THE NAVY AND THE STUARTS 

 Trouble with the Dutch. 



Beginning with the trouble with the Dutch herring fishers, the bad 

 feeling in that quarter was rapidly increasing. In 1639 the Dutch 

 Admiral Tromp, who was afterwards to become such a great figure in 

 English history, stopped a number of British ships and took from them 

 a body of Spanish soldiery bound for Dunkirk. It was an action 

 entirely in keeping with the spirit of the times, but Charles would not 

 have it so. A Dutch fleet pursued a body of Spaniards into the Downs 

 where Penington with a weak squadron was quite unable to back up his 

 protestations of neutrality. All this time the state of the fleet was 

 going from bad to worse and the definite quarrel between the King and 

 Parliament was approaching, so that in 1642 things came to a head by 

 counter appointments. The result of these was that confusion grew up 

 in the fleet and it became impossible to rely upon it as an instrument 

 of the Royal will. 



The " Sovereign of the Seas." 



The crack ship of Charles I's Navy, the money for whose construc- 

 tion was undoubtedly a contributory cause to losing him his head, was 

 the Sovereign of the Seas, which was rightly known in her day as being 

 the finest man-of-war afloat. She was built at Woolwich in 1637, and 

 the fact that this number is also given as her tonnage in the old Navy 

 List is curious. The Corporation of Trinity House, which in those days 

 appears to have had very few of the qualities for which it is now known, 

 was very much against her being built, for they maintained that a ship 

 of her size, mounting three tiers of ordnance, could not possibly be 

 safe at sea and could not possibly be accommodated in any British 

 harbour. Both these jeremiads proved totally incorrect, for she never 

 had any trouble over her draught and had a wonderful career. The 

 original plan was for the King to launch her in State, but after he had 

 taken all his Court down at the public expense it was found that the 

 tides would not serve and a similar outing was planned for the next 

 springs. A gale, however, sprang up the night before and to prevent 

 her bumping herself to pieces she had to be launched in a hurry by the 

 fight of flickering torches on her deck. Her total cost was just over 

 £40,000, of which nearly £7,000 was spent on gilding and decoration, a 

 luxury which caused a great outcry but curiously enough came to be so 

 loved by the people that when the Commonwealth ordered that all our 

 men-of-war should be painted a sombre black — " sad colour " — they 

 would not allow the Sovereign of the Seas to be touched in any way. 

 She carried a hundred guns of various sizes and in a life of nearly sixty 

 years she certainly used them to very good advantage, for her fighting 

 record was magnificent and she was always known by the Dutch as the 

 Golden Devil. Eventually, in 1696, she was burned by the careless- 

 ness of her shiokeeper, who allowed a lighted candle to fall over in a 

 store-room, and by the false economy of the Government, who limited 

 her fire-fighting apparatus to a few leaky buckets. 



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