INTRODUCTION

Summary

“Our historians,” said Sir J. Knox Laughton at the recent International Historical Congress, “have considered, and therefore people in general have considered, that the navy is merely an engine for fighting battles.” That is an attitude which it is becoming increasingly easy to avoid, because its fallacy is being ever increasingly exposed; though, until our present standard naval history is superseded, there remains in being a monumental example of that prime fallacy.

It is that fallacy, or rather, that lack of true proportion, which it is particularly necessary to avoid in this study of the Navy of the Restoration. The Restoration period is one of vital interest and importance regarding the development of the Navy as a self-containing, independent service, and as a part of the nation. It is not too much to say that it is during this period that there is the first dawn of a service consciousness—esprit de corps. That “very calme and good temper” with which the fleet as a whole took any and every political change that came along was not mere stolid indifference, nor a stupid dull obedience resulting from thick brains; there was as much live interest in questions of the day in the Navy as in the Army, but it scarcely ever became so uncontrolled as to gain the upper hand of discipline; though once, in February, 1660, it rose perilously near the danger point.