Richard Blakemore and Elaine Murphy’s, The British Civil Wars at Sea: 1638-1653 continues a trend to revise the existing historiography of early modern British sea power by moving away from the traditional view involving “momentous swings between success,” such as the purported triumphs of the Elizabethan navy, and failure as epitomized by purported Stuart navy stasis, and a nationalist view of “an inexorable but sometimes interrupted progress toward a nineteenth-century apogee” of global British naval power. (3, 29) The authors instead focus on the neglected story of the intense interaction between land and naval forces during the British Civil Wars and how that “internecine strife . . spurred on efforts to expand and improve naval forces,” sometimes fitfully and gradually, such that by the 1653 the new ships, organization, dockyards, and most crucially the “’fiscal naval state’” enabled the Commonwealth navy to extend its reach globally and “place pressure on foreign powers such as the Dutch, French, Spanish and Portuguese” navies in a manner unthinkable in the 1630s as demonstrated by British naval impotency against the Dutch and Admiral Maarten Tromp in 1639 during the Battle of Scheveningen. (3-4, 177)
Dr. Elaine Murphy is a professor at the University of Plymouth and has published extensively on British naval history. She characterizes this book as the “first comprehensive study of this period at sea.” (YouTube interview) The authors establish three main objectives at the outset of the work. The first is “to provide an overview of the war at sea” during the British civil wars “that takes into account the wider nature of the conflict within the British Isles,” to include interconnected warfare in England, Ireland and Scotland where naval forces of each belligerent transported materials and troops, blockaded ports, relieved sieges, raided commerce and took prizes, and made substantial investments in maritime forces. (174) The authors claim to fill a “scholarly gap” as most histories of the British Civil War have focused almost exclusively on land warfare. (3) In addition, their other objectives are to “assess the impact of maritime activity on the course of the wars; and to understand the consequences of the civil wars for wider British naval and imperial history.” (174) The authors accomplish all three of their primary objectives in this readable and deeply researched book.
The first chapter sets the stage for understanding the role of naval forces in the British Civil Wars with a highly readable account of the nature and limitations of early modern naval warfare such as its extensive reliance on private initiative in the form of commerce raiding, privateers issued letters of marque and reprisal, piracy, tactics, the development of fast frigates, the growth of state navies, and the constant challenge of financing a navy. This financial challenge is epitomized in the 1630s by the perennial royal demand for Ship Money imposed across the land that ultimately created divisive constitutional issues that played a role in undermining the reign of Charles I. (13-15, 30-31) The authors develop the important point that early modern naval power must be viewed as “’maritime potential’” which considers both the steady expansion of British merchant fleets during the period as well as naval developments, because as emphasized throughout the book, merchant ships were most often armed and contributed to the war efforts of all belligerents through a war of attrition. Hugo Grotius and John Selden’s competing concepts of maritime sovereignty are also introduced which support the authors’ later arguments that Charles I, the parliamentarians and Commonwealth all sought to stridently exercise such maritime sovereignty as characterized in these emerging concepts of international law. (24-25, 31)
The second chapter conveys how in 1642 Parliament wrest control of the bulk of the navy Charles I had built with his controversial Ship Money often with the active support of not only senior officers, but also junior officers such as pursers, surgeons, gunners, boatswain mates, and even common seamen. The authors maintain, for example, that the Earl of Warwick who assumed command for parliament, was not only supported by most naval captains, but also was popular among seamen and “the decision of these sailors to support Warwick secured the control of most of the royal fleet for parliament, even before the civil war in England had begun in earnest.” (50, 53) In fact, sailors seized control of two ships from captains who were hesitant to side with Parliament at the outset of the Civil Wars. (51) This discussion of the agency of sailors and the extensive discussion of the mutiny of 1648 in Chapter 6 are based in part on the authors’ prior research in the social history of seamen. Dr. Blakemore has frequently published, while a professor at the University of Reading, on the social history of British sailors during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and his prior work is cited to support the discussion of the 1648 mutiny for example. (e.g., 140, n.74) Similarly, Dr. Murphy’s current social history research focuses on the experiences of women with the Royal Navy in the 17th Century.
The authors adeptly frame the naval engagements of the Civil War by noting that the defection of the standing navy to Parliament forced the royalists, Irish confederates, and Scottish covenanters to build naval forces, and organizations nearly from scratch which meant there would be no dramatic set piece, large scale naval engagements; rather, the war at sea would be characterized by commerce raiding, protection of sea lines of communication, the transport of military resources from the continent, and the support of coastal garrisons against sieges by naval supply which was often decisive in such as in Drogheda, Limerick and other ports. (56)
The structure of the book is largely chronological in chapters 3-4 and 6-7 with a focus on tracing the origin, development, and engagement of the better documented naval forces of Parliament with descriptions of the engagements and challenges of the opposing naval forces interspersed. However, Chapter 5 departs somewhat from this chronological approach to describe in detail the resourcefulness of the “Royalist, Confederate, and Scottish Naval Efforts, 1642-1653” as the chapter title announces. This chapter and the continuation of these concepts elsewhere are one of the more original achievements and strengths of the book. The authors painstakingly reconstruct the capabilities, engagements, organization, leadership, and impact of the navies of the royalist, Irish confederates, and Scottish covenanters based on scarce and scattered primary source material and often unpublished work. This was a difficult task as the records of these navies for the most part have not survived so their story had to be piecemeal assembled from hostile parliamentarian sources, depositions in prize cases, and other sources. (108) The authors note that these forces were never able to seriously threaten parliamentary naval power; however, they inflicted considerable damage on commerce, and just as importantly forced Parliament to “develop and deploy substantial resources to eliminate the danger they posed,” and in particular protect London’s crucial trade which was the engine needed to finance the war at sea and on land. (84, 128)
In sum, Blakemore and Murphy provide a readable and comprehensive survey of the naval dimension of the British Civil Wars and the often effective naval efforts of royalist, confederate and Scottish naval forces – both topics have often been omitted from other histories. Further, they painstakingly piece together disparate sources to paint a vivid picture of the royalist, confederate, and covenanter navies. Moreover, they provide useful Appendices, an extensive bibliography, and robust citations enabling others to build on this foundational work to further advance the field.
