80 THE REA. 



Charles, in spite of his troubles, either rebuilt or added eighteen vessels to the Royal 

 Navy, leaving- it not merely numerically stronger, but improved in all other particulars. 

 The immense square sterns and full bows originally copied from the Dutch (who built their 

 ships apparently on their own model) gave place to more shapely sterns and sharper bows. 

 Extremely high poops and forecastles copied, one would think, from the Chinese were 

 abandoned as increasing the dangers of seamanship. Tonnage and number of guns were 

 largely increased. A " first rate " advanced from fifty to sixty, and afterwards to a 

 hundred guns. 



Holland, during the reigns of James I. and Charles I., had been carrying off all the 

 commercial honours from England, and it was becoming evident that prohibitory laws 

 were needed to stop their triumphant progress on the sea. In 1646, and again in 1650, 

 two Acts were passed, both having the same tendency, to prevent foreign ships trading with 

 England's new plantations in Virginia, Bermuda, Barbadoes, " and other places in America."* 

 On the 9th of October, 1651, the celebrated Navigation Act of Cromwell came into operation. 

 There were no half measures in that Act. It declared that no goods or commodities whatever 

 of the growth, production, or manufacture of Asia, Africa, or America, should be imported 

 either into Great Britain or Ireland, or any of the colonies, except in British-built ships, 

 owned by British subjects, and of which the master and three-fourths of the crew belonged to 

 that country. This, literally translated, meant that England wanted the carrying trade of 

 everything that concerned her own well being. The next enactment went further. It 

 provided that no goods of the growth, production, or manufacture of any country in Europe 

 should be imported into Great Britain except in British ships, owned and navigated by 

 British subjects, " or in such ships as were the real property of the people of the country or 

 place in which the goods were produced, or from which they could only be, or most usually 

 were, exported" This provision was aimed at the Dutch ; they had little to export. But 

 unless one can understand the long-stifled animosity and jealousy felt in England regarding 

 their commercial supremacy on the seas, and as regards the carrying trade, he can hardly 

 understand why laws, which would nowadays be considered ridiculous and unjust, were 

 so popular then. So strong had these feelings become, that when the Dutch despatched an 

 embassy to England for the purpose of obtaining a revocation of the navigation laws, its 

 members had to be guarded from the violence of the mob. 



England had now unmistakably asserted her right to carry on her own over-sea trade 

 in her own ships, and to enter the lists with any other nation as regards foreign trade. This 

 action was a defiance hurled at Holland, and after a little manoeuvring ended inevitably in 

 war. A few facts only regarding that war may be permitted here. The Dutch were at 

 first, and indeed for the most part, the sufferers. Within a month of its declaration, Blake 

 captured 100 of their herring boats, and twelve of their frigates, sinking a thirteenth. 

 In 1 6523 there were five actions. In the first Blake was successful ; in the second he was 

 thoroughly beaten by Martin Tromp (father of the Tromp best known in history). The third, 

 early in 1653, resulted in a victory for the English, the Dutch losing 300 merchantmen 

 they had captured not long before; the fourth was a decided victory for England,, and the 



# The term "America" often included the West Indies, &c., at that period, 



