Robert Blake

English admiral

• Born: Late August?, 1599
• Birthplace: Bridgwater, Somerset, England
• Died: August 7, 1657
• Place of death: At sea, off Plymouth, Devon, England

Combining leadership ability with deep religious faith and a strong sense of duty to his country, Blake was one of the founders and the chief admiral of the English Commonwealth Navy.

Early Life

Robert Blake was baptized on September 27, 1599, in St. Mary’s Church, Bridgwater, Somerset, England. His family came from the small farming gentry that had developed under the Tudors. His grandfather moved to Bridgwater and prospered in the shipping business. His father, Humphrey Blake, inherited a good business in 1592, adding estates to the family holdings when he married a widow, Sarah Williams. Young Robert was the eldest of twelve children, ten of whom survived.

As a youngster, Robert was a student at King James’s School, an English grammar school, and in 1615, he attended St. Albans Hall, Oxford. He failed to win a scholarship to Christ Church and enrolled instead at Wadham College, which had Somerset connections. Little is known about his college life, but it may have been during these years that he developed some of his antimonarchical views. The family belonged to the Church of England, but in his beliefs Robert was a Presbyterian. He received a B.A. in 1618 but lost a fellowship bid at Merton College in 1619, reportedly because of his short, squat, ungainly figure.

Blake’s father died on November 19, 1625. Blake took over the family shipping business, which was in bad shape as a result of a rise in piracy and a decline in naval defenses. For the next fifteen years, he dropped out of sight; he may have gone to sea with some of his vessels, then a fairly common practice for merchant-shippers.

In 1640, Blake emerged from this period of low profile as his nation prepared for war. Charles I had been ruling without a Parliament, but early in 1640, he called one (later known as the Short Parliament) to ask for money to finance a war with Scotland. Blake was elected a member of Parliament (M.P.) for Bridgwater, though he lost his seat in November in the election of what would be known as the Long Parliament . The next evidence of Blake appears during the First English Civil War in March, 1643, when he served as one of twenty-six M.P.’s on the Parliamentary Committee for the Sequestration of the Estates of the Royalists in Somerset. Four months later, he was in command of a company defending Prior’s Hill Fort at Bristol. The subsequent loss of Bristol to the Royalist forces of Prince Rupert, nephew of Charles I, gave the Crown control of trade to Ireland, the West Indies, and Spain.

Blake next served as a lieutenant colonel leading the defense of Lyme in 1644. The town held its ground for twenty-six days, largely thanks to the leadership, courage, and inspiration of Blake in his first independent command. He went on to capture Taunton in July, 1644. Taunton was located at the intersection of all the main roads in Somerset. Blake helped prepare it for a Royalist siege, which lasted about nine months, until the Royalist defeat at Naseby. Blake was then selected to capture Dunster Castle in Somerset, the last Royalist holdout. The surrender terms drawn up by Blake were very generous and demonstrated his humane attitude toward his foes.

With the first phase of the Civil War over, Blake was again elected to Parliament, but he was unable to take his seat until May, 1646. As a member of Parliament, Blake had to resign his military commission, but he became governor of Taunton in this period. Civil war erupted again in early March, 1648. Despite lack of funds for paying or raising troops, Blake and Edward Popham held Somerset, preventing uprisings in Devon and Cornwall. At the end of January, Charles I was executed and the Commonwealth was born, activities in which Blake took no part.

Life’s Work

To replace the king, a forty-nine-member Council of State was formed. From it, the Admiralty Committee was made up and took over the duties of the lord high admiral. Sir Robert Rich, the second earl of Warwick, who held that position, was dismissed, and Edward Popham was appointed commander of the British fleet. Popham apparently spoke highly of Blake, who, along with Richard Deane, was appointed by the Admiralty Committee as a “general-at-sea.” Popham, Deane, and Blake all took command of the fleet on February 23, 1649, and Blake began the most eventful part of his life.

Blake focused on settling the unrest among the nation’s seamen. He met with them, listened to their grievances, and began to restore morale. A major concern was to improve the efficiency of the selling of prizes, from which crews were paid for their work. Blake and Deane also had to get a fleet ready for sea, overseeing all the details of supplying the vessels and manning each ship with officers and crew.

Blake hoisted his flag on the ship Triumph at Chatham and sailed in April, 1649, to blockade Kinsale, Ireland. He declined a post as major general under Oliver Cromwell in order to remain at sea. Blake was able to restore both morale and discipline, while exhibiting great patience in patrolling. Ship conditions forced him to shift to the Lion and then the Guinea.

Blake was put in command of the winter fleet, which sailed from Cowes on March 1, 1650, to attack Prince Rupert’s fleet at Lisbon. Blake’s flag was in the St. George, which had fifty-six guns. Again, he used the blockade effectively. In July, his fleet captured or destroyed nine of the twenty-three vessels in the Portuguese Brazilian fleet. Rupert, no longer a naval threat to England, headed for the Mediterranean to raid at sea. Blake shifted his flag to the Leopard late in October and continued the hunt for Rupert. He was successful in destroying most of Rupert’s fleet, only three ships of which safely reached Toulon. By mid-December, Blake was back at Cadiz, having maintained both morale and confidence in the fleet. He was replaced by Sir William Penn (1621-1670) and returned to England on February 10, 1651.

By March 10, 1651, Blake was on the Phoenix with a squadron patrolling in the Irish Seas, but on April 1, he was ordered to the Isles of Scilly to confront Admiral Maarten Tromp and a Dutch squadron. The Dutch left, and Blake took control of the Royalist strongholds in the Scilly Isles. He helped to plan and execute amphibious landings and a blockade of the Royalist forces on Saint Mary’s. By early June, the Scilly Isles were under control. Generous surrender terms had been accepted and the Western Seas were safe for Commonwealth shipping, all at a cost of six men killed and no ships lost, a tribute to Blake’s skill as a commander. He received new orders on August 22 and sailed for the Downs in the Victory, arriving on September 3, as Royalist forces were defeated at Worcester. While at Plymouth, he was busy trying to get repayment for the men who had paid discharged sailors. Shortage of funds continued to plague the Commonwealth, as it had the king.

Blake was next ordered to prepare a fleet in September, 1651, to assist in capturing the last Royalist strongholds in the Channel Islands. His flagship was the Happy Entrance. The amphibious operations and siege tactics were successful, and Blake returned to England late in December, where he was made a member of several committees, including the Admiralty Committee. He attended council and committee meetings regularly until early in March, 1652.

With the passage of a Navigation Act on August 20, 1651, and an English insistence on sovereignty of the seas, trouble with Holland was brewing. The Dutch were preparing a fleet to enforce their own claims to maritime sovereignty, and Blake was ordered to assemble a summer fleet. His flagship, the James, and the English fleet met the Dutch fleet under Admiral Tromp in the Brederade off Dover, England, on May 19, 1652. After this Dutch attack, Blake was ordered to capture the Dutch East India fleet and to disrupt the Dutch fishing fleet off England and Scotland. He was then to disrupt the Dutch Baltic trade while protecting that of the English. Blake sailed late in June in the Resolution, and war was declared on July 8, 1652. He was so successful that Tromp was blamed for Dutch losses and resigned, to be replaced by Johan de Witt and Michiel Adriaanszoon de Ruyter .

Late in September of 1652, Blake met the Dutch under Witt off Dover in the Battle of Kentish Knock, in which Blake won his first open sea battle. Although the Dutch were defeated, however, their fleet was not destroyed. Parliament dispersed the British fleet, leaving Blake with limited forces to protect the English Channel. Meanwhile, the Dutch reinstated Tromp and prepared for further action. Tromp was at sea late in November and met Blake south of Dover in the Battle of Dungeness (December 10, 1652). The English were defeated, and the Dutch controlled the channel and the Thames estuary.

This defeat forced the English to remodel their navy under Sir Henry Vane the Younger . With Blake’s help, an enquiry into the defeat was made, captains were disciplined, and a new pay scale was developed. The Laws and Ordinances of the Sea, thirty-nine articles dealing with discipline, were passed on December 25, 1652. A British fleet was again prepared, and it met the Dutch fleet off Portland in the Three Days’ Battle, from February 28 to March 2, 1653. The English—commanded by Blake, in the Triumph, Penn, and George Monck —fired low to hull their opponents, while benefiting from their own stoutly built ships. The Commonwealth was victorious, although Blake was wounded in the leg by a bar of iron.

Late in May, the English fleet was ordered out again. They met the Dutch in the Battle of the Gabbard Shoal in June. Fleet line-of-battle tactics were tried for the first time. Blake’s arrival in the Essex with fresh forces was cheered by the crews and made possible the victory that followed. Blake did not, however, participate in the final victory of the war at the Battle of the Texel (Scheveningen) late in July, 1653. The Dutch signed a peace treaty on April 5, 1654, ending the First Anglo-Dutch War .

In August, Blake was ordered to the Mediterranean. Cruising the western portion of the sea in the George with a small squadron, he was instructed to carry out reprisals against the North African pirates and the French. He showed that Gibraltar cut the naval forces of both France and Spain in half.

In March, 1655, although he was then ill, Blake was again sent out to capture the Spanish Plate Fleet. He sailed in the Naseby, along with Edward Montagu (first earl of Sandwich), to cruise off Gibraltar. Not until September, however, were two prizes from the Plate Fleet taken by Sir Richard Stayner. Montagu returned to England in the Naseby with the prizes and the ships needing repairs. Meanwhile, Blake, in the Swiftsure, continued to blockade Cadiz, using Lisbon as a base.

In February, 1655, Blake heard that part of the Plate Fleet was heading for the Canaries. He was not able to take advantage of this information until early April, and when he did, he would not divide his fleet, instead sailing for the Canaries with most of his ships. On April 20, he attacked the forts at Santa Cruz, while Stayner attacked the galleons. All the Spanish ships were destroyed, some treasure was collected, and no English ships were lost. By early May, Blake was back off Cadiz, but he was again not well. Another commander was sent out to replace him.

Blake returned to England, arriving on the Lizard on August 6. He died entering the sound at Plymouth, the morning of August 7, 1657. Blake’s body was taken to Greenwich to lie in state, and after a funeral procession up the Thames, he was buried at Westminster Abbey on September 4. After the Restoration, however, by order of Charles II, on September 9, 1661, Blake and other Parliamentarians were disinterred and thrown into unmarked graves north of the abbey.

Significance

Blake, a hero of the English Civil War, was one of the founders of the Commonwealth’s navy, and with that fleet under his command, he became a hero of the Anglo-Dutch War as well. As an admiral, he has been surpassed only by Lord Nelson in English history. He restored morale and discipline to the navy. He did not throw away the lives of his men unnecessarily, and thus they served him faithfully. An able administrator and innovator, he remodeled the navy and helped to establish the fighting instructions for the fleet and to develop new tactics of fleet line-of-battle. Blake was the first to attack land defenses from the sea, and he appreciated the use of the broadside with low firing to hull an opponent. Blake’s military brilliance had influence even after he died serving his country, for he had trained many future captains and admirals. Changes in Great Britain’s rocky seventeenth century political scene and Blake’s service off the coasts of faraway lands hid his accomplishments, however, so that it was not until the eighteenth century that his role in history was fully appreciated.

Bibliography

Baumber, Michael. General-at-Sea: Robert Blake and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution in Naval Warfare. London: J. Murray, 1989. A biography of Blake told within the context of new developments in naval warfare occurring during his lifetime.

Blake, Robert. The Letters of Robert Blake. Edited by J. R. Powell. London: Navy Records Society, 1937. Most helpful in appreciating the flavor and details of naval activities of mid-seventeenth century England. The letters reveal a man of action who expressed himself well and with few words.

Bowley, R. L. Scilly at War. St. Mary’s, Isles of Scilly, England: Bowley, 2001. The first chapter of this book recounts Blake’s 1651 conquest of the Dutch in the Scilly Isles.

Curtis, C. D. Blake: General-at-Sea. Taunton, Somerset, England: Wessex Press, 1934. Good illustrations, maps, documentation, and extensive quotations. Contains interesting comments on the missing years, 1625-1640; contemporary accounts of Blake; extracts from Blake’s wills; portraits; and his funeral program.

Gardiner, Leslie. The British Admiralty. London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1968. Very good on the development of British naval administration, containing interesting comments on Blake’s committee work, the Articles of War, the first “Fighting Instructions,” and a special code of flags for admirals.

Lewis, Michael. The Navy of Britain: A Historical Portrait. London: Allen and Unwin, 1948. Contains an interesting essay on Blake as embodying the transition from the old “fighting officer” type, usually a nobleman, to the modern naval officer, usually of merchant stock.

Mahan, Alfred Thayer. The Influence of Sea Power upon History. Boston: Little, Brown, 1890. Reprint. New York: Dover, 1987. The classic reference for a wide variety of naval matters, consistently quoted by writers on both sides of the Atlantic ever since its first publication. Discusses the state of Europe in 1660; characteristics of French, English, and Dutch ships; and the shift from melee tactics to line-of-battle naval tactics.

Padfield, Peter. Tide of Empires: Decisive Naval Campaigns in the Rise of the West, 1481-1654. Vol. 1. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979. This volume ends with the First Anglo-Dutch War (1652-1654). It has excellent battle descriptions and shows the connections between economic affairs and naval strengths. Deals with various naval tactics and strategy and with Blake’s activities in a clear manner. Includes good battle maps and a glossary.

Phillips, C. E. Lucas. Cromwell’s Captains. London: William Heinemann, 1938. Reprint. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1972. This collection of four substantial essays includes an essay on Blake, focusing on his serving the Commonwealth on land and sea with courage and able administration. It also contains a portrait of Blake and maps of fleet actions at Portland and Santa Cruz.

Powell, J. R. Robert Blake, General-at-Sea. London: Collins, 1972. By far the best and most accurate available work on Blake. Liberally sprinkled with illustrations, maps, and battle plans. The old tales are laid to rest, and Blake is set carefully in his times. The book is well documented, with an excellent index and list of ships.