Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 Part 5

30. The musketeers, divided into quarters of the ship, shall not deliver their shot but at such distance as their commanders shall direct them.

31. If the admiral give chase and be headmost man, the next ship shall take up his boat, if other order be not given. Or if any other ship be appointed to give chase, the next ship (if the chasing ship have a boat at her stern) shall take it.

32. If any make a ship to strike, he shall not enter her until the admiral come up.

33. You shall take especial care for the keeping of your ships clean between the decks, [and] to have your ordnance ready in order, and not cloyed with chests and trunks.

34. Let those that have provision of victual deliver it to the steward, and every man put his apparel in canvas cloak bags, except some few chests which do not pester the ship.

35. Everyone that useth any weapon of fire, be it musket or other piece, shall keep it clean, and if he be not able to amend it being out of order, he shall presently acquaint his officer therewith, who shall command the armourer to mend it.

36. No man shall play at cards or dice either for his apparel or arms upon pain of being disarmed and made a swabber of the ship.

*37. Whosoever shall show himself a coward upon any landing or otherwise, he shall be disarmed and made a labourer or carrier of victuals for the rest.

*38. No man shall land any man in any foreign ports without order from the general, by the sergeant-major[13] or other officer, upon pain of death.

*39. You shall take especial care when G.o.d shall send us to land in the Indies, not to eat of any fruit unknown, which fruit you do not find eaten with worms or beasts under the tree.

*40. You shall avoid sleeping on the ground, and eating of new fish until it be salted two or three hours, which will otherwise breed a most dangerous flux; so will the eating of over-fat hogs or fat turtles.

*41. You shall take care that you swim not in any rivers but where you see the Indians swim, because most rivers are full of alligators.

*42. You shall not take anything from any Indian by force, for if you do it we shall never from thenceforth be relieved by them, but you must use them with all courtesy. But for trading and exchanging with them, it must be done by one or two of every ship for all the rest, and those to be directed by the cape merchant[14] of the ship, otherwise all our commodities will become of vile price, greatly to our hindrance.

*43. For other orders on the land we will establish them (when G.o.d shall send us thither) by general consent. In the meantime I shall value every man, honour the better sort, and reward the meaner according to their sobriety and taking care for the service of G.o.d and prosperity of our enterprise.

*44. When the admiral shall hang out a flag in the main shrouds, you shall know it to be a flag of council. Then come aboard him.

*45. And wheresoever we shall find cause to land, no man shall force any woman be she Christian or heathen, upon pain of death.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The articles marked with an asterisk do not appear in the Gorges set, and were presumably those which Ralegh added to suit the conditions of his expedition or which he borrowed from other precedents.

[2] Cape Finisterre.

[3] Cape St. Vincent.

[4] MS. Cape Devert.

[5] MS. 'loofe.'

[6] Corporal of the field meant the equivalent of an A.D.C. or orderly.

[7] This appears to be the first known mention of a court-martial being provided for officially at sea.

[8] This pa.s.sage is corrupt in the MS. and is restored from Wimbledon's Article 32, _post_, p. 58.

[9] This was the Spanish practice. There is no known mention of it earlier in the English service.

[10] Gorges's article about 'Musket-arrows' is here omitted by Ralegh.

[11] _I.e._ 'noisy confusion.' Shakspeare has 'I heard a bustling rumour like a fray.'

[12] The corresponding article in Gorges's set (_Stowe MSS._ 426) is as follows:--

'No man shall board any enemy's ship but by order from a princ.i.p.al commander, as the admiral, vice-admiral or rear-admiral, for that by one ship's boarding all the fleet may be engaged to their dishonour or loss.

But every ship that is under the lee of an enemy shall labour to recover the wind if the admiral endeavour it. But if we find an enemy to leeward of us the whole fleet shall follow the admiral, vice-admiral or other leading ship within musket-shot of the enemy, giving so much liberty to the leading ship, as after her broadside is delivered she may stay and trim her sails. Then is the second ship to give her side and the third, fourth, and rest, which done they shall all tack as the first ship and give the other side, keeping the enemy under a perpetual volley. This you must do upon the windermost ship or ships of the enemy, which you shall either batter in pieces, or force him or them to bear up and so entangle them, and drive them foul one of another to their utter confusion.' For the evidence that this may have been drawn up and used as early as 1578, and consequently in the Armada campaign, see Introductory Note, _supra_, pp. 34-5.

[13] 'Sergeant-major' at this time was the equivalent to our 'chief of the staff' or 'adjutant-general.' In the fleet orders issued by the Earl of Ess.e.x for the Azores expedition in 1597 there was a similar article, which Ralegh was accused of violating by landing at Fayal without authority; it ran as follows:--'No captain of any ship nor captain of any company if he be severed from the fleet shall land without direction from the general or some other princ.i.p.al commander upon pain of death,'

&c. Ralegh met the charge by pleading he was himself a 'princ.i.p.al commander.'--Purchas, iv. 1941.

[14] This expression has not been found elsewhere. It may stand for 'chap merchant,' _i.e._ 'barter-merchant.'

PART III

CAROLINGIAN

I. VISCOUNT WIMBLEDON, 1625

II. THE EARL OF LINDSEY, 1635

THE ATTEMPT TO APPLY LAND FORMATIONS TO THE FLEET, 1625

INTRODUCTORY

From the point of view of command perhaps the most extraordinary naval expedition that ever left our sh.o.r.es was that of Sir Edward Cecil, Viscount Wimbledon, against Cadiz in 1625. Every flag officer both of the fleet and of the squadrons was a soldier. Cecil himself and the Earl of Ess.e.x, his vice-admiral, were Low Country colonels of no great experience in command even ash.o.r.e, and Lord Denbigh, the rear-admiral, was a n.o.bleman of next to none at all. Even Cecil's captain, who was in effect 'captain of the fleet,' was Sir Thomas Love, a sailor of whose service nothing is recorded, and the only seaman of tried capacity who held a staff appointment was Ess.e.x's captain, Sir Samuel Argall. It was probably due to this recrudescence of military influence in the navy that we owe the first attempt to establish a regular order of battle since the days of Henry VIII.

These remarkable orders appear to have been an after-thought, for they were not proposed until a day or two after the fleet had sailed. The first orders issued were a set of general instructions, 'for the better government of the fleet' dated October 3, when the fleet was still at Plymouth.

They were, it will be seen, on the traditional lines. Those used by Ralegh are clearly the precedent upon which they were drawn, and in particular the article relating to engaging an enemy's fleet follows closely that recommended by Gorges, with such modifications as the squadronal organisation of a large fleet demanded. On October 9, the day the fleet got to sea, a second and more condensed set of 'Fighting Instructions' was issued, which is remarkable for the modification it contains of the method of attack from windward.[1] For instead of an attack by squadrons it seems to contemplate the whole fleet going into action in succession after the leading ship, an order which has the appearance of another advance towards the perfected line.

Two days later however the fleet was becalmed, and Cecil took the opportunity of calling a council to consider a wholly new set of 'Fighting Instructions' which had been drafted by Sir Thomas Love.

This step we are told was taken because Cecil considered the original articles provided no adequate order of battle such as he had been accustomed to ash.o.r.e. The fleet had already been divided into three squadrons, the Dutch contingent forming a fourth, but beyond this, we are told, nothing had been done 'about the form of a sea fight.' Under the new system it will be seen each of the English squadrons was to be further divided into three sub-squadrons of nine ships, and these apparently were to sail three deep, as in Drake's parade formation of 1588, and were to 'discharge and fall off three and three as they were filed in the list,' or order of battle. That is, instead of the ships of each squadron attacking in succession as the previous orders had enjoined, they were to act in groups of three, with a reserve in support. The Dutch, it was expressly provided, were not to be bound by these orders, but were to be free 'to observe their own order and method of fighting.' What this was is not stated, but there can be no doubt that the reference is to the boarding tactics which the Dutch, in common with all continental navies, continued to prefer to the English method of first overpowering the enemy with the guns. This proviso, in view of the question as to what country it was that first perfected a single line ahead, should be borne in mind.

As appears from the minutes of the council of war, printed below, Love's revolutionary orders met with strong opposition. Still, so earnest was Cecil in pressing them, and so well conceived were many of the articles that they were not entirely rejected, but were recognised as a counsel of perfection, which, though not binding, was to be followed as near as might be. Their effect upon the officers, or some of them, was that they understood the 'order of fight' to be as follows:--'The several admirals to be in square bodies' (that is, each flag officer would command a division or sub-squadron formed in three ranks of three files), 'and to give their broadsides by threes and so fall off. The rear-admiral to stand for a general reserve, and not to engage himself without great cause.'[2] The confusion, however, must have been considerable and the difference of opinion great as to how far the new orders were binding; for the 'Journal of the Vanguard'

merely notes that a council was called on the 11th 'wherein some things were debated touching the well ordering of the fleet,' and with this somewhat contemptuous entry the subject is dismissed.

Still it must be said that on the whole these orders are a great advance over anything we know of in Elizabethan times, and particularly in the careful provisions for mutual support they point to a happy reversion to the ideas which De Chaves had formulated, and which the Elizabethans had too drastically abandoned.

FOOTNOTES: