Heart of Oak Empire of the Seas: How the Navy Forged the Modern World


Heart of Oak

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On a blustery November day four centuries ago, the English were preparing

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themselves for one of the greatest national celebrations ever seen.

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Beneath the dome of St Paul's they gathered to celebrate

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their tiny nation's victory over the world's greatest superpower, Spain.

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On the walls hung the captured ensigns of the Spanish fleet, that was even then being dashed

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on the rocky shores of Scotland and Ireland.

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The year was 1588...

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..and the battle was the Armada.

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Today's celebrations mark the centenary of the Fleet Air Arm, and it still seems

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like the most natural thing in the world to devote a great cathedral to the Royal Navy,

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a tradition that began on that autumn day 400 years ago.

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1588 marked a turning point in our national story.

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Victory over the Armada transformed us

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into a seafaring nation and it sparked a myth

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that would one day become a reality, that the nation's new destiny,

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the source of her future wealth and power, lay out there on the oceans.

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This series tells the story of how the Navy expanded from a tiny force

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to become the most complex industrial enterprise on Earth.

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Of how the need to organise it laid the foundations of our civil service and our economy.

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Of how it transformed our culture, our sense of national identity

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and our democracy.

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It's a story of heroism and innovation,

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but also of disasters and dark chapters in our history.

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It's the remarkable story of a 400-year struggle, fought at sea

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and on land, of how the Navy drove Britain into the modern age and changed the world.

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-Clear the hatch!

-England's extraordinary journey

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from a third rate nation to global superpower

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began on a clear October day 20 years before the Armada.

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OK, bring on the beer.

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Not that anything so grand was on the minds of the sailors

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who scurried to and fro in the old harbour in Plymouth,

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making a small fleet of six ships ready for sea.

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The gangplank groaned as last minute supplies were brought on board.

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Large barrels of fresh water and beer and even whinnying goats, and chickens as well.

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When anything was brought on board they were lashed down

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to the bulkheads in expectation of a bumpy passage.

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The two men in command were cousins.

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On that fine autumn day, they were thinking not about making war but about making money.

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The older of the two was John Hawkins who, at the age of just 35,

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was already Plymouth's leading merchant venturer.

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The younger was his cousin,

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a poor relation who'd grown up with Hawkins, 27-year-old Francis Drake.

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They were leaving behind a poor, insignificant town on the edge of a poor, insignificant country

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which itself clung to the fringes of Europe.

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But this place had one thing going for it - this,

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one of the finest natural harbours on Earth, gateway to the Atlantic and, beyond that, the New World.

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First discovered only 60 years before,

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the New World of the Americas offered wealth beyond imagining -

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if they could get there and bring it back, that is.

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A round trip of 12,000 miles.

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No mean feat in the 1560s.

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Stand by. Two, six!

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Two, six! Two, six!

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Take a break.

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-Is that halfway?

-Yeah.

-You're kidding me!

-No!

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This wonderful replica of the Tudor ship, The Matthew,

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gives me a strong sense of what life might have been like on board.

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Sailing one of these you're just so struck by the ingenuity, aren't you?

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The sort of combination of wood, rope, bit of metal,

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and you can sail round the other side of the world.

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Among the profit-hungry investors in the venture was the Queen herself.

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She'd lent two ships, the Jesus of Lubeck and the Minion.

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Both were old, spent and rotten, as were most of the vessels in her tiny navy.

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The crew, too, would get their share of the booty.

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All were young. Some were just boys, among them Hawkins' nephew Paul

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and the 13-year-old Miles Philips,

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whose journal relates the terrors of frequent storms and leaking hulls.

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There were no creature comforts for those on board either.

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The single-minded Hawkins made his men sleep on deck.

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Because every inch of hold space was reserved for the cargo that would make the cash.

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On that expedition, the cargo was a human one.

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Drake and Hawkins have the terrible distinction of being the first Englishmen

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to bind African men, women and children in chains

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and transport them in the holds of ships like this.

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They were slave traders.

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Six weeks out of Plymouth, they picked up 500 slaves in Guinea then headed west.

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Few Englishmen had ever made this journey.

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England had been slow to spot the opportunities of the New World and the Spanish had got their first.

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Now Spain jealously guarded a lucrative American empire stretching from South America

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through the Caribbean to Mexico and further north.

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Drake and Hawkins just wanted a little slice of the action.

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Nip in, sell a few slaves and return home with a hold full of silver.

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The problem was that the Spanish had banned foreigners from trading within their lucrative empire.

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Hawkins had managed it once or twice before and got away with it.

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He hoped to do so again. But this time would be different.

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In the Caribbean they traded their human cargo for silver, gold and pearls, then turned for home.

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But it was hurricane season.

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Storms drove them to San Juan on the coast of Mexico,

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where a powerful Spanish fleet first promised them safe passage

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then decided to teach them a violent lesson.

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In the fight that followed, Hawkins lost three of his ships,

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including the Jesus of Lubeck and 200 men killed or captured.

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He managed to escape on the Minion,

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and with him was the 13-year-old Miles Philips,

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who watched what happened to the prisoners.

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"They took our men ashore," he wrote,

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"and hung them up by their arms until blood burst out from their fingers' ends."

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And the moment of personal tragedy for Hawkins -

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he realised that his nephew Paul was among them.

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Disease and famine followed and by the time they limped home

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fewer than 20 men were left alive aboard the Minion.

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But, for the survivors, this disaster acted

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not as a deterrent but as a spur to action.

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The experience marked Drake and Hawkins for the rest of their lives.

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Neither would ever forgive the Spanish for their treachery,

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and they threw themselves into a bitter, personal crusade against Spain.

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It was fuelled by the heady mix of a lust for cash, religious zealotry

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and a desire for personal revenge.

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In time, this crusade would become a national enterprise

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and in doing so it would forge a new idea of Englishness.

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But if England's seafarers were to have any chance of catching up with Spain,

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they would need better ships to do it.

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Hawkins' answer was the race-built galleon,

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his radical breakthrough in warship design,

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preserved in these original drawings.

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By using maths and geometry instead of rule of thumb,

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by cutting down high decks and by streamlining hulls,

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Hawkins produced the fastest ships of their kind anywhere in the world.

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The first was built in 1570 at the Queen's dockyard in Deptford.

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More were to follow.

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With greater space for guns, they were perfectly designed for war.

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But 20 race-built galleons, the most the Tudor state could afford,

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would not be enough on their own.

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Hawkins landed a job on the Navy Board, the committee that ran the Queen's modest fleet.

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And, in 1582, the board commissioned a series of extraordinary surveys

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preserved here at the National Archives.

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I've read about this but never seen it before.

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This is a list of every ship in England compiled under Hawkins' leadership.

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And as you can see, it's broken up by county.

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Here Norfolk, Suffolk, absolutely meticulously written down. It's beautiful.

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Every single ship, with the tonnage here, so these ones are St Mary, the Solomon, 200 tonnes.

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Absolutely incredible.

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As we go further on, here, they didn't just list the ships,

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they list the masters and then the number of mariners

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and seamen there are as well for each port.

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So here we go. In Cornwall, there are 108 masters,

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626 mariners and 1,184 seamen.

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So precise. Incredible.

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This information is being gathered centrally in London at the beck and call of the Tudor state.

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It's actually very moving seeing the names of people that lived all those centuries ago.

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Once you have a list like this, when war comes, when there's a national emergency,

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you can knock on the door of men like John Cooper and Peter Dolomore

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and say, "Right, mate, you're coming in the Navy to protect the country."

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It does make you wonder whether men like William Bennett, William Mort

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from Littleham, whether they end up fighting against the Spanish Armada.

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And this is just fantastic. You get right to the end.

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The total number of mariners available to the Tudor state,

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16,259.

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Men that could be mobilised to protect little England

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against the greatest superpower in the world.

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Drake, meanwhile, was taking his revenge on Spain in a much more direct fashion.

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On an April day in 1587, the residents of Cadiz woke to the sound of gunfire.

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By the end of the day, over 30 Spanish ships lay at the bottom of the harbour

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and Drake's fleet had sailed away with holds full of treasure.

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It was the culmination of a ten-year pillaging spree

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that had seen Drake circumnavigate the globe,

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attack Spanish colonies and steal their loot.

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Belligerent, venal, a peerless seafarer,

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he was Protestant England's new hero.

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In Catholic Spain, he was anything but.

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Standing here, looking at it from the Spanish point of view,

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the English appear little different from Vikings.

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Men who came from the north in ships bent on plunder and destruction, to whom nothing was sacred.

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The most infamous of all was Drake,

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still hated, still known as El Draque, The Dragon.

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And now The Dragon had pushed the King of Spain

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to take his own terrible revenge on Drake and England.

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That revenge came in July 1588.

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When the Armada appeared off England's coast,

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one eye witness wrote that the ocean groaned under their weight.

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It had taken Spain three years and a titanic amount of silver to assemble it,

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while the English fleet had been mobilised in just three months.

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The battle raged for several days.

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But the leadership of men like Drake and Hawkins had given the English a decisive edge.

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People have tended to attribute victory over the Spanish Armada

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to the courage of the English sailors

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or the intervention of divine wind.

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But the Spanish fought equally bravely,

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and at different stages of the campaign the wind favoured both sides.

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The real reason is a lot less glamorous, it's the inspired organisation of Hawkins.

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He ensured that England had a fleet of fast, manoeuvrable ships,

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each of which carried something like three times the weight in armament of its Spanish equivalent.

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He laid the foundations for modern naval warfare,

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bringing ships, men and cannon together

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in a decisive combination.

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So when the great and the good arrived in their finery at St Paul's on that day in November 1588,

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they were celebrating not just a victory,

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but the beginning of a new future.

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The Queen, as one author wrote, was carried in a golden chariot

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through her city of London in robes of triumph...

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while the still bloody heads of Catholic traitors,

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executed for praying for the Armada's success,

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stared down from spikes nearby.

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The Tudor PR machine went into overdrive.

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A new portrait showed the Queen triumphant, her hand on a globe,

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the Spanish ships crushed on the rocks behind her.

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The scale of the victory expanded the horizons of a small, impoverished nation.

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One commentator wrote,

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"The sea had become a means to seek new worlds,

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"for gold, for praise, for glory."

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# God save our gracious Queen... #

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The English had been given a bright vision of a glittering future,

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of riches beyond imagination,

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of new frontiers that stretched way beyond the shores of tiny England.

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Above all, it was a future that would be played out on the seas,

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by the ships of the Navy and by a new breed of heroic seafarer.

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England's view of its place in the world would never be the same again.

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Guard of Honour, slope arms!

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Right turn!

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The Queen's navy had become a source of national pride as never before

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and there was an insatiable demand for stories of seafaring adventure and discovery.

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A new national identity - aggressive, ambitious and Protestant - was in the making.

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If Hawkins was the architect of that new identity and Drake its firebrand,

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then Richard Hakluyt was its biographer.

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In 1589, the year after the Spanish Armada, he wrote this.

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"The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffics and Discoveries of the English Nation."

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An account of 1,600 years of history

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containing over 250 seafaring adventures by Englishmen.

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A mix of storytelling and myth making.

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Here at the back of this one, for example, we have

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Hawkins's ill-fated trip to the Caribbean, with Miles Philips' gruesome account

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of the barbarous treatment they received at the hands of the Spaniards.

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Here in the next volume we have the accounts of the defeat of the Spanish Armada itself, which ends

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with this incredible paragraph that says, "Thus the magnificent, huge and mighty fleet of the Spaniards

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"in the year 1588 vanished into smoke."

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This was history with a purpose,

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a call to arms to a nation on the verge of a new destiny.

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That destiny could not have been made more obvious

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than it was in a subsequent edition of Hakluyt's work,

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which contained this stunning map.

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This piece of paper is 400 years old.

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It's incredibly beautiful.

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Just look at the detail

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of the world's coastlines and ports and rivers.

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What's so remarkable about this map is that medieval maps show England

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as an insignificant island clinging to the edge of Europe,

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but now England's not at the edge. It's been picked up

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and moved right to the heart of the world.

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It's an image of the world we all recognise, but this map showed it for the first time.

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It was a potent symbol of a nation that now had global ambitions.

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Ships poured out of England,

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bound for the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Baltic.

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Numerous and aggressive, these English pioneers steadily eroded Spanish power

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and founded the colonies that formed the beginnings of Britain's future empire.

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Abroad and at home, business was booming.

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Ports like East Looe in Cornwall now had scores of fishing boats

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trading as far away as North America.

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In these new, confident times they called themselves the western adventurers.

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But economic success brought a new threat that no-one had foreseen.

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Suddenly, whole fleets - 10 or 12 ships - would head out to sea and simply vanish.

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There are reports of ships found floating out there in the Atlantic

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without their crews, who were never seen again.

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On one night in the summer of 1631,

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in the village of Baltimore in southern Ireland,

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over 100 people were removed from their beds,

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leaving the place a ghost town.

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A remarkable letter, written in August 1625, reveals the scale and horror of the problem.

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It's from the mayor of Plymouth, Thomas Seeley, to the king's council.

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"One poor maritime town in Cornwall called Looe hath within ten days

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"lost 80 mariners, bound in fishing voyages to the deeps

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"and there have been taken by the Turks."

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Back then, Turks meant Muslims, and these were in fact pirates from North Africa.

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Barbary pirates.

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They came to these shores and took people as slaves back to North Africa.

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It was a barbarous practice but it was, of course,

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what these West Countrymen had been doing to Africans for decades now.

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Even so, it turned the sea here from a source of wealth and prestige for England

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into a place of terror and slavery.

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The ports and fishing villages, it's said, were filled with

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the pitiful lamentations of the victims' families.

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In the next few years, Devon and Cornwall would lose a fifth of their shipping and crews.

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This extraordinary and little-known episode in English history was to have far-reaching consequences.

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Englishmen were bred on the myth of maritime invincibility.

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But now they had to face hard truths.

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Once the predators, they were now the prey, and people did what they usually did in a crisis.

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They blamed the government. And they weren't entirely wrong.

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Fishing vessel Trevose, fishing vessel Trevose.

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This is protection vessel Tyne calling you channel one-six, over.

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Tyne, Trevose.

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I'm on one of the modern Navy's fishery protection vessels about 30 miles from Cornwall.

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Just the territory where Barbary pirates

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were seizing English shipping.

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Trevose, this is Tyne. It's my intention to send a routine boarding team over to you.

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My team will be with you in two-zero minutes, over.

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In Elizabeth's time, the Queen's ships and the private vessels of freebooters like Drake

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had kept these waters safe.

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But the Queen was now dead.

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The new Stuart regime had made peace with Spain and the Navy had been cut back.

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With a predilection for self-aggrandisement,

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the regime had spent its cash,

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some of it raised illegally by notorious ship money,

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on a few grand, vanity ships,

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designed to impress the kings of Europe.

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The trouble was, fishery protection wasn't the kind of job that these showy vessels were designed to do.

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Just as the job that these guys do couldn't be done by an aircraft carrier.

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In the absence of this kind of protection, the king's subjects,

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particularly down here in the West Country, were completely vulnerable.

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They and their cargoes made irresistible targets for North African pirates.

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Shocked by the magnitude of the crisis,

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West Country MP Sir John Elliot wrote to the king's council begging for action.

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But the government did nothing.

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Elliot was furious.

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And he wasn't the only one.

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Anger also oozes from the pages of this,

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a best seller written around the time of the disappearances from East Looe.

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It's called Sir Francis Drake Revived.

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It's written by Drake's nephew,

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and he recounts the glories and successes of what now seemed like a vanished age.

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It's an indictment on the present with its all-pervasive sense of fear and its insecurity.

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But it's also a call to arms, as the author makes very clear on the title page.

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He writes, "Calling upon this dull or effeminate age,

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"to follow his noble steps for gold and silver."

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Sir John Elliot caught the mood,

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calling for a return to the aggressive policies of the past.

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England's new King, it seemed, was listening.

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Charles I had been on the throne for just a few months

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and, like a modern leader seeking crowd-pleasing policies in troubled times,

0:28:290:28:34

he funded an expedition to attack Spain.

0:28:340:28:36

It set sail from Plymouth in October 1625, waved off by a delighted John Elliot.

0:28:420:28:49

Their target was none other than Cadiz.

0:28:540:28:57

Their mission, a Drake-style smash and grab, returning home

0:28:590:29:03

with holds full of treasure to public acclaim.

0:29:030:29:05

But it didn't work out that way at all.

0:29:100:29:12

The expedition was commanded by Viscount Wimbledon, a man who'd never served at sea before

0:29:140:29:20

and was so indecisive his men quickly gave him the nickname "Viscount Sit Still".

0:29:200:29:25

Confusion reigned.

0:29:250:29:27

Ships collided and masts and rigging tumbled overboard.

0:29:270:29:31

When Sit Still ordered his captains to attack, many of them simply ignored him.

0:29:310:29:36

The lack of an experienced, charismatic commander, like Drake,

0:29:360:29:39

exposed terrible weaknesses in the English fleet.

0:29:390:29:42

Even with Drake in charge it would have been hard enough to impose order.

0:29:420:29:46

Now, many captains simply did as they wished.

0:29:460:29:49

They were a rabble.

0:29:490:29:51

The chaos continued when they landed 2,000 troops on the beach

0:29:580:30:02

but failed to give them any water.

0:30:020:30:04

The weather was scorching.

0:30:060:30:09

When they finally got into the town, these thirsty Englishmen stumbled on a warehouse.

0:30:090:30:16

It was full of wine.

0:30:180:30:20

All hell broke loose.

0:30:230:30:25

The men started drinking, and although the officers tried to stop them, it was no use.

0:30:250:30:29

"The whole army was drunken,"

0:30:290:30:31

wrote one eye witness, "and in one common confusion, some shooting at one another amongst themselves."

0:30:310:30:38

This wouldn't, of course, be the last time drunken English behaved disgracefully abroad.

0:30:380:30:43

But on this occasion, with the expedition descending into total farce,

0:30:430:30:47

the commanders had no choice but to call it off.

0:30:470:30:50

On the way home, farce turned to tragedy as disease took hold.

0:30:590:31:03

By the time they reached Plymouth, hundreds were dead and hundreds more were dying.

0:31:060:31:12

And who was standing up here waiting for them?

0:31:160:31:18

None other than Sir John Elliot.

0:31:180:31:21

The man who in October had waved them off with such high hopes

0:31:210:31:25

now stood on a miserable day just before Christmas 1625, as the fleet limped in.

0:31:250:31:30

"The miseries before us are great,"

0:31:310:31:34

he wrote, as he watched corpses being tossed into the harbour from the ships.

0:31:340:31:39

And later he saw sailors drop down dead in the streets of Plymouth.

0:31:390:31:44

But soon his compassion for the sailors turned into another emotion - rage.

0:31:440:31:49

News of the fiasco soon reached London,

0:31:570:31:59

and when Parliament convened, John Elliot was on his feet,

0:31:590:32:04

his anger echoing around St Stephen's Hall.

0:32:040:32:07

"Our honour is ruined. Our ships are sunk.

0:32:090:32:11

"Our men are killed, not by the sword, nor by the hand of an enemy,

0:32:110:32:17

"but by those we trust."

0:32:170:32:20

Those words, spoken by Elliot in this chamber, where the House of Commons used to meet,

0:32:200:32:25

were the sharpest denunciation of royal government ever heard in Parliament.

0:32:250:32:30

Cadiz, Elliot said, proved that the King was unfit to run the Navy.

0:32:300:32:35

In a series of extraordinary speeches in here, Elliot demanded

0:32:350:32:40

that Parliament take a greater role in overseeing the affairs of state.

0:32:400:32:45

When the Speaker, who sat in his chair on this spot,

0:32:450:32:48

tried to shut him up, Elliot hired three thugs to hold him down.

0:32:480:32:53

If it seemed like revolution was in the air, it was.

0:32:530:32:56

The King's failure to run a modern, efficient navy had sparked a constitutional crisis.

0:32:560:33:03

John Elliot was thrown into the Tower.

0:33:070:33:10

But a new generation of MPs,

0:33:100:33:12

immortalised here in St Stephen's Hall, took up his call for liberty.

0:33:120:33:18

Relations between King and Parliament collapsed.

0:33:190:33:23

In 1642, Charles fled London and the Civil War began.

0:33:230:33:28

By fleeing the capital, Charles lost control both of the Navy

0:33:360:33:41

and of the new, burgeoning maritime economy that it supported.

0:33:410:33:45

It made his defeat inevitable, and in 1649,

0:33:450:33:49

on the orders of England's new republic, he was executed.

0:33:490:33:54

Parliament acted quickly to secure control over the Navy, putting men of proven loyalty in charge.

0:33:590:34:06

They were known as the "generals at sea".

0:34:060:34:09

One of them was Robert Blake, West Country MP, hero of the Civil War,

0:34:130:34:18

and a radical protestant to boot.

0:34:180:34:20

Blake had never fought at sea.

0:34:350:34:38

Not a brilliant start for a man charged with protecting England's coasts against a multitude of foes.

0:34:380:34:45

But Blake understood warfare and men,

0:34:450:34:47

and he knew that chaos and indiscipline were as dangerous at sea as they were on land.

0:34:470:34:52

Command problems that had dogged the English expedition to Cadiz still remained.

0:34:520:34:57

In one of his first battles, he was appalled to see his captain disobey his orders and flee.

0:34:570:35:03

He knew he had to find a way to assert his control.

0:35:030:35:08

His solution was to produce the Navy's first ever

0:35:110:35:14

set of rules and regulations,

0:35:140:35:18

the Laws of War and Ordinances of the Sea, in 1652.

0:35:180:35:23

For the first time, it gave English commanders a fighting chance of issuing orders that would be obeyed.

0:35:240:35:30

Port 15.

0:35:300:35:32

It was a list of 39 offences,

0:35:320:35:35

from stealing to spying, from cowardice to sleeping on duty.

0:35:350:35:40

Most were punishable by death.

0:35:400:35:43

Blake even sacked his own brother for discipline offences.

0:35:460:35:50

The Laws of War offered a blueprint for structure and discipline at sea...

0:35:510:35:56

..that would later be applied through all areas of government.

0:35:580:36:02

Blake was just what the Navy needed, a tough outsider.

0:36:060:36:10

He could see that over the previous 50 years the Navy had vacillated wildly

0:36:100:36:14

between great successes like the Armada and total failures like Cadiz, but there was no reliability.

0:36:140:36:20

Under charismatic leadership of men like Drake, the English could be great successes.

0:36:200:36:25

But otherwise, denied that leadership, failure was often the result.

0:36:250:36:29

Blake imposed order and discipline.

0:36:290:36:32

He ensured that no matter who was in charge, the Navy would be effective.

0:36:320:36:38

Blake left behind a navy that was larger and more disciplined than the country had ever known before.

0:36:420:36:48

The powerful fleet had protected the young republic from its foreign enemies.

0:36:510:36:57

But it could not fill the vacuum created when Cromwell, the English dictator, died.

0:36:570:37:04

A new era was coming.

0:37:040:37:06

On May 26th 1660, one of the Navy's grandest ships,

0:37:140:37:18

the Royal Charles, came within sight of England.

0:37:180:37:22

On board was a man making his triumphant return home after years in exile.

0:37:250:37:31

It was Charles, son of the murdered king, soon to be crowned King Charles II.

0:37:320:37:37

The journey was the result of weeks of plotting between senior naval officers and exiled royalists

0:37:420:37:47

to bring back the monarchy.

0:37:470:37:49

The new king was eager to lay claim to England's potent navy.

0:37:510:37:55

He gave gold to the sailors and rebranded the fleet.

0:37:550:37:59

It was now the Royal Navy.

0:37:590:38:01

Disembarking with the royal party was the younger cousin

0:38:080:38:11

and newly appointed secretary to the ship's commander.

0:38:110:38:15

The young man was honoured to be given the job

0:38:230:38:25

of taking the King's spaniel off the ship.

0:38:250:38:28

He wrote in his diary, "It shit the boat,

0:38:280:38:30

"which made us laugh and methink that the King

0:38:300:38:33

"and all that belong to him are but just as others are."

0:38:330:38:37

As they came ashore, the young man saw huge crowds

0:38:400:38:43

of nobles and citizens alike who'd turned out to welcome their king.

0:38:430:38:48

"The shouting and joy expressed by all,"

0:38:480:38:50

he wrote, "was past imagination."

0:38:500:38:53

The 27-year-old from London had just completed his second sea voyage.

0:38:530:38:58

He didn't know it then, but this was just the start of an extraordinary naval career.

0:38:580:39:03

His name was Samuel Pepys.

0:39:030:39:05

Pepys was from humble origins,

0:39:090:39:11

the son of a poor tailor and a washerwoman,

0:39:110:39:13

but he left behind two extraordinary legacies.

0:39:130:39:17

He would transform the administration of the Navy like no-one before him,

0:39:170:39:22

and leave behind one of the most vivid

0:39:220:39:26

and colourful diaries of all time.

0:39:260:39:29

And here it is, volume one of Samuel Pepys' diary,

0:39:310:39:34

started on January 1st 1660,

0:39:340:39:37

possibly in response to a New Year's resolution.

0:39:370:39:39

It's in shorthand, so takes a bit of deciphering,

0:39:390:39:42

but it's an incredibly honest account of a colourful life.

0:39:420:39:45

There are descriptions of his trips to the theatre,

0:39:450:39:48

drinking, his affairs, music, money and even arguments with his wife.

0:39:480:39:53

That's all interspersed with descriptions of a job he loved.

0:39:530:39:58

Or at least, he came to love it.

0:39:580:40:01

When he first landed the job of Clerk of the Acts to the Navy Board,

0:40:010:40:05

he hadn't the foggiest idea what it entailed.

0:40:050:40:08

But he was delighted with the pay - £350 a year,

0:40:080:40:12

more than he'd ever earned in his life.

0:40:120:40:15

Eager to learn, Pepys threw himself into the complex new world

0:40:190:40:23

of the Navy's dockyards at Chatham, Woolwich and Deptford.

0:40:230:40:27

All are now long gone.

0:40:280:40:30

But this yard on the Dutch coast

0:40:300:40:33

is building a replica ship of the same era.

0:40:330:40:36

The project manager is Aryan Klein.

0:40:390:40:42

It's great to see the ship at this stage,

0:40:420:40:44

cos you see what gives it its strength.

0:40:440:40:46

Usually you just see it floating around.

0:40:460:40:49

Yeah, it's all heavy timber construction.

0:40:490:40:51

-So how many oak trees go into the building of this then?

-Several hundred.

0:40:510:40:55

-Really?

-The estimates vary from 400-600 fully grown trees.

0:40:550:40:59

And some of these trees will be maybe 100 years old, maybe older.

0:40:590:41:04

How long would it have taken to build this back in the 17th century?

0:41:040:41:07

-About nine months.

-Wow, that's quick.

0:41:070:41:09

Very hard labour. Hundreds of men working day and night almost.

0:41:090:41:13

And as soon as the ships were watertight,

0:41:130:41:15

they would be put into the water

0:41:150:41:17

to make room for the next ship on the slipway.

0:41:170:41:20

It just shows the value of the goods these ships were bringing back.

0:41:200:41:23

They were being built to bring back the riches of the world.

0:41:230:41:27

Well, yeah, the big East Indiamen were built for trade,

0:41:270:41:30

but this particular ship we're standing in now was a Man of War.

0:41:300:41:33

Who was it built to fight against, then?

0:41:330:41:36

The English, I'm afraid!

0:41:360:41:38

THEY CHUCKLE

0:41:380:41:39

The Dutch had a really large stake in world trade at that time

0:41:390:41:42

and England, of course, thought, "Well, we'll have some of that trade."

0:41:420:41:47

And it erupted into trade wars between Holland and England.

0:41:470:41:52

This ship is basically the result of an arms race between the two countries.

0:41:520:41:56

The Dutch had overtaken Spain

0:41:590:42:01

to become England's new maritime rivals.

0:42:010:42:04

They were aggressive, protestant and organised, just like the English.

0:42:040:42:10

To combat the Dutch threat, England was now spending a mighty 25%

0:42:130:42:19

of the national budget on her navy,

0:42:190:42:21

making it by far the country's largest industrial enterprise.

0:42:210:42:25

The dockyards consumed materials in vast quantities.

0:42:280:42:31

150 tonnes of iron a year,

0:42:310:42:34

100 miles of rope,

0:42:340:42:35

and had a vast workforce to match.

0:42:350:42:38

And, as Pepys soon discovered, corruption was rife.

0:42:390:42:45

Pepys reported corrupt officials to the Navy Board, but he soon realised

0:42:450:42:49

that the worst corruption was actually on the Navy Board itself.

0:42:490:42:53

He refers to his colleagues as "old fools and rogues"

0:42:530:42:56

and realised that one of them was even stealing

0:42:560:42:59

from the sailors' pension fund, known as the Chatham Chest.

0:42:590:43:02

The problem was that the Navy had become a vast receptacle of public funds.

0:43:020:43:07

There were no systems in place to spend that money,

0:43:070:43:10

and if a few thousand went missing, who would care?

0:43:100:43:13

Pepys cared, and realised that every aspect of the Navy had ballooned,

0:43:170:43:21

except for the central administration.

0:43:210:43:24

The fleet had grown far beyond the ability of the medieval Navy Board to manage it.

0:43:250:43:31

Back in the office, Pepys hired a team of clerks.

0:43:320:43:35

He gave them desks, with regular hours,

0:43:350:43:38

and together they set out imposing some order.

0:43:380:43:41

They spent a lot of time making lists.

0:43:410:43:44

This one here is an alphabetical list

0:43:440:43:47

of all naval officers that served in the Navy

0:43:470:43:50

during Pepys' time in office,

0:43:500:43:53

starting up here with A,

0:43:530:43:55

coming all the way down to Z down here.

0:43:550:43:58

The amazing thing is it contains information

0:43:580:44:00

about their service records, dates on which they were in different ships -

0:44:000:44:04

in some cases, it even has their fate.

0:44:040:44:06

So, for example,

0:44:060:44:08

this man died,

0:44:080:44:10

George Colt drowned,

0:44:100:44:13

and Humphrey Connisby was discharged by his Royal Highness.

0:44:130:44:16

Lists like these imposed a manageable symmetry

0:44:160:44:20

on the anarchic world that Pepys found himself in,

0:44:200:44:23

and he became an expert in the complex gathering

0:44:230:44:27

and storage of information.

0:44:270:44:29

He was determined to professionalise every aspect of the Navy's operations.

0:44:300:44:35

He designed a call book to keep records of dockyard hours worked,

0:44:350:44:40

compiled an alphabetical list of all contracts,

0:44:400:44:42

and kept detailed notes of everything he did.

0:44:420:44:46

Pepys wasn't the first naval administrator to make lists,

0:44:480:44:51

but he was the most systematic, the most brilliant, the most obsessive.

0:44:510:44:55

He adored the Navy, not because he loved storming aboard enemy ships

0:44:550:44:59

with the smell of gunsmoke in his nostrils,

0:44:590:45:01

but because he loved the bureaucracy.

0:45:010:45:04

He delighted, he wrote, "in the neatness of everything".

0:45:040:45:08

But the Samuel Pepys of the diary emerges as a man

0:45:220:45:25

who was far from being a dull paper-pusher and list-maker.

0:45:250:45:30

Here's a not untypical entry.

0:45:330:45:35

He has an orgy with the wife of one of his colleagues on the Navy Board

0:45:350:45:40

and her daughter.

0:45:400:45:41

He wrote, "There are a great many women in the chamber,

0:45:410:45:44

"My Lady Penn and her daughter among them, whereupon My Lady Penn

0:45:440:45:48

"flung me down upon the bed and herself and others,

0:45:480:45:52

"one after another upon me and very merry we were."

0:45:520:45:56

Well, I'm not surprised!

0:45:560:45:58

Every man has his vice they say, and for Pepys it was definitely the ladies...

0:45:580:46:02

Well, and bouts of heavy drinking, and fine dining, and nice clothes,

0:46:020:46:08

and music, and he loved the theatre, of course, and, well, you get the idea.

0:46:080:46:13

The point is Pepys was a man who lived life to the full.

0:46:130:46:16

But what really shines out in these diaries is his love of his work.

0:46:160:46:21

"My business," he wrote "is all my delight."

0:46:210:46:24

The Navy's officer training college, here at Dartmouth,

0:46:320:46:35

was built long after Pepys' time, but the idea

0:46:350:46:38

of professionally trained and qualified officers was his.

0:46:380:46:43

Anyone with the right connections, Pepys realised,

0:46:480:46:51

could become an officer,

0:46:510:46:53

leaving the Navy's valuable ships in often unreliable hands.

0:46:530:46:57

There was no quality control.

0:46:570:46:59

-Midshipman Briers!

-Sir.

0:47:000:47:02

Pepys' solution - exams.

0:47:020:47:05

The verbal test that he introduced for all would-be lieutenants still exists.

0:47:060:47:11

Midshipman Briers, take a seat, please.

0:47:120:47:14

These days, they call it Fleet Board.

0:47:140:47:17

The first question is,

0:47:180:47:19

what are the responsibilities of the CBM at State One?

0:47:190:47:24

He's on upper deck roaming, sir,

0:47:240:47:27

-looking mostly for fire fighting events.

-OK.

0:47:270:47:30

The whole idea of assessment and interview seems deeply familiar to us.

0:47:300:47:36

What items of seamanship rigging must always be fully rigged?

0:47:360:47:39

The safety net underneath, sir.

0:47:390:47:41

But that's because of Pepys.

0:47:410:47:43

When he introduced his exam for lieutenants, it was the first time

0:47:430:47:47

any employee of the English state had ever been tested in this way.

0:47:470:47:51

And where is it located?

0:47:510:47:53

Quick release marker buoy, sir.

0:47:530:47:54

-It's usually found on the quarter deck.

-OK.

0:47:540:47:57

Thank you very much, Midshipman Briers. Please carry on.

0:47:570:48:01

Using pen, paper and a tidy mind,

0:48:030:48:06

Pepys had done for the Navy as an institution

0:48:060:48:08

what Hawkins had done for its ships,

0:48:080:48:11

and Blake for the discipline of its crews.

0:48:110:48:14

But could it survive the ultimate test -

0:48:140:48:18

war?

0:48:180:48:20

In 1665 came the inevitable clash with the Dutch.

0:48:230:48:28

A series of English victories early on seemed to augur well.

0:48:310:48:35

But Pepys was worried.

0:48:360:48:38

He'd said from the start that Parliament hadn't voted enough money

0:48:380:48:42

to fund the war and, just as he predicted, the money was soon gone.

0:48:420:48:47

The Navy lunged from triumph

0:48:470:48:50

to crisis.

0:48:500:48:52

Things soon reached boiling point.

0:48:550:48:57

The Navy was terribly in debt and sailors went unpaid.

0:48:570:49:00

In the dockyards, Pepys saw workers walking around like ghosts

0:49:000:49:05

and he heard the lamentable moans

0:49:050:49:07

of sailors that lay destitute in the street,

0:49:070:49:10

a sight which he said "troubled him to his heart".

0:49:100:49:13

To add to the sense of crisis, plague broke out in London

0:49:130:49:16

and Pepys and his clerks came here to Greenwich,

0:49:160:49:19

where they took up residence in this, one of Charles II's unfinished palaces.

0:49:190:49:24

But that put them in the heart of the fleet

0:49:240:49:26

with all the disgruntled sailors around them.

0:49:260:49:29

One day, their windows were broken

0:49:290:49:31

and Pepys and his staff were threatened with physical violence.

0:49:310:49:34

Pepys spent 24 hours composing a desperate letter to the King.

0:49:390:49:44

It's unambiguous and it would have made very disturbing reading for his royal master.

0:49:450:49:50

Pepys begins by apologising for being troublesome, he says

0:49:500:49:53

"troubling His Majesty on the subject which we often have done,

0:49:530:49:57

"the want of money, the effects of that want,

0:49:570:50:00

"under which His Majesty's service under our care

0:50:000:50:04

"hath long been sinking."

0:50:040:50:06

So Pepys is in no doubt that his Navy

0:50:060:50:08

is facing utter ruin and he comes up with a typically Pepysian solution.

0:50:080:50:12

He gives a list, carefully costed,

0:50:120:50:14

of everything that he thinks is necessary to prevent that.

0:50:140:50:17

He starts up here by saying 55 anchors of various weights,

0:50:170:50:22

800 bales of sailcloth, 4,000 loads of plank,

0:50:220:50:25

400 dozen oars, 12 tons of brimstone,

0:50:250:50:29

10,000 spars of all sorts,

0:50:290:50:31

and comes up with the incredibly precise figure,

0:50:310:50:34

as only Pepys could do, of the money required

0:50:340:50:37

to stave off disaster for the Navy and for England.

0:50:370:50:40

And that sum is 179,793 pounds

0:50:400:50:46

and ten shillings.

0:50:460:50:49

But the King had nothing to give and would not humiliate himself

0:50:490:50:54

by going cap in hand to Parliament to ask for more.

0:50:540:50:57

Just a few months later came the naval disaster Pepys had predicted.

0:50:570:51:03

It was the summer of 1667.

0:51:070:51:09

The fleet had been laid up because there was no money to pay crews to man it.

0:51:090:51:14

Upnor Castle, 30 miles up the Thames from London,

0:51:160:51:20

had been built in Elizabeth's time to protect the fleet

0:51:200:51:24

across the River Medway at Chatham.

0:51:240:51:26

The exhausted and unpaid garrison were not at their best.

0:51:260:51:30

On that June day, the horrified defenders of this fort watched

0:51:320:51:36

as 62 Dutch ships made their way up the river on the rising tide.

0:51:360:51:40

Anchored here was much of Charles' fleet,

0:51:420:51:44

including four of his finest battleships.

0:51:440:51:47

In a desperate measure, the English sank some of their own ships here

0:51:470:51:51

to try and block the river, but that didn't work

0:51:510:51:53

and their cannon on shore opened up to try and turn the Dutch back.

0:51:530:51:57

But someone had delivered the wrong ammunition

0:51:570:51:59

and many of the cannonballs didn't even fit the barrels.

0:51:590:52:02

The Dutch ships ploughed in amongst the English ships with impunity, capturing them,

0:52:040:52:09

burning others, including three of the finest battleships in the land.

0:52:090:52:13

The river was covered in wreckage

0:52:150:52:17

and in the sky, there was a pall of smoke.

0:52:170:52:19

One of Pepys' clerks who lived and worked down here wrote,

0:52:190:52:23

"The destruction of those three glorious ships

0:52:230:52:25

"was one of the most dismal sights my eyes have ever beheld."

0:52:250:52:30

"It was enough," he said, "to make the heart of every true Englishman bleed."

0:52:300:52:34

In a final humiliation,

0:52:470:52:49

the Dutch towed back to Holland the Royal Charles itself,

0:52:490:52:53

a moment immortalised on canvas,

0:52:530:52:55

showing the pride of England's fleet flying the Dutch flag.

0:52:550:53:00

The Dutch raid on the Medway was at the time, and remains to this day,

0:53:040:53:08

the most embarrassing defeat in the history of the Royal Navy.

0:53:080:53:12

Not even the brilliant Pepys could avert this catastrophe.

0:53:120:53:15

The simple fact was that King Charles

0:53:150:53:18

just couldn't afford a modern navy.

0:53:180:53:20

The Medway disaster set the King and Parliament

0:53:300:53:32

on another collision course

0:53:320:53:34

over how the Navy was to be funded and controlled.

0:53:340:53:38

When Charles died in 1685,

0:53:430:53:46

relations between King and Parliament

0:53:460:53:48

were at their lowest ebb since the Civil War.

0:53:480:53:51

He was succeeded by his brother, James.

0:53:570:54:00

Now he had had a rather successful career as an admiral in the Royal Navy.

0:54:000:54:04

Could he be the man to work together with politicians and financiers

0:54:040:54:08

and businessmen to build a new kind of constitutional monarchy?

0:54:080:54:13

Well...

0:54:130:54:15

no.

0:54:150:54:16

And this extraordinary portrait tells us why.

0:54:160:54:21

James has had himself painted in the garb of a roman emperor,

0:54:220:54:26

with a haughty stare,

0:54:260:54:28

his golden tunic, magnificent purple robe flowing off his shoulders

0:54:280:54:32

and decked out in jewels at his throat, sword hilt and sandals.

0:54:320:54:38

And out at sea his navy, his plaything,

0:54:380:54:41

the royal banner flying from the main topmast.

0:54:410:54:44

This was not how the English wanted their kings to see themselves.

0:54:440:54:50

To make matters worse, James was openly, proudly Catholic.

0:54:500:54:55

He appointed Catholics to key positions in the armed forces.

0:54:550:54:59

He even put one of them in charge of the Royal Navy.

0:54:590:55:02

This was clearly a man who wouldn't send his Royal Navy out to attack

0:55:020:55:07

the great Catholic powers of Europe.

0:55:070:55:09

This was not a man to protect the legacy of Drake and Hawkins.

0:55:090:55:14

He would have to go.

0:55:140:55:17

In July 1688, a figure dressed as a common sailor arrived in Holland.

0:55:250:55:30

Beneath the disguise

0:55:340:55:36

was England's premier naval officer, Admiral Arthur Herbert.

0:55:360:55:40

Or, rather, ex-admiral.

0:55:400:55:44

He'd resigned weeks before, refusing to serve under King James.

0:55:440:55:48

Herbert was carrying an extraordinary letter.

0:55:510:55:53

It was signed by seven Englishmen, all grandees in the armed forces,

0:55:530:55:57

church and state, and it was addressed to the Dutch Prince,

0:55:570:56:01

William of Orange, who was not only protestant

0:56:010:56:03

but he was married to James II's daughter, Mary.

0:56:030:56:07

It was an appeal for William's help against their tyrannical king.

0:56:070:56:11

This was high treason, but Herbert and his fellow conspirators

0:56:110:56:16

were the desperate men from an exasperated nation.

0:56:160:56:19

And in William, they'd found their man.

0:56:190:56:22

On November 1st 1688, a vast Dutch invasion fleet -

0:56:290:56:34

463 vessels, 40,000 men -

0:56:340:56:39

left Holland, bound for England.

0:56:390:56:42

It was almost exactly 100 years since the Spanish Armada,

0:56:480:56:52

but this time not a single shot was fired.

0:56:520:56:56

On the top mast of William's flagship, he flew a banner

0:57:080:57:11

with his family motto on - "I will maintain".

0:57:110:57:14

But he added, in letters three-feet-high,

0:57:140:57:16

"the liberties of the English and the protestant religion".

0:57:160:57:19

The message was clear and when William landed here

0:57:190:57:22

on the south coast of England, he was greeted with cheers.

0:57:220:57:25

Over the next few weeks,

0:57:250:57:27

it became obvious the English weren't going to fight for James II

0:57:270:57:30

and he fled the country and was replaced as king by William.

0:57:300:57:34

James, like his brother and his father before him,

0:57:420:57:45

had proved himself incompatible with the new idea of Englishness

0:57:450:57:49

that had crystallised since the days of the Armada.

0:57:490:57:52

That idea was opposed to absolutism and Catholicism

0:57:520:57:56

and proud of Parliament, liberty

0:57:560:57:58

and of sending the English Navy out against England's traditional enemies.

0:57:580:58:02

William's invasion of 1688 represented the final victory of those values.

0:58:040:58:11

It was the myth of the Armada made real.

0:58:110:58:14

In little over 100 years,

0:58:190:58:21

a rabble of West Country seafarers and a few royal ships

0:58:210:58:24

had become a recognisably modern institution,

0:58:240:58:28

with staff and systems to manage a vast, efficient navy.

0:58:280:58:33

This was England's heart of oak,

0:58:330:58:36

a navy that now lay at the centre of the national project and its future.

0:58:360:58:42

Next week - how the Navy triggered a series of revolutions

0:58:450:58:50

in finance, industry and agriculture,

0:58:500:58:52

generating unimaginable wealth

0:58:520:58:55

and propelling Britain into the modern world.

0:58:550:58:57

Subtitles by Red Bee Media

0:59:190:59:22

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0:59:220:59:25

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