except in English-built ships, owned by English subjects,
navigated by English masters, and of which three-fourths of the crew
were Englishmen; or in such ships as were the real property of the
people of the country or place in which the goods were produced, or from
which they could only be, or most usually were, exported.[I] This last
clause was the blow direct to Holland, for the Dutch had little native
products to export, and their ships were mainly employed in carrying the
produce of other countries to all foreign markets. It was answered with
war, the fierce naval war of 1652-1654, in which was exhibited that
famous spectacle of the at first victorious Dutch admiral, Van Tromp,
sweeping the English Channel with a broom at his masthead.

With the final defeat of the Dutch after hard fighting on both sides,
their virtual submission to the English Navigation Act, and their
admission of the English "sovereignty of the seas,"[J] by their consent
to "strike their flag to the shipping of the Commonwealth," England, in
her turn, became the chief sea power of the world.[K] During the ten
years of peace that followed, however, the Dutch despite the English
Navigation Act, succeeded in increasing their shipping, and regained
much of the carrying trade if not their lost leadership.[L]

Cromwell's act was confirmed by Charles II in 1660, and made the basis
of the code which then her statesmen exalted as "The Great Maritime
Charter of England."

Early in Charles II's reign also (in 1662) indirect bounties were
offered for the encouragement of the building of larger and more
efficient ships for service in time of war. These were grants of
one-tenth of the customs dues on the cargo, for two years, to every
vessel having two and one-half or three decks, and carrying thirty
guns.[M] Thirty years later (1694), in William and Mary's reign, the
time was extended to three years. Under William and Mary the granting of
bounties on naval stores was begun, and this system was continued till
George III's time.[M] With William and Mary's reign also began the
giving of indirect bounties to fishermen for the catching and curing of
fish. After the middle of the eighteenth century vessels engaged in the
fisheries were regularly subsidized, with the object of training sailors
for the merchant marine and the royal navy.[M]

While the fundamental rules of the "Maritime Charter" of 1660 remained
practically unimpaired, although in the succeeding