the business of the fleet. Deane, another
soldier like Blake, though he had commanded fleets, had never before
seen an action, but had done much to improve the organisation of the
service, and at this time, as his letters show, was more active and
ardent in the work than ever. Monck before the late cruise had never
been to sea at all, since as a boy he sailed in the disastrous Cadiz
expedition of 1625; but he was the typical and leading scientific
soldier of his time, with an unmatched power of organisation and an
infallible eye for both tactics and strategy, at least so far as it
had then been tried. Penn, the vice-admiral of the fleet, was a
professional naval officer of considerable experience, and it was he
who by a bold and skilful movement had saved the action off Portland
from being a severe defeat for Blake and Deane. Monck's therefore was
the only new mind that was brought to bear on the subject. Yet it is
impossible to credit him with introducing a revolution in naval
tactics. All that can be said is that possibly his genius for war and
his scientific and well-drilled spirit revealed to him in the
traditional minor tactics of the seamen the germ of a true tactical
system, and caused him to urge its reduction into a definite set of
fighting instructions which would be binding on all, and would
co-ordinate the fleet into the same kind of homogeneous and handy
fighting machine that he and the rest of the Low Country officers had
made of the New Model Army. In any case he could not have carried the
thing through unless it had commended itself to the experience of such
men as Penn and the majority of the naval officers of the council of
war. And they would hardly have been induced to agree had they not
felt that the new instructions were calculated to bring out the best
of the methods which they had empirically practised.

How far the new orders were carried out during the rest of the war is
difficult to say. In both official and unofficial reports of the
actions of this time an almost superstitious reverence is shown in
avoiding tactical details. Nevertheless that a substantial improvement
was the result seems clear, and further the new tactics appear to have
made a marked impression upon the Dutch. Of the very next action, that
off the Gabbard on June 2, when Monck was left in sole command, we
have a report from the Hague that the English 'having the wind, they
stayed on a tack for half an hour until they put the