his escort duty?  Full as he was of desire to deal with the enemy’s main fleet, he was perplexed with the practical difficulty—­too often forgotten—­that the mere domination of the enemy’s battle strength does not solve the problem of control of the sea.  No fresh instructions were forthcoming to clear his perplexity, and he could only protest again.  “I could wish,” he wrote, “to be so fortunate as to have only one of these two duties—­to seek out the enemy, or to give convoy, for to do both is attended with great difficulties.”

The indecisive campaign which naturally resulted from this lack of strategical grip and concentration of effort came to an end with Tromp’s partial defeat of Blake off Dungeness on 30th November 1652.  Though charged in spite of his protests with a vast convoy, the Dutch admiral had sent it back to Ostend when he found Blake was in the Downs, and then, free from all preoccupation, he had gone to seek out his enemy.

It was the effect which this unexpected blow had upon the strong military insight of the Cromwellian Government that led to those famous reforms which made this winter so memorable a landmark in British naval history.  Monk, the most finished professional soldier in the English service, and Deane, another general, were joined in the command with Blake, and with their coming was breathed into the sea service the high military spirit of the New Model Army.  To that winter we owe not only the Articles of War, which made discipline possible, and the first attempt to formulate Fighting Instructions, in which a regular tactical system was conceived, but also two other conceptions that go to make up the modern idea of naval warfare.  One was the conviction that war upon the sea meant operations against the enemy’s armed fleets in order to destroy his power of naval resistance as distinguished from operations by way of reprisal against his trade; and the other, that such warfare required for its effective use a fleet of State-owned ships specialised for war, with as little assistance as possible from private-owned ships.  It was not unnatural that all four ideas should have taken shape together, so closely are they related.  The end connotes the means.  Discipline, fleet tactics, and a navy of warships were indispensable for making war in the modern sense of the term.

The results were seen in the three great actions of the following spring, the first under the three Generals, and the other two under Monk alone.  In the last, he carried the new ideas so far as to forbid taking possession of disabled vessels, that nothing might check the work of destruction.  All were to be sunk with as much tenderness for human life as destruction would permit.  In like manner the second war was characterised by three great naval actions, one of which, after Monk had resumed command, lasted no less than four days.  The new doctrine was indeed carried to exaggeration.  So entirely was naval thought centred on the action of the battle-fleets, that no