a Commonwealth ship.

In this, as in the later conflicts with Holland, while England was still
able to live on its own products, the Dutch were in the position in which
we are now, for the command of the sea was vital to their daily life. Their
whole wealth depended on their great fishing fleets in the North Sea; their
Indiamen which brought the produce of the East to Northern Europe through
the Straits of Dover; and the carrying trade, in which they were the
carriers of the goods of all Central Europe, which the Rhine and their
canals brought into their ports. The mere prolongation of a naval war meant
endless loss to the merchants and shipowners of Holland.

The development of ocean-borne commerce had led to great improvements in
shipbuilding in the three-quarters of a century since the days of the
Armada, and the fleets that met in the Channel and the North Sea during
Cromwell's Dutch war were far more powerful than those of Medina-Sidonia
and Howard. The nucleus of the English fleet had been formed by the
permanent establishment created by Charles I, but the ships for which he
had levied the "Ship Money" were used against him in the Civil War, for the
seafaring population and the people of the ports mostly sided with the
Parliament. The operations against Rupert in the Mediterranean, the war
with the Algerines, and the expeditions to the West Indies had helped to
form for the Commonwealth a body of experienced officers and seamen, and in
Blake, Cromwell had at least one admiral of the first rank. The fleets on
both sides sometimes numbered as many as a hundred sail. The guns mounted
in broadside tiers had come to be recognized as the weapons that must
decide a sea-fight, and in this first Dutch war we see on both sides
attempts to use tactical formations that would give the best scope to gun
power.

Though a battle was always likely to develop into an irregular melee, in
which the boldest exchanged broadsides and the shirkers hung back, there
were attempts to fight in regular lines, the ships giving each other mutual
support. Want of traditional experience, marked differences in the speed
and manoeuvring power of ships, and the rudimentary character of the
signalling, made it difficult to keep the line, but it was early recognized
as an ideal to be aimed at.

The old oar-driven galleys, with their heavy batteries in the bows and all
the guns pointing ahead, went into battle, as at Lepanto, in line abreast.
The br