Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

CHAPTER I

OF THE NAVY AND ITS REGULATION IN GENERAL

How great an instrument under God the navy has been and still is to the well-being of this and the neighbouring nations of Ireland and Scotland, is not unknown to all that know anything of government; nor yet how it always was and still is the wisdom of those that have been, or are, in authority vigilantly to intend1 its preservation, both in ships and stores, in good equipage both as to offence and defence, to prevent the mischief of foreign invasion and intestine commotions. How successfully through the late wars between the King and his Parliament, and the later between the Dutch and the Commonwealth, is fresh in every man's memory!

I shall not therefore trouble myself nor my reader with useless apologies for that honourable esteem that ought to be had of the navy or the seamen in general; every man I hope will easily subscribe to the truth thereof without rhetorical persuasions thereunto. That which I rather choose to design in this discourse is to hint some short discoveries by which the government of the navy (as it is now constituted) may be managed to a better account, both for the nation in general and the State in particular, than either at present it is or of late hath been, if men will be faithful to their own

1 Aim at.

interest and trust. And this I conceive may be of some small use to my country when I am gonethe alone profit I either expect or desire (under the glory of God) in the navy's welfare.

I know that since the year 1618 there have been many commissions under the Great Seal, acts and ordinances of parliament, and other derivations of power to several men, and those of great wisdom and experience in State affairs, to regulate the navy, besides many other attempts and particular orders from the lords admirals, commissioners of the admiralty, committees and commissioners for the navy,' in order to that undertaking, every man

1 The commission of 1618, at first intended to be temporary, was established in 1619 as a permanent system for the government of the navy, and continued till February 1628, when the four principal officers resumed control, under Buckingham as lord high admiral. During the tenure of this commission another special commission was appointed in 1626 to inquire into the state of the navy. After Buckingham's murder, the office of lord high admiral was put in commission until 1638, when the child Duke of York was made lord high admiral for life, with Northumberland as his substitute during the King's pleasure (E. H. R. vii. 481, ix. 476). When the Civil War broke out, the Parliament took control of the navy by means of committees. Subordinate to the parliamentary committee was a financial board, called the commissioners of the navy and customs, while another board, called the commissioners of the navy, discharged the functions of the principal officers other than the treasurer. The Earl of Warwick was lord high admiral from 1642 to 1645 and again from 1648 to 1649 (ibid. ix. 480). Under the Commonwealth the lord high admiral and the parliamentary committee were replaced by the admiralty committee of the council of state, and the commissioners of the navy and customs ceased to take any practical part in administration, being finally dissolved in 1654. Their duties fell to the commissioners of the navy. Under the Protectorate the admiralty committee and the commissioners of the navy became the 'commissioners of the admiralty and navy,' nominated by patent, and having control of the ordnance also (ibid. xi. 57-8). No less than ten different admiralty commissions were issued between December 1643 and the Restoration (see lists in the Pepysian MSS., Miscellanies, xi. 214-220). These

being ambitious in his way either privately or publicly to carry on so good a design as the well managing of that which so nearly concerns the wellbeing of the whole nation.

I know also that little good hath been produced after much expense of time and treasure, and as much contest who should do best in that particular, and that what was usefully propounded and effectually established, hath by default of some in trust crumbled to nothing, and that things are carried on in the same way as if there had never been any settlement of anything regular in the whole navy.

If you ask why so great and many undertakings for the regulation of the navy had so little success, I can give no other account thereof than this: that either the business was referred to men that knew not the navy, that is to say, so as to reform it, and so could act no further therein than to the extent of their own knowledge, or at the best by the information of other men, which kind of knowledge in governors is so remote that it is often attended with gross mistakes; or else that all or most of the commissions of inquiry, acts and ordinances for regulation of the navy, were gained from the late kings or parliaments more out of design, and to ruin some particular men and exalt others (nay ofttimes themselves) in their rooms, or otherwise to vent private revenges in subordinate instruments each against other, than any ways to advance the common good by discovering or reforming what was too apparently amiss in the navy.

For the first of these I shall only say, that no man can be a good anatomist that doth not know

frequent changes were possibly less damaging to the efficiency of the navy than would at first sight appear, as Blake was a member of the commissions continuously from 1652 to 1655, and Monck, with only a short interval, from 1652 to 1660.

how to direct the dissection of a body; and that all men (though wise) are not fit for all employments; and if you will believe the late Lord Strafford (no fool), he said that the reformation or well government of the navy was the most difficult thing that in all his time he met withal, and that he was never puzzled (that was his expression) in anything so much, as in that little navy which he had designed for Ireland while he was lord lieutenant there.

I have observed several commissions consisting of lords, knights, and gentlemen about the Court, and a late act or ordinance of parliament wherein few other than aldermen and merchants of the City of London were empowered to regulate the navy.1 Yet neither courtiers nor merchants, lords nor aldermen, gentlemen nor citizens, did ever do the business they pretended to, for the reasons before named. I have often thought (what I have sometimes said)2 that the navy is a wood wherein a wise man may sooner lose himself than find another. And this, among other things, was that which made Sir Walter Ralegh so sparing upon this subject, though a man of no small experience therein, and to handle it more upon the by and at distance than to enlarge. Yea, this is that which fears me and all others to appear in print upon this subject, as having nothing of other men's labours to be their star or guide in so intricate an affair.

1 The references here are apparently to such earlier commissions as those of 1618 and 1626, and to the act of 1649 establishing a 'committee of merchants' as described below (p. 122).

2 See p. 11 supra.

3 Sir Walter Ralegh's Observations on the Royal Navy and Sea Service, published in 1650, only occupy 46 small pages of large type. His Discourse on the Invention of Shipping is considerably less.

=

4 'By,' subs. a secondary object, side issue, something of minor importance. The phrase upon the by' usually occurs contrasted with 'main.' Cf. 'by-end—an object lying aside from the main object; hence a secret or selfish purpose.

It may be truly said of those formerly (and of late) employed in and undertaking to regulate the navy (though otherwise men very able and wise in their way), that they did much eclipse their own worth by meddling with what they never understood; and this was so apparent in the late act or ordinance (intituled an Act of the Commons assembled in Parliament touching the Regulation of the Officers of the Navy and Customs)1 that when those that were the procurers and promoters of that act saw what a mouse was brought forth after many months' sitting with reference to the navy and customs, they were ashamed to own themselves authors or promoters of that which took so little effect after so great promises to the parliament of doing wonders by the men designed

for that purpose. But indeed (to speak plainly)

that act was calculated for another meridian than the navy, that is to say, the customs, and the navy was but crowded in to fill up the blank, and blind the parliament with high hopes of great things to be amended in the one, when the other was the thing intended, as too plainly appeared by the actings of those merchants entrusted, and the ambitious desire of some that were procurers of that act to promote themselves and friends to be commissioners and other officers in the customs. More of which by-and-by. In the mean time this may serve for the first reason of the ill success of those that have been employed to regulate the navy, viz. they never understood what they undertook.

For the other, hinted before to be matter of design or private revenge, I could (were it needful) cloy my reader with examples of this kind, almost throughout all the commissions, acts, and ordinances that have been granted to inquire into abuses and 1 See note on p. 122 infra.

« VorigeDoorgaan »