by James J. Tritten

Anglo-Dutch Wars

The army-dominated English Commonwealth government followed the Dutch lead in mandating navy escorts for merchant ships. The Convoy Act of 1650 established a requirement for navy protection of shipping which eventually resulted in confrontation with French and Moslem privateers and Holland. During the subsequent Anglo-Dutch Wars (1652-1674) many of the navy engagements were fought against Dutch convoys.

Three of Oliver Cromwell’s best army colonels were asked to serve as sea-going generals to lead the navy. Cromwell distrusted the monarchist tendencies of existing serving navy officers and, of course, he himself came from the army. The massing of so many cannons at sea [1] allowed for new tactical opportunities, recognized in revisions to tactical procedures of the day. Early cannon were notoriously inaccurate, hence the earliest doctrine was to amass offensive firepower close together in line ahead so that a devastating broadside could be delivered. If artillery became the “king of battle” ashore, the broadside became the sine qua non of battle afloat. Just as firepower bred linear tactics ashore, it led to similar developments at sea.

In addition to tactical improvement, the seagoing generals also recognized the need to improve battlespace management. They were to provide some degree of order to the general chaos of early privateering sailing ship tactics–essentially “mimic the leader” where captains watched and mimicked the maneuvers of the leader (e.g., if he closed to engage, they all did). The English seagoing generals developed the ideas of a well-developed plan to manage as many as a hundred ships in battle, many of which were still privateers, as well as the need to experiment with tactics and the overall battle plan before engaging in combat. The context for most battles was defense and attack of convoys.

This period also marked the introduction of a new professional officer corps in England and a centralized organization for the administration of the fleet. England’s gentlemen supported Cromwell’s reform efforts, since they would result in emphasis placed upon maritime forces rather than the already powerful army. [2] Local seagoing commanders began to issue written instructions for their subordinates starting in 1636. [3] Parliament issued comprehensive articles of war in 1652. In 1653, a fleet commander promulgated the first comprehensive written doctrine. This written doctrine combined both sailing instructions and fighting instructions in separate but companion volumes. The fighting instructions portion was much shorter than the sailing instructions.

Fighting instructions cannot be studied without concurrent consideration of sailing instructions. The fighting instructions attempted to mass firepower. The commander now had a different command and control problem, since his captains would no longer simply mimic his own behavior–they were required to place their ships in precise positions that required a system of communications for command and control. The signal book was incomplete by itself, however, since if the captain merely acted upon receipt of orders, he might fail to take advantage of a tactical opportunity in the absence of a signal or when signals could not be sent or seen. Doctrinal fighting instructions, thus, served as the understanding of what to do in the absence of other more tactical directives.

The new standing orders were immediately put to the test during three Anglo-Dutch Wars in which: (1), strategically England replaced the Dutch at sea essentially throughout the world; (2), operationally England executed a series of campaigns including several devastating convoy battles, blockades, and the bombardment of the Dutch shoreline; and (3) the seagoing generals more then held their own against the Dutch fleet led by the greatest admirals of the world. The English success was generally due to the massing of superior firepower and refusing to let the Dutch close for boarding. The defeated Dutch, on the other hand, continued to rely on the mêlée and had not yet accepted the primacy of artillery.

The Cromwell-era fighting instructions and other reforms were not repudiated with the dissolution of the Commonwealth. Indeed, the return of the monarchy under Charles II had a beneficial effect upon the essentially untainted fleet that was now commissioned the Royal Navy and provided with a new benefactor at the direct expense of the army. This Royal Navy may have had its origins in the need to protect convoys, but with the combat-proven opportunities provided by artillery and massing, doctrine began to shift to the offensive form of warfare. Simply put, the fleet could be used for other than defensive tasks.

Several different fleet commanders issued doctrinal sailing and fighting instructions in various forms. These instructions were anything but inflexible and were issued as guides for action unlikely to be scrupulously followed in the heat of battle. Revisions to the fighting instructions and new instructions reflecting combat lessons learned were repeatedly issued during the wars in 1654, 1655, 1666, 1672, and for the first time as an integrated whole in 1672-73. [4] These revised fighting instructions allowed for tactical flexibility on the part of the local commander–to include mêlée tactics and the breaking of the line. A frequently overlooked, but important, function of the fighting and sailing instructions was to ensure that commanders acted more as components of an integrated fleet whose purpose was political rather than as entrepreneurs whose motivation was the pursuit of prize money.

[1] . The numbers of cannon at sea during major fleet engagements is an often overlooked point. For example, at the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), the gun power of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson’s fleet exceeded that massed by Napoleon Bonaparte at Waterloo (1815) by a factor of six. See John Keegan, The Price of Admiralty: The Evolution of Naval Warfare, New York, NY: Viking Penguin, Inc., 1988, p. 47.

[2] . Captain Stephen Wentworth Roskill, RN (Ret.), The Strategy of Sea Power: Its Development and Application, [based upon the Lees-Knowles Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge, 1961] London, UK: Collins, 1962, p. 39.

[3] . “Fighting instructions, 1636,” John B. Hattendorf, et. al., British Naval Documents: 1204-1960, Hants, UK: Scolar Press [for the Navy Records Society], 1993, p. 160-161.

[4] . Historians are constantly refining these dates as they discover additional materials. These dates serve to illustrate the point that doctrinal development was on going and constant.