THE SHIP-MONEY FLEETS, circa 1635

INTRODUCTORY

That Cecil’s unconfirmed orders produced some impression beyond the circle of the military flag-officers is clear.  Captain Nathaniel Boteler, in the work already cited,[1] quotes the system they enjoined as the one he would himself adopt if he were to command a large fleet in action.  In his sixth dialogue on the ’Ordering of Fleets,’ after recommending the division of all fleets of eighty sail and upwards into five squadrons, an organisation that was subsequently adopted by the Dutch, he proceeds to explain his system of signals, and the advantages of scout vessels being attached to every squadron, especially, he says, the ‘van and wings,’ which looks as though the ideas of De Chaves were still alive.  Boteler’s work is cast in the form of a conversation between a landsman admiral and an experienced sea captain, who is supposed to be instructing him.  In reply to the admiral’s query about battle formations, the captain says that ’neither the whole present age [i.e. century] with the half of the last have afforded any one thorough example of this kind.’  In the few actions between sailing fleets that had taken place in the previous seventy-five years he says ’we find little or nothing as touching the form of these fights.’  Being pressed for his own ideas on the subject, he consents to give them as follows:  ’I say, then, that wheresoever a fleet is either to give or take a battle with another every way equal with it, every squadron of such fleet, whether they be three in number as generally they are, or five (as we prescribed in the beginning of the dialogue) shall do well to order and subdivide itself into three equal divisions, with a reserve of certain ships out of every squadron to bring up their rears, the which may amount in number to the third part of every one of those divisions.  And every one of these (observing a due berth and distance) are in the fight to second one another, and (the better to avoid confusion, and the falling foul one upon another) to charge, discharge and fall off by threes or fives, more or less, as the fleet in gross is greater or smaller; the ships of reserve being to be instructed either to succour and relieve any that shall be anyway engaged and in danger, or to supply and put themselves in the place of those that shall be made unserviceable; and this order and course to be constantly kept and observed during the whole time of the battle.

Asked if there are no other forms he says:  ’Some forms besides, and different from this (I know well), have been found prescribed and practised; as for a fleet which consisteth but of a few ships and being in fight in an open sea, that it should be brought up to the battle in one only front, with the chief admiral in the midst of them, and on each side of him the strongest and best provided ships of the fleet, who, keeping themselves in as convenient a distance