oadside battleship would thus have her guns pointed at her consorts.
The line abreast was used only to bear down on the enemy. The fighting
formation was the line ahead. This was adopted at first as a fleet running
down from windward closed upon its enemy. Unless they were actually running
away, the other side would be sailing in line ahead with the wind abeam. It
was soon realized that in this formation an admiral had his fleet under
better control, and gradually the normal formation for fleets became line
ahead, and hostile fleets either fought running on parallel courses on the
same tack, or passed and repassed each other on opposite tacks. But this
was the result of a long evolution, and the typically formal battles fought
out by rule in the "close-hauled line ahead" belong to the eighteenth
century.

The first Dutch war ended with Blake's victory off the Kentish Knock. The
second war, in the days of Charles II, is best remembered in England in
connection with a national disgrace, the Dutch raid on Chatham and the
blockade of the Thames. This disaster was the result of a piece of almost
incomprehensible folly on the part of the King and his advisers. But it
came shortly after a great naval victory, the story of which is by most
forgotten. It is worth telling again, if only to show that the disaster
in the Thames was not the fault of the British navy, and that even under
Charles II there were glorious days for our fleet. It is also interesting
as a typical naval battle of the seventeenth century.

[Illustration: THE "SOVEREIGN OF THE SEAS," LAUNCHED 1637.
A TYPICAL WARSHIP OF THE 17TH CENTURY
_After the painting by Vandervelde_]

Hostilities began in 1664 without a formal declaration of war, the conflict
opening with aggressions and reprisals in the colonial sphere of action.
English fleets seized Dutch trading ships on the African coast and Dutch
islands in the West Indies. In North America the Dutch settlement of New
Amsterdam, at the mouth of the Hudson, was occupied, annexed, and renamed
New York in honour of His Highness the Duke of York, the brother of the
King. England drifted into the war as the result of conflicts in the
colonies, and was in a state of dangerous unreadiness for the struggle on
the sea. "God knows how little fit we are for it," wrote Pepys, who as
Secretary of the Navy knew the whole position. There was the utmost
difficulty in obtaining men for the ships that were being got read