In 1660, Charles II tightened up the Commonwealth’s Navigation Act, insisting that key commercial products be transported only by English ships. The commodities listed included timber, grain, salt, and wine from the Baltic and the Mediterranean. Foreign merchants were also forbidden from importing tobacco, sugar, and dyes from England’s North American colonies. Further Acts, in 1662 and 1663, tightened England’s hold over foreign shipping and the right to trade with its American possessions. At the same time it was stipulated that at least two-thirds of the ships’ crews must be English-born. This was extreme and aggressive protectionism, conjured up by a nation confident in its maritime muscle.
Although the navy was a brutal place for the average seaman, with press-gangs having to top up the ships’ complements, it still attracted many volunteer officers. In particular, impoverished Royalists, their fortunes devoured by Civil War defeat, saw the sea as the quickest available route to riches. James, Duke of York, provided a rallying point for those who hoped for war. A brave soldier, who had fought for Louis XIV under Marshal Turenne, James now sought to find a meaningful role for himself while his brother ruled. The duke had been appointed Lord High Admiral as a boy. Now he was in his prime, he looked to find purpose in his courtesy title. His secretary Sir William Coventry, when looking back on the causes of this war, wrote: ‘I must not forget to add his Royal Highness’s own vigour, who, having been bred to arms, was willing to have an occasion to show his courage on sea as on land.’[537]
One of the most able and ruthless of the Duke of York’s warmongers was Sir Robert Holmes, a stalwart companion of Rupert’s on land and sea. In the summer of 1661, a correspondent wrote from The Hague to Rupert’s mother, Elizabeth, expressing Dutch concern at Holmes’s presence off West Africa: ‘It is believed that in England a design has been hatched on the river Guaiana, following on information given by His Highness Prince Rupert’s.’[538] Holmes returned to the territory he had first visited with the prince, relishing the opportunity for friction and sure of action. Conflict was inevitable, since the Dutch West India Company claimed a commercial monopoly in the area.
At the same time, the English were intolerant of Dutch intrusion into their North American commerce. They captured New Amsterdam from its Dutch governor, Peter Stuyvesant, in April 1663. The English renamed the port New York, in honour of their Lord High Admiral. Just before Christmas the same year, the English waylaid the Dutch Smyrna Convoy outside Cadiz.
In January 1663, a joint stock company was formed in London, called the Royal African (or Guinea) Company. The Duke of York became its governor and Prince Rupert was one of the company’s patentees, as well as one of its councillors. Gold ore and slaves were the principal goals of the investors: Jamaica had become English during Cromwell’s time and slave labour was required to suffer the harsh conditions of the sugar and tobacco plantations. Planters would pay £18 for a ‘negro’.
In 1664 the company sent Holmes to West Africa with two warships and orders to protect English commercial interests there. He exceeded his brief, overrunning Dutch trading stations, including Cormantine Castle, and bringing havoc in his wake: at Aga his African mercenaries fell on surrendered Dutchmen, hacking off their heads for trophies. Open hostilities were now inescapable, with avenging attacks ordered by the States-General on Holmes, as well as against English shipping in the West Indies.
The Zeeland admiral, Michiel Adrians zoon de Ruyter, had been summoned out of retirement as a merchant captain to lead the United Provinces’ fleet during the previous war. He was now sent with twelve ships to deal with six English vessels that were causing trouble off Cape Verde. News reached London that de Ruyter had captured Cape Verde and was now heading for the African coast, his intention the recapture of Cormantine Castle.
Because of his familiarity with West Africa, because he was a member of the council of the Royal African Company, and because of his fighting reputation, ‘Prince Rupert was ordered, with twelve men of war and six company’s ships of, at least, forty guns each; and the fleet sailed about the middle of October.’[539] The Duke of York felt the Dutch had underestimated England’s resolve: ‘Whereas they think us in jest’, Pepys recalled the duke’s secretary saying about his master, ‘he believes that the Prince (Rupert) which goes in this fleet to Guinny will soon tell them that we are in earnest.’[540] The United Provinces had provided. Rupert with a childhood refuge and had consistently shown him kindness since. In 1649 he had recognised his debt to the States-General with a fulsome tribute:
I beg you, Sirs ... to believe that in my case I will never forget to bear witness to your lordships’ friendship and protection on all occasions by my very humble service, protesting to you, that I am passionately, High and mighty lords, your very humble servant,
Rupert[541]
Now the Prince was riding out in his flagship, the Henrietta, at the head of a squadron looking for action against the Dutch. As always, his loyalty to the English Crown overrode all other considerations. Rupert was excited not only by the prospect of taking prize ships, but also by the scientific experiments entrusted to him by the Royal Society: during the voyage, he was to test out a new sounding device without the use of a line and to obtain samples of water from the depths of the sea. Pepys recorded the sense of optimism surrounding Rupert’s assignment: ‘This morning, by three o’clock, the Prince and King, and Duke with him, went down the River, and the Prince under sail the next tide after, and so is gone from the Hope. God give him better success than he used to have!’[542]
It was a short command, terminating when Rupert had got no further than Portsmouth: news that a larger Dutch fleet was being fitted out encouraged James to take over active control of the navy. Full-scale war was in sight.
Rupert fell severely ill, soon after his recall from the expedition. His enemies claimed he had fallen victim to the effects of dissolute living, but he was almost certainly suffering from an inflammation of the head wound received when serving under Marshal Gassion. He recuperated slowly in London. Late in 1664 the prince was sufficiently recovered to accompany the Duke of York as he spent four days in the Channel, assessing the fleet. These sea trials convinced James that the English had a fleet so powerful that they would quickly overcome an overawed enemy. However, James had no experience of war at sea, and he was forgetting the hardiness and pride of the Dutch, which had ensured their survival against Spain in her pomp. He also appears to have been unaware that Johan de Witt, the Raadpensionaris (Grand Pensionary) of Holland, had spent the years since the previous war building up a significant fleet of warships.
On 4 March 1665, war was declared. Both Houses of Parliament urged Charles II on, granting the navy £2.5 million to prosecute the contest. The Earl of Clarendon, the king’s senior councillor, was chief among ‘those ministers who should otherwise have preserved peace at any price’,[543] but his words of caution were ignored. Both the Dutch and the English were confident that they would win the Second Anglo-Dutch War.
The Duke of York commanded the English navy. It was divided into three squadrons, which bore the names of colours — the Red, the White, and the Blue. James was admiral of the senior unit, the Red, which comprised the centre of the combined force. Rupert was vice-admiral of the fleet and admiral of the second squadron, the White, whose place was at the front of the fleet. Admiral of the junior detachment, the Blue, was a former Cromwellian, the Earl of Sandwich. Each squadron had its own vice-admiral and rear-admiral: in all there were seventeen flag officers, eleven of whom had served the Commonwealth and Protectorate.
York’s plan in 1665 was simple: to sail to the Dutch coast and blockade the enemy ports until the ‘Hogen-Mogen Hollanders’ were forced to make a dash for the open seas. It was clear, after all, that the United Provinces’ survival depended on trade. When they were out in the open, the English were confident that they would make short work of the Dutch. Unfortunately, the logistics and expense of supplying a sizeable fleet at sea was beyond the navy. James had to cease th
e blockade and lead his ships back to the Gunfleet, where food and fresh water were readily available.
While there, he learnt that the Dutch were approaching, looking for battle. James sailed the fleet to Southwold Bay, near Lowestoft: on 3 June, a cloudless day with a strong southwesterly wind, the Dutch attacked York’s fleet with 113 men-of-war. The English had 98 warships of a size and firepower that, the Duke of York boasted, made his fleet ‘the greatest England had ever seen’.[544]
Seventeenth-century naval encounters were brutal affairs, the ship’s decks awash with blood as cannon fired at close range, scything through flesh, while splinters tore round decks crammed with sailors, marines, and gentlemen volunteers. Medical knowledge was minimal, and what was practised was often life-threatening. There was no dedicated hospital for wounded sailors and the compensation available for men disabled in action would have been familiar to Elizabeth I’s men. Each injury received a set amount: £6 13 s. 4 d. for the loss of each leg; £4 per eye; and £15 for being deprived of both arms.
The battle of Solebay began at dawn, although the main forces were not fully engaged until ten in the morning. From that moment, it was a desperately hard-fought encounter. The poet John Dryden recalled being able to hear the gunfire in London, ‘like the noise of distant thunder, or of swallows in a chimney’. The capital’s audience was gripped by the distant drama. Passengers on the Thames urged the watermen to pull more softly on their oars, the better to catch the far-away sound of rumbling death: ‘The noise of the cannon from both Navies reached our ears about the City’, Dryden continued, ‘so that all men being alarmed with it, and in a dreadful suspense of the event which we knew was then deciding, every one went following the sound as his fancy led him; and leaving the Town almost empty, some took towards the Park, some cross the River, others down it; all seeking the noise in the depth of silence.’[545]
Rupert led the English formation, although he was suffering from health so poor that he could barely stand. His old head injury had flared up dangerously, causing him agony. A poet described the sight of the ailing prince stoically fulfilling his duty while in real pain:
Rupert that knew no fear, but Health did want,
Kept State suspended in a Chair Volant;
All save his Head shut in that wooden Case,
He shew’d but like a broken weather glass;
But arm’d with the whole Lyon Cap-a-Chin,
Did represent the Hercules within.[546]
Eyewitnesses present a less florid, but equally admiring, view of the prince’s conduct during the battle. An official account recorded that he ‘received the charge of their fleet, not discharging again till close to, and then firing through and through the enemy with great success’[547] — a description that could have applied as well to the prince on horseback, two decades earlier, when he forbade his men from firing before they were into the enemy lines.
Over the preceding weeks the Duke of York, with his flag officers, had painstakingly planned to fight the Dutch in line: his ships would sandwich each other, creating a column of blazing guns, against which the Dutch would flail without form or plan. However, in the Titanic clash, it was impossible to preserve such order for long. The general melee that ensued was much more to Rupert’s liking. He preferred to let his men loose, confident that the superior spirit of his officers would win the day.
The Dutch commander was Jacob van Wassenaer, Heer van Opdam, a gallant old soldier with little experience of sea warfare. He owed his command to compromise: there was fierce competition among the five fleets of the United Provinces for precedence, underpinned by ancient rivalries. Opdam — being a cavalry officer, not a naval one — was a choice designed to sidestep these problems, but choosing a man of such inexperience was a risk.
Even Opdam was alive to the danger of attacking the English in their lair, but the States-General’s delegates rebuffed his concerns. When his senior officers heard the command to strike the enemy in Solebay, they were quick to voice their consternation: ‘I am entirely in your sentiments’, Opdam said, ‘but here are my orders, tomorrow my head shall be bound with laurel, or with cypress.’[548]
In the early afternoon Opdam, on the Eendracht, led a fierce attack by several Dutch ships on the Duke of York’s flagship, the Royal Charles. The exchange of gunfire was relentless and claimed Opdam’s life. Soon afterwards, a cannonball from the Duke of York’s ship pierced the Eendracht’ s powder store, causing her to erupt in splinters: all but a handful of the 400 men on board perished. An English poet saw this as suitable repayment for the Dutchman’s arrogance in attacking the Duke of York:
Let Opdam speak, that now with Neptune dwells,
Condemn’d to sword fish in his watery cells,
For daring to attack your Royal Ship,
With his unequal and confounded skip:
Sce where he flew in Sulphorous ‘atoms, sent
To th’ Prince of Flames, for his most hold attempt ...[549]
The watching Netherlanders fought on briefly after the loss of their commander and his flagship, but eventually broke and fled. James ordered an all-out pursuit of the defeated Dutch, before retiring to his cabin at 11 p.m., to recover from an exhausting, terrifying, and exhilarating day. However, while James slept on a quilt with his clothes on, one of his courtiers, Henry Brouncker (brother of the first president of the Royal Society) intervened. Possibly he was worried about his own safety or was carrying out a request from the Duchess of York to keep her husband safe. Whatever the reason, Brouncker persuaded James’s captain to slacken his sails. The rest of the fleet followed the flagship’s lead. In the morning, James awoke fresh, ready to resume the previous day’s engagement. To his fury, the Dutch were nowhere to be seen: they were over the horizon, almost home, the opportunity to catch up with them gone.
James had won a battle, sinking twenty Dutch warships, slaying four enemy admirals, and taking, killing, or wounding 10,000 of their men. His own casualties numbered just 800. But the main job was left undone by Brouncker’s untimely meddling. As Rupert later reported to Parliament: ‘I shall only say, in short, if the Duke’s orders, as they ought, had been strictly observed, the victory which was then obtained had been much greater, nay, in all probability the whole fleet of the enemy had been destroyed.’[550]
Returning disconsolate to land, James and Rupert were summoned by a king grateful for his fleet’s success. However, their supporters complained that reports of the victory failed to honour the personal contributions of the commanders. A civil servant called Hickes thought more should have been made of the duke’s bravery when slogging it out with Opdam and his posse of warships. ‘Nor is a word said of Prince Rupert’, Hickes continued, ‘though the seamen said none excelled him in valour and success.’[551] When some claimed that the Earl of Sandwich deserved more credit for the victory than Rupert, a few of the prince’s supporters in Parliament mischievously proposed that Rupert receive a £10,000 reward from a grateful nation, while Sandwich be given half a crown for his inferior efforts.
Charles was shocked at the bloodiness of an engagement that had claimed so many of his senior officers and noblemen, including James’s vice-admiral, Sir John Lawson; Rupert’s rear-admiral, Robert Sansum; and the earls of Marlborough and Portland. The Queen Mother intensified Charles’s anxiety: Henrietta Maria visited England that summer, and she learnt that James had nearly been the victim of a costly Dutch cannonball, which had carried away his friend the Earl of Falmouth, Lord Muskerry, and Richard Boyle, the second son of the Earl of Burlington. James had been standing close to them, ‘their blood and brains flying in the Duke’s face’,[552] according to Pepys: indeed, Boyle’s severed head had knocked James off his feet. Henrietta Maria pointed out that, with the Duke of Gloucester dead and Catharine of Braganza having yet to produce an heir, James’s preservation was essential to the future of the Stuart dynasty. Egged on by his mother, Charles called a council of war attended by James, Rupert, and all the flag officers. Here, according to Joh
n Evelyn, an onlooker, the king ‘determined that his Royal Highness should adventure himself no more this summer’.[553]
With James confined to shore, the king offered control of the fleet at sea to Rupert and the Earl of Sandwich. However, Rupert refused to accept divided command with an old adversary and Sandwich therefore assumed overall authority. But Sandwich was disgraced soon afterwards — accused of pocketing bounty from captured Dutch merchantmen, he was bundled off to serve as ambassador to Spain, to avoid impeachment at home. In early 1666, command of the navy was divided between George Monck (who had been created Duke of Albermarle and Lord General, as rewards for his role in the Restoration) and Prince Rupert.
Albermarle and Rupert were old acquaintances. Albermarle’s record extended back to the unsuccessful expeditions to Cadiz and La Rochelle, in the 1620s. He had fought for Charles I in the Civil War until captured at the battle of Nantwich in 1644. Rupert had personally tried to broker his release, without success. During Albermarle’s captivity in the Tower of London, he was persuaded to switch allegiance to Parliament. He then fought well for Cromwell, impressing particularly at the battle of Dunbar in 1650, before showing he had a real gift for naval combat in the First Anglo-Dutch War: he was seen as the principal victor at the 1653 battle of Portland, when the English sank thirty-three enemy ships, including nine men-of-war.
Albermarle accepted the offer of joint command, while making it clear he would happily serve under Prince Rupert. Yet the king, perhaps out of concern for Rupert’s health, perhaps because of his high regard for Albermarle, and perhaps, too, because he was worried that his cousin was too headstrong for ultimate control, insisted that command of the fleet be divided in two. This was not, however, the Wisdom of Solomon.
Chapter Twenty-One - Joint Command
‘Whereas the King my Sovereign Lord and Brother, hath thought fit and expedient for his service, that the chief command of his Majesty’s Fleet should be exercised by joint Commission, that so the affairs thereof may be carried on by joint council and advice, and also in regard of the accident of war, and the distraction which many times happened by the loss of the chief commander, when the same is entrusted on a single person, and whereas through long experience which his Majesty as well as myself, hath had of your affections, courage, and knowledge in maritime affairs, his Majesty hath been pleased to approve of the choice of you for the chief Command of his Majesty’s Fleet for the present expedition.’
Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier Page 35