and lamenting the blundering and confusion of their own.  It may be added that Dr. Gardiner’s recent researches in the same field equally failed to produce any document upon which we can credit the Dutch admirals with serious tactical reforms.  Even De Ruyter’s improvements in squadronal organisation consisted mainly in superseding a multiplicity of small squadrons by a system of two or three large squadrons, divided into sub-Squadrons, a system which was already in use with the English, and was presumably imitated by De Ruyter, if it was indeed he who introduced it and not Tromp, from the well-established Commonwealth practice.[5]

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] The others were John Rolle, member for Truro, a merchant and politician, who died in November 1648, and who as early as 1645 had been proposed, though unsuccessfully, for the Navy Committee; and three less conspicuous members of Parliament:  Sir Walter Earle (of the Presbyterian party), Giles Greene, and Alexander Bence.  They were all superseded the following year by the new Admiralty Committee of the Council of State.

[2] Supra, p. 63.  It may also be noted that these articles are intended for a fleet not large enough to be divided into squadrons—­just such a fleet in fact as that in which Penn was flying his flag.  The units contemplated, e.g. in Articles 2-4, are ‘ships,’ whereas in the corresponding articles of 1653 the units are ‘squadrons.’

[3] Gardiner, Dutch War, i. 9.

[4] This at least is what Van Galen’s crabbed old Dutch seems to mean.  ’Alsoo naer bij quam dat se couden toe schieter dragen, de elcken heer onder den windt, gaven so elck hare laghe dan vinjt d’eene sijde, dan veer van d’anden sijde, hielden alsdan met haer schepen voor den vindt tal dat se weer claer waren, dan wast alsvooren met cannoneren van de heele lagh en in sonderheijt op mijn onderhebbende schip vier gaven van meeninge masten aft stengen overboort to schieten.’  A copy of Van Galen’s despatch is amongst Dr. Gardiner’s Dutch War transcripts.

[5] See De Jonghe’s introduction to his Third Book on ’The Condition of the British and Dutch Navies at the outbreak of and during the Second English War,’ Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Zeewesen, vol. ii. part ii. pp. 132-141, and his digression on Tactics, pp. 290 et seq., and p. 182 note.  De Witte’s order is p. 311.

PARLIAMENTARY ORDERS, 1648.

[+Sloane MSS. 1709, f. 55.  Extract+]

Instructions given by the Right Honourable the Committee of the Lords and Commons for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports, to be duly observed by all captains and officers whatsoever and common men respectively in their fleet, provided to the glory of God, the honour and service of Parliament, and the safety of the Kingdom of England. [Fol. 59.]