We are not in any doubt at the present moment of at least one meaning of the words. Had not our fleet instantly asserted its supremacy at the very outbreak of the great war with Germany we should have found it very difficult to get along at all, either with the war or with "business as usual". Does everybody realize, even now, that the war forced us to try to do two stupendous things at once—to carry on the biggest struggle in our history and to keep going the biggest trade and commerce in the world? It is quite certain that if we had not been able to maintain our "ruling of the waves", we should soon have been in a state of commercial collapse.

But in the old days our claim to the empire of the sea was based on other considerations, and though nothing more important was at stake than what may be termed a question of precedence, our naval commanders, even in those periods when our navy was by no means at its best or strongest, were always prepared to enforce their claims by instant resort to arms. Strange to say, it is only since our great victory off Cape Trafalgar that we have abrogated a claim to an extensive watery kingdom, extending from Cape Van Staten in Norway to Finisterre in Spain, which for many hundred years we had fought for, generally maintained, and asserted in the most imperious manner. According to old writers on the subject, even the Saxon kings had claimed the kingship of the "Narrow Seas", which then probably meant what is now the English Channel. This, in the time of our Norman kings, was actually a channel through their dominions, and when, by his marriage to the daughter of the Duke of Aquitaine, Henry II eventually succeeded to that duchy, and extended his dominions to the south-east corner of the Bay of Biscay, he naturally felt he had a claim to rule the seas still farther to the south.

"The striking of the sail" (that is, lowering it) "is one of the ancientest prerogatives of the Crown of England," says an old writer, "and in the second year of King John, it was declared at Hastings by that Monarch, for a law and custom of the sea, that if a Lieutenant on any voyage, being ordained by the King, encounter upon the sea any ship or vessel, laden or unladen, that will not strike or vail their bonnets[31] at the commandment of the Lieutenant of the King, or of the Admiral of the King, or his Lieutenant, but will fight against them of the fleet, that if they can be taken they shall be reputed as enemies; their ships, vessels, and goods taken and forfeited as the goods of enemies; and that the common people being in the same, be chastised by imprisonment of their bodies." The same writer states that this claim was formally recognized and accepted in the twenty-sixth year of the reign of Edward I (1297) "by the Agents and Ambassadors of Genoa, Catalonia, Spain, Almaigne, Zealand, Holland, Friesland, Denmark, Norway, and divers other places in the Empire, and by all the States and Princes of Europe".

There do not seem to have been any definite limitations to our watery kingdom laid down: it is sometimes convenient not to be too precise. But the earliest claim was usque ad finem terrae, which might mean to the "Land's End", to "Finisterre" in Brittany, to "Finisterre" in Spain, or "to the ends of the earth"—all very different things. Certainly the Spanish Finisterre was regarded as the southern boundary in the seventeenth century, for in the Rev. H. Teonge's Diary, when chaplain in the Royal Oak, we find the following entry written after leaving Gibraltar for England: "13 May, 1679—An indifferent good gale, and fayre weather, and at twelve wee are in the King of England's dominions (Deo gratia), that is wee are past Cape Finister and entering on the Bay of Biscay".

Monarch after monarch asserted his right to be saluted by foreigners "taking in their flag and striking their topsail" when within "His Majesty's Seas", and the Protector Cromwell made the same claim on behalf of the nation. Our men-of-war had also to be saluted in the same way by our merchant-ships. Any neglect used to be summarily punished. Captain Pennington of H.M.S. Vauntguard notes in his Journal that on 6th September, 1633, he had "in the Bilbowes" (that is, fastened by the legs to an iron bar running along the deck) "Richard Eastwood, Master of a Sandwich hoye, for not striking his topsayle"! He does not say how long he kept him there, or whether he handed him over to the civil power to be prosecuted by the Admiralty.

Not only the sea but "all that therein is" was considered the property of the English monarchs. Foreigners were not allowed to fish without permission, for which they generally had to pay. This was relaxed under Henry VI, but reasserted later, and the enforcement of payment from Dutch fishermen for fishing in the North Sea was one of the prime causes of the wars between Holland and England in the time of the Commonwealth and of Charles II. For the Dutch thought they were strong enough to wrest the trident of Neptune from our grasp. They nearly succeeded, but not quite, and we find William III asserting our claim to sovereignty afloat just as particularly and definitely as any of his predecessors.

The officers in command of royal ships or fleets were not expected to refer the matter to higher authority, but were to take action at once, and made no bones about doing so. Innumerable instances may be quoted—the only difficulty is to pick out the most interesting cases. Nor were they respectors of persons. When the gloomy and saturnine Philip of Spain arrived in British waters, on his way to espouse our Queen Mary, he came with great pomp and circumstance with a fleet of 100 sail, flaunting the gaudy flag of Spain even in the Straits of Dover. Lord Howard of Effingham, sent with a guard of honour of 28 men-of-war to meet the Prince Consort elect, had no idea of allowing that even in this very special case, and, seeing no disposition on the part of the Spanish fleet to pay the customary salute, lost no time in sending over a gentle reminder in the shape of a round shot.

The hint was taken, and not till then did Howard go on board to pay his respects to King Philip. Not many years later a Spanish fleet which was on its way to Flanders, to bring Anne of Austria back to Spain, tried it on again on entering Plymouth. Here they found Admiral Hawkins flying his flag on board the Jesus of Lubeck—a ship, by the way, that had taken part in the Armada fight. Hawkins was not slow in sending the usual reminder humming through the Spanish admiral's rigging, and, as he still hesitated to "take in his flag", a second messenger came crashing into his ship's side. Still trying to avoid paying the usual compliment, he went personally on board the Jesus to argue the point. He might have spared his pains. All the satisfaction he got was a peremptory order to clear out of our seas within twelve hours as a penalty for his rudeness to the Queen.

Again, off Calais, the French ambassador was made to render the proper salute to our admiral of the Narrow Seas, who gave orders to Sir Jerome Turner, his second in command, to "shoot and strike him", should he refuse to do so. In 1605 Sir William Monson had a slight difficulty with a Dutch admiral at the same place. The Dutchmen dipped his flag three times, but Monson insisted that he should pay the ordained salute and take it in altogether, or fight the matter out on the spot. The salute was paid.

Even in the days of James I, when our fleet was in somewhat a poor way, its captains insisted as firmly as ever on the customary honour being paid to our flag. Captain Best of the Guardland sends in a report about two Dutch men-of-war off Aberdeen, and says: "The Admiral of the Holland men-of-war hath his flag in her main-top, but giveth it out that he will not take it in for all the Commanders of His Majesty's ships. Forty years is within the compass of my knowledge, and I never knew but that all nations forbear to spread their flags in the presence of the King's ships. That custom shall not be lost by me. When I come into the road and anchor by him, if the Admiral will not take in his flag when I shall require it, I will shoot it down, though it grow into a quarrel." The last expression is delightful. There certainly would have been the makings of a "quarrel". This was in 1623.

Captain Richard Plumleigh took an even wider view of the obligations of foreigners to pay honour to the English flag. His idea was that they had to do so even in foreign harbours. He writes to the Admiralty on 23rd September, 1631: "It was my fortune to speak with one of these two merchants from whom the French demanded their flag".[119]
[120] That is to say that the French had what he regarded as the impertinence to expect that they should have "struck" their topsails to them. He goes on: "They shot at the English some dozen shots and received from the English the like entertainment, with the loss of one man, by which they sat down and gave over their pretences.... It hath always been my principal aim to preserve His Majesty's Naval honnour both in his own seas and abroad, and for my part I think that it were better that both I and the ship under my charge were at the bottom of the sea, than that I should live to see a Frenchman or any other nation wear a flag aloft in His Majesty's seas and suffer them to pass unfought withal.... I dare engage my head that with five of H.M. ships I will always clear the way to all French flagmasters, yea, and make them strike to him upon those which they call their own seas.... This summer I was at the Texel in Holland, where come in divers French, and though the Hollanders bade me domineer at home in England, yet I forebore not to fetch down their flag with my ordnance." Evidently the gallant captain had strong views on the subject, and did not hide them under a bushel. But he was not alone in his determination to uphold the "honnour of the flag" at all costs.

Pennington, a notable naval officer of that period, has several incidents of a similar kind to relate in his Journals on board H.M.S. Convertive,[32] Vauntguard, and Swiftsure, between 1631 and 1636. He tells us that sailing in the first-mentioned ship, together with the Assurance and a couple of small vessels known as "whelps"—in search of "Rovers and Pyrates"—he met a fleet of eleven Dutch men-of-war in Dover Roads, "whereof two were soe stoute that they would not so much as settle their topp-sayles untill wee made a shott at each of them, soe—they doinge their dutyes—wee stood on our course". A few days later "There came up 4 Dunkerke men-of-warr unto us, who in all submissive wise, with their topp-sayles and top-gallant sayles lowrd upon the capp, saluted us accordinge to the custome of the sea"!

All this seems summary and drastic enough for anybody, so that it is curious to find the celebrated Sir Walter Raleigh not long before lamenting British decadence in this respect. "But there's no state grown in haste but that of the United Provinces, and especially in their sea forces.... For I myself may remember when one ship of Her Majesty's would have made forty Hollanders strike sail and come to an anchor. They did not then dispute De Mare Libero, but readily acknowledged the English to be Domini Maris Britannici. That we are less powerful than we were I do hardly believe it; for, although we have not at this time 135 ships belonging to the subject of 500 tons each ship, as it is said we had in the twenty-fourth year of Queen Elizabeth; at which time also, upon a general view and muster, there were found in England of able men fit to bear arms, 1,172,000, yet are our merchant ships now far more warlike and better appointed than they were, and the Royal Navy double as strong as it then was."

Possibly Raleigh's words had borne fruit in increased vigilance on the part of the captains of English men-of-war. But the Hollanders were determined to put the matter to the test. Possibly they thought that as there was no King of England after the martyrdom of Charles I there could be no king of the English seas. They began by forbidding their captains to pay the usual salute under pain of death. It was not long before Van Tromp sailed defiantly through Dover Straits with all his flags aloft. He got what he was asking for, a volley of round shot from Robert Blake, who was on the look-out for him, and at once both fleets went for each other "tooth and nail". The Dutch were beaten, but in a second encounter—for by now English and Dutch were openly at war—Blake got the worst of it, and was driven into the Thames to refit. "Tromp meanwhile sailed up and down the Channel as a conqueror, with a broom at his mast-head, thus braving the English navy in those very seas in which she claimed unrivalled sovereignty".[33]

But his triumph was short-lived. The British eventually got the upper hand, and their claims to the sovereignty of their seas were formally admitted by the Dutch in 1654. Once again the question was fought out in the days of Charles II, and once again the Dutch were compelled to agree to strike their sails to even a single ship flying the King's flag. This was in 1674. Not long before the first Dutch War the Swedes also wished to question British rights. In 1647 Captain Owen of the Henrietta Maria, having with him only the Roebuck, a small craft, with a crew of forty-five men all told, was refused the salute by a fleet of three Swedish men-of-war and nine or ten merchant-vessels off the Isle of Wight. The usual "weighty arguments" were ignored, and the Swedes got away and anchored in Boulogne Roads. Captain Owen was unable to keep in touch with them, as they had shot away his tiller, but he got into Portsmouth and reported the matter, and the Parliament at once ordered the St. Andrew, Guardland, Convertine, and Mary Rose, which were lying in the Downs, to attend to the matter. Captain Batten, of the first-named ship, who was in command, at once put to sea, and found the Swedes still at anchor off Boulogne, but flying no colours at all. Batten sent for the Swedish commanders to come on board—and they came, but declared that if their flags had been up they would not have taken them in, as they had been expressly ordered not to do so. It was rather a difficult situation. Captain Batten, however, dealt with it by ordering the Swedish vice-admiral to "come with him", and took him back to the Downs. He told the remainder to "run away home". However, they followed the English and their prisoners to the Downs, as their commanders said that they dare not go home without the vice-admiral. The affair was then considered by "the Committee of Lords and Commons for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports", who eventually gave an order for the release of the culprit.

Other nations from time to time attempted to exact salutes from foreign ships in certain places, but apparently without much success. Thus the Spanish demanded that a French fleet under the Duke of Guise when passing Gibraltar in 1622 should strike their flags. The Duke refused, though he said that they had told him that British ships were in the habit of doing so, and he asked Sir E. Herbert to write and ask the Duke of Buckingham whether this was true or not. But Herbert smelt a rat; and though he complied with Guise's request, he wrote: "Be well advised what answer you return, for I believe that he intends that the French king should exact the same acknowledgements on the coasts of this country, which you will never permit, as to the prejudice of the sovereignty that the Kings of England have always kept in the narrow seas." As regards the Mediterranean, it was laid down by James II, to prevent disputes with "the most Christian King",[34] "That whensoever His Majesty's ships of war shall meet any French men-of-war in the Mediterranean, there shall no salutes at all pass on either side". William III's orders were—after the usual directions to make foreigners pay the customary salute in the English seas—"And you are further to take notice, that in Their Majesties' Seas, Their Majesties' Ships are in no wise to strike to any; and that in other parts, no ship of Their Majesties' is to strike her flag or top-sail to any foreigner unless such foreigner shall have first struck."

A final incident must bring this chapter to a close. It indicates a slightly farther step towards the evacuation of the original position which we had taken up. This was in the year 1730. Lieutenant Thomas Smith, R.N., happened to be in temporary command of H.M.S. Gosport, which was lying in Plymouth Sound. In came a French frigate, which, either on[123]
[124] account of ignorance or of design, omitted to strike her top-sails. Smith, having so many precedents to guide him, though possibly not very recent ones, sent the usual intimation by hulling her with a cannon-ball. It was at a time of profound peace, and on the demand of the French ambassador he was tried and dismissed the Service. Plumleigh and Pennington must have turned in their graves! But he was re-appointed to the Navy on the very next day, with the rank of captain, and for the rest of his life was known as "Tom of Ten Thousand".

The old regulations remained in force up to the end of the eighteenth century, but were omitted from those that were published about the Trafalgar period. The orders given by William III for guidance of officers when outside English seas were made universal, so that for some unknown reason we finally abandoned our claims at the very time we were in a better position to enforce them than we had ever been before. The old system rather partook of the way the proverbial Irishman in search of "divarsion" asks "if any gintleman will be good enough to thread on the tail of his coat", but it had its advantages. Had it been now in force it is practically certain that some German commander would have challenged it long before the German fleet had reached its present proportions, after which there would have been no German fleet. Again, there could have been no difficulties with neutral nations about contraband or conditional contraband. As the whole sea from Norway to Finisterre would have been recognized as British, no one could have disputed our right to close it to anybody or anything that suited our book. When it comes to fighting, other nations do not thank us for having played "Uriah Heep" beforehand. It has possibly induced them to fight instead of settling the dispute in some other way.

"Striking the sail" is now a thing of the past, but it is customary for merchant-vessels to "dip" their flags to kings' ships. As for men-of-war, they no longer exchange salutes of this kind when they meet at sea.