382 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA 



The Parliament clearly intended to abate no jot of the pre- 

 tensions which had been put forward by the king. 



An opportunity soon came for putting the instructions 

 regarding the flag into force. In May of the same year a 

 Swedish fleet of fifteen sail, consisting of ten merchantmen 

 bound for the Mediterranean and five ships of war convoying 

 them, was met by Captain Owen in the Henrietta Maria off 

 the Isle of Wight. On being called upon to strike, the Swedes 

 refused, declaring that they had been commanded by the 

 Queen of Sweden "not to strike to any whatsoever." Owen, 

 reinforced by Batten, thereupon attacked them, the fight con- 

 tinuing till night. The Swedes suffered much loss ; the colours 

 of their vice-admiral and rear-admiral were shot away, a " great 

 breach " was made in the vice-admiral's ship, and their vessels 

 were captured and taken into Portsmouth. They were after- 

 wards released, but the Admiralty Committee expressed the 

 opinion that the proceedings of their officers " in order to the 

 maintenance of the kingdom's sovereignty at sea " were to be 

 commended, and this resolution was reported to both Houses of 

 Parliament. 1 The question of the salute between ships of war 

 of different nations had been brought to the front in most 

 other maritime countries by the forcible measures taken by 

 Charles in 1633 and later. Two years before the encounter 

 with the Swedes in the Channel, Denmark and Sweden had 

 regulated the ceremony, as affecting their own ships of war, in 

 the treaty of peace then concluded between them. 2 



From this time until shortly before the war with the Dutch 

 there is little to record about the claims to the dominion of the 

 sea. In 1649, the instructions issued to Popham, Blake, and 

 Dean, the commanders of the fleet, included the guarding of 

 ,the North Sea and the mackerel-fishing, as well as the main- 

 tenance " of the sovereignty of the Commonwealth in the sea," 

 all in the prescribed form. 3 In the following year the Council 

 of State issued express commands to Blake on the subject 

 when he was ordered to proceed against Prince Rupert and the 

 revolted ships at Lisbon. The dominion of " these seas," they 

 said, had anciently and time out of mind belonged to the Eng- 



1 Rushworth's Collections ; Penn, op. cit., i. 242. 



2 Loccenius, De Jure Maritime, x. s. 10. 



3 State Papers, Dom., 27th Feb. 1649. 



