For King or Commonwealth

by Richard Woodman

‘Oh, I do not object to a man standing his ground. Tell me, Captain Brenton, how you addressed our pilot aboard the Basilisk? You have been previously acquainted, I believe.’

  ‘We served together aboard the Prince Royal, General.’

  ‘And what name do you use after this previous amity?’

  ‘As my . . . as our principal pilot, General Blake, and knowing his rank in other service, I allowed him the courtesy title of Captain.’ Faulkner noticed Brenton’s left hand was shaking and wondered if he had, on some earlier occasion, been a victim of Blake’s wrath.

  ‘Did you now? Well, well.’ Blake turned to his secretary who had been busy writing the entire time. ‘D’you have that commission, Joseph?’

  ‘Excellency . . .’ The clerk laid his quill aside, lifted a paper and handed it to Blake. Looking at it briefly, Blake leaned forward to pass it across the table to Faulkner.

  ‘It seems Captain Brenton has anticipated me, Sir Christopher.’ Blake’s eyes twinkled with irony. ‘I do not have a ship for you at present, Captain Faulkner, but you may count on having one before winter is out. Come, sir; take it, take it.’

  Faulkner took the proffered document. Although covered in writing and sealed with the enwreathed emblems of the St George’s Cross and Harp, it took him but a moment to realize he was a commissioned captain in the Commonwealth’s State Navy.

  ‘My congratulations, Captain Faulkner, upon the faultless execution of your duty. We could have done with you at the Scillies. Now, gentlemen, if you will excuse me . . .’

  Scrambling to their feet, Faulkner tucked his commission into his gauntlet. The two officers withdrew after a second, fulsome bow, emerging on deck to find Coppin talking with his first lieutenant. He looked round as Brenton and Faulkner crossed the deck. ‘I understand you are one of us, Captain Faulkner,’ he said matter-of-factly.

  ‘So it would seem, Captain Coppin,’ Faulkner replied, ‘so it would seem.’

  The Kentish Knock

  January – September 1652

  Faulkner spent the winter with Mainwaring at Camberwell. His pay enabled him to ease the increasingly frail old man’s pains and penury during the cold weather. Mainwaring was pathetically grateful. Faulkner declared it was the very least he could do for a man who, with no more motive than a philanthropic desire, had encouraged a demonstrably able lad to be metamorphosed into a sea officer. What Faulkner was able to tell him of the Commonwealth Navy seemed to please Mainwaring, setting him nodding by the fire of sea-coal that Faulkner ensured was kept in by a husband and wife he hired to attend the old man’s wants.

  Faulkner mentioned names from the past, some from the Trinity House as it had been before its replacement by a committee, some the names of men now executing the offices of the former Brethren, whose talents for opportunistic ship-owning and timber-supplying were not dissimilar to the pasts of both Mainwaring and his protégé. Although open to charges of corruption, the likes of Nehemiah Bourne, Thomas Smith and Richard Badiley – then commanding the Commonwealth squadron in the Mediterranean – at least ensured that the navy wanted for nothing. It was even known that the victor of Dunbar and Worcester, Oliver Cromwell, supplied timber to the navy. Mainwaring brushed the references to venality aside, maintaining the end justified the means. ‘Was not the poor’s box at Trinity House filled with the products of sin, Kit?’ he was fond of asking. ‘And our charitable bequests prompted by bad consciences?’

  Here they learned of the recapture of Jersey where the siege of Elizabeth Castle had proved a wearisome business until Carteret, aware of the disaster that had overtaken his Royal Master, capitulated on 12th December. A week later his example was followed by the remnant Royalist garrison on neighbouring Guernsey, likewise mewed up in the island’s fortress, Castle Cornet at St Peter Port. Looking at Mainwaring dozing before the fire, Faulkner recalled his words. Great things indeed seemed to be in train.

  Although they had spent Christmas that year on their own, in mid-February they were paid a visit by Brenton and his petite blonde wife. Fresh from London, Brenton brought news both of further extirpation of the Royalists, and more closely touching Faulkner.

  ‘Of course, with Rupert at large in the Mediterranean, we have yet to dispose of the canker,’ he said, ‘but the Royalists at Barbados have surrendered to a squadron under Sir George Ayscue, by Heaven, clear evidence of God’s good grace towards our cause.’

  They had drunk a bumper to Ayscue and his men, after which Brenton informed Faulkner that he had been ordered to take command of a new ship, the Dunbar, then fitting out at Deptford, and hinted that Faulkner might thereby find himself appointed to the Basilisk in his room.

  ‘I think, Kit, Blake will prove as good as his word.’

  ‘I never doubted it,’ put in Mainwaring, calling for a refill of his glass. Sure enough, three weeks later a letter arrived instructing Faulkner to report to the Naval Commissioners ‘upon his appointment to the command of the Basilisk, frigate’.

  ‘Great things are afoot, Kit,’ Mainwaring had said at his departure. ‘Great things.’

  A man cannot be everywhere at once, but it seemed to Faulkner in the following sixteen months that he was swept up in the great things that Mainwaring had predicted, for he beat about the Narrow Seas at the behest of either one or another of the Commonwealth’s Generals-at-Sea. True, he missed several of the actions with the Dutch, being occupied in other duties which took a frigate elsewhere, but he found himself in the line of danger on more than one occasion and played his part in the first clash between the Protestant powers. In later life he recalled those tumultuous months as a kaleidoscope of impressions which encompassed the howl of the wind, the anxiety of shortening sail on a lee shore or of watching from the quarterdeck the straining gear aloft as he pressed the Basilisk to make the best speed she could, for she oft times bore despatches from Blake and Monck to their subordinate admirals, went in chase of a strange sail, or ran before a superior force to bring word of their coming to the nearest English squadron. There was, too, the thunder of the guns, the noise and confusion of close action as the fleets of the two nations clashed off Dover, in the Thames Estuary, off Dungeness, off Portland and, finally, off the coast of Holland. And in the aftermath of action, the pitiable condition of the wounded, for which there was precious little succour, kept the spectre of death before their eyes even as they licked their wounds after defeat, or rejoiced in their victory.

  In the spring of 1652, Faulkner was with Nehemiah Bourne’s squadron in The Downs. A Dutch fleet under Maarten Harpertzoon Tromp had been reported close inshore off the South Foreland with forty sail and Bourne, with a small squadron of nine, became alarmed when a messenger arrived from Dover with news that, despite a warning gun from the ramparts of Dover Castle, the Dutch refused to dip their colours in respect of England’s sovereignty over the narrow strait. The following morning boats from the Dutch men-of-war had pulled close inshore and fired musketry to no good purpose other than to raise an alarm. The intentions of the Dutch were unclear, and while in fact Tromp was awaiting the arrival of a convoy of seven East Indiamen, Bourne sent Faulkner to slip past Tromp during the night, and carry word to Blake who lay off Rye.

  Having word from a Dutch frigate that the expected convoy was off Beachy Head, Tromp weighed anchor and hauled offshore against an easterly wind, expecting the convoy’s topsails to come over the horizon. What he saw was Blake, his ships on the starboard tack, coming up from Dungeness, so Tromp, with the wind on his starboard quarter, bore down to cut across the head of Blake’s two divisions which were parallel to each other. Although neither side intended action, the contentious matter of respect to the English flag provoked an exchange of fire, following which a fierce fight developed. The concussion of the guns and the clouds of smoke rolled ashore over the little town of Folkestone so that the houses shook and the fishermen on shore spoke of a fog on the waters of the Channel, the like of which they had never previously seen.

  The Basilisk played little direct
part in the main action, being sent to locate the expected convoy and harry it with such success that two Indiamen were taken while the rest hauled their wind for the French coast. As Faulkner came up from the south-west with his prizes he witnessed the last phases of the action, with Bourne falling upon the Dutch rear from the north. On a lee shore Tromp, in the Brederode, extricated his ships with the loss of three of them, giving Faulkner the opportunity to fire at the retreating force as it stood away out of harm’s way.

  The battle off Dover, fought on 19th May, caused a declaration of war between the two countries. No one was surprised, for the difficulties of maintaining trade during the long Civil War had encouraged the Dutch to make up for the lack of English merchant ships able to serve the collective needs of the North European markets. The loss of trade to the Dutch, who had thrown off the Spanish yoke, made such inroads that English ship owners were threatened with bankruptcy, particularly those engaged in the Baltic trade. With little to fear from the English navy, divided as it was by civil strife and engaged upon a war against itself, the Dutch thought little of any opposition. The navy of the Stuart kings had been unimpressive, despite the magnificence of a handful of its ships, and the Dutch rested upon the certainty of being the better seamen. It was this weakness that had preoccupied Mainwaring for most of his life and he had striven wherever possible to reverse this, both in terms of ships and men, particularly officers. Kit Faulkner was a product of Mainwaring’s private project and, as he made his way up the side of Blake’s flagship, the James, anchored in The Downs at the end of the day, he considered he had played a small part in the great event that precipitated the war. The James had taken a battering and Blake had little time for pleasantries, instructing Faulkner to carry his despatch to London.

  The Basilisk rejoined the fleet a few days later with orders to take Blake north, to intercept the main convoy from the East Indies which was expected off the Orkneys. Faulkner himself was left with Admiral Sir George Ayscue, and missed the unsatisfactory encounter between Blake and Tromp off Fair Isle which was spoilt by bad weather. Instead, the Basilisk took part in Ayscue’s destruction of Dutch ships off Calais before being sent to the westward in search of another homeward-bound convoy, which, they had learned from their captives, was expected to be entering the Channel. Ayscue’s squadron, consisting of the sixty-gun Vanguard and George and eight lesser men-of-war, was also charged to cover English shipping. To this end they were in Plymouth Sound when word came that a Dutch squadron was somewhere off shore, intent on meeting the silver-laden homeward convoy from the West Indies. The Dutch men-of-war made their rendezvous before Ayscue, who had by now been reinforced to a strength of some forty sail, weighed and headed south to intercept the Dutch, known to be under Michel Adriaenzoon de Ruyter. To his chagrin, Faulkner took no part in the action in which De Ruyter succeeded in warding off Ayscue, saving his convoy and compelling Sir George to withdraw into Plymouth. Instead, he had been sent to seek the Dutch to the westwards, in case De Ruyter decided not to hazard his valuable convoy through the Strait of Dover but passed it north of Scotland.

  Thanks to detached duty seeing English merchantmen safe into port, Faulkner missed further actions and manoeuvrings in the Channel between the main contending fleets. Nevertheless, he acquitted these tasks with a brisk efficiency that ensured his name began to be noted by the merchants of Liverpool, Bristol, Plymouth and London as a reliable commander who perfectly understood the ways of merchantmen, he having first been to sea in the Swallow of Bristol. There were those who asked if this could possibly be the same Captain Faulkner who had caused such a flutter on the London insurance markets a year or two previously but, being assured that it was, remarked that God’s redeeming powers were wonderful. Those of a more practical bent agreed that former poachers made the best gamekeepers, remarking that a former privateer commander of any note ought to know where best to intercept incoming ships, whether they were from the East or West Indies.

  Unaware of this gossip, Faulkner was in Portsmouth in early September where he rejoined Blake’s fleet, sailing east with it when the General-at-Sea ordered his ships to proceed to The Downs. Although the Dutch had succeeded in bringing in most of their trade, some two hundred of their merchantmen were outward bound for the following season’s cargoes and, Blake reasoned, would pass the Strait of Dover before the onset of winter. Blake’s fleet of over sixty men-of-war was led by the first-rates, Resolution and Sovereign, the latter formerly King Charles’s over-gilded, one hundred-gun, Sovereign of the Seas, and the greatest warship in the world.

  The weather in late September was blustery, with intermittent gales and short steep seas made worse when wind and tide were in opposition. Thus, while word came that a large Dutch fleet was at sea, Blake hesitated, aware that to better his opponents he must be able to use his superior firepower, particularly the heavy guns on his largest ships’ lowest decks. These could not be fired in a heavy sea, for opening the ports led only to flooding. But at daylight on the 28th, the conditions appeared propitious and Blake hoisted the signal for the fleet to weigh and proceed through the narrow Gull Channel so that, once off Ramsgate and clear to the north of the Goodwin Sands, they could form up in their respective divisions.

  Passing a fleet of three score men-of-war through a channel fit only for one at a time led to a certain amount of confusion off the North Foreland. The three divisions – the first under the General-at-Sea, Robert Blake, the second under Admiral William Penn, the third under Rear-Admiral Bourne – took hours to debouch to the north of a shoal, Bourne’s lagging far behind Blake’s and Penn’s.

  On rejoining the fleet, the Basilisk had been ordered back under Bourne’s flag and although one of the first ships to be under weigh, Faulkner was obliged to heave to off the North Sand Head and watch the others head away to the north as they came up with their flag officers. Far away, over the lumpy grey-green water, they could see the westering sunlight, shining occasionally through rifts in the rapidly moving clouds, catching the topgallants of the Dutch as they came in from the east, beating up against a brisk south-easterly.

  Faulkner paced his quarterdeck in frustration; the day was slipping away, the Dutch had been in the offing for three days and he felt the quickening of blood that was nigh irresistible. Where was Bourne? Beside him his first lieutenant, Matthew Stockton, was in a similar state, almost beside himself with eagerness to get into action and it was the near fury of the younger man that cooled Faulkner.

  ‘We must save the hot-headedness for action, Matthew,’ he said with an easy familiarity, raising his glass and staring astern.

  ‘I suppose so, sir,’ Stockton responded, ‘but I confess to being in a damned fizz.’

  ‘Ahh, here comes Nehemiah, by heaven.’ He could see Bourne’s flag flying from the mizzen mast of his flagship as, with three other men-of-war, she altered course round the inner extremity of the Goodwins and passed close to the Brake Sand. ‘I think that we might haul the mainyards now. Keep the courses in the buntlines while the flag catches up.’

  ‘Aye, sir, I’ll inform the master.’

  Faulkner nodded and turned his attention to the north where, at last, Blake, his flag now flying from the Triumph, and Penn in the James were almost up to the southern tail of the Kentish Knock, a large sandbank that lay athwart the outer Thames Estuary. A cloud of sail was storming in from the east, their yards braced sharp up, the dark mass of their hulls still just below the horizon. Faulkner studied the enemy. He had been out in the strait two days previously and had seen the Dutch fleet come out of Calais Road, like themselves, in three divisions. Their chief commander was Witte Corneliszoon de With, a hard republican, hated by his men; but he was a brilliant seaman and ably supported by De Ruyter and De Wildt.

  The dull thump of a distant gun rolled across the water as Bourne’s flagship cleared the shoals, bunting bright at her mastheads, summoning his squadron.

  ‘All sail, Mr Clarkson,’ Faulkner called to the master, shutting his telescop
e with a snap. ‘I am going below a moment,’ he said, dropping smartly down to his cabin where his servant buckled on his half-armour over a leather jerkin. The cabin was cleared of all furniture and a gun’s crew occupied each quarter, looking at him curiously as he stood in their midst, making his final preparations by settling his sword on his hip. He took up a small hat, devoid of any decoration and as like Puritan garb as anything he had ever worn. Clapping it on his head he looked about him.

  ‘Well, men, I wish you God’s blessing on your work today. Serve your guns well and trust in the righteousness of our cause.’ He was uncertain of the righteousness of their cause, or of too frequent a reference to God, but he knew their sympathies and knew they were still getting the measure of him as a former Malignant. He was therefore pleased with the enthusiastic ‘Alleluias!’ that greeted his little speech. Nodding to his servant as he took up the wheellock pistol that Brenton had presented him with on taking command, he stuck it into his crimson sash. ‘It’s charged and loaded. God bless you, sir,’ the servant said.

  ‘And you, Jackson. And you.’

  Although he had been below for only ten minutes it seemed they had significantly closed the distance on Blake and Penn as Bourne’s division came up from the south. The Dutch fleet, though no more than the English, seemed numerous, stretched out on the starboard bow. Faulkner stared out on the larboard bow, trying to see whether there was white water showing over the Knock but the horizon was obscured by the English men-of-war.

  ‘Have you seen the Knock, Mr Clarkson?’

  ‘No, sir, but I’ve a man in the larboard chains to keep an eye on the depth.’

  ‘That is well done. If the Dutchmen press us too far to the west . . .’

  ‘We’ll be in trouble,’ Clarkson finished the sentence, as anxious as Faulkner. ‘The tide ain’t helping neither.’

  ‘Look there, sir!’ Stockton called, pointing out on the larboard bow. ‘The general’s engaging!’