few ships not inferior to the queen's, but that was quite the exception. ”

“ With the growth of the maritime power of England is associated a splendid array of heroic names, and many of the humblest sailors were equal in bravery to their renowned commanders. No history is more intensely interesting thanx that of the daring perils and triumphs of heroic seamen. The heroes, who have distinguished themselves in the history and growth of the British Navy, furnish a gallery and galaxy, bewildering in extent ”

“ Signal as has been the value of the services of the little vessels of the infant navy of the United States in their operations along the American coast and upon the woodsy waters of the highway from the north during the year of the nation’s birth, the American sailors had really only just begun to fight, and it was not until they carried the fight into the very harbors of Great Britain that they taught the British merchants, who had been supporting the British ministry in its oppression of the colonies, a lesson they were slow to learn. ”

“ The fact was that thousands of their trained seamen were hopelessly cut off from Germany by the British Navy. Nearly every German merchant ship outside of the North Sea or the Baltic was either taken by the British or chased into some neutral port from which it never got out. The crews were mostly reservists in the German Navy. They were ready for the call to arms. But they could not answer it. So new men had to be trained. Meanwhile the one good chance slipped away; for by the time these recruits had been trained the Grand Fleet had grown much stronger than before. ”

“ Only a well-considered leadership knows when it will use this thirst for action, and employ it in undertakings which keep the great whole in view. Our Navy, thank God, does not need to pursue prestige policy; the services which it has already rendered us are too considerable and too important for that.”
There is no occasion to quarrel with a word in this passage. The German admirals and captains in command of twenty-three or twenty-four of the most powerful ships in the world must certainly have been straining at the leash. ”

“ If you want to serve your King and Country there is the Royal Navy open to you, a fine service with its grand traditions, its splendid ships, guns, and seamen. It takes you across the seas to our great Colonies and to foreign lands, from the frozen Arctic to the tropical coasts of Africa. ”

“ The British navy has ever been the support of that liberty which has been handed down to us by our ancestors, and which I trust we shall maintain to the latest posterity; and [362] that can only be done by unanimity and obedience. This ship's company and others, who have distinguished themselves by their loyalty and good order, deserve to be, and doubtless will be, the favourites of a grateful country. They will also have from their inward feelings a comfort which will be lasting, and not like the floating and false confidence of those who have swerved from their duty. ”

“ Any one who will contrast the British navy of to-day with the British navy as it might and would have been under the administration, say, of such a First Lord of the Admiralty as the present Duke of Somerset proved himself in every department of the naval service five-and-twenty years ago, will understand the recent outcry in England for a safer and more powerful fleet. ”