3 - Navies

Summary

In 1688 the most powerful European navies were the French, English and Dutch. Spanish and Portuguese sea power had suffered a serious decline in the seventeenth century. The Ottoman, Algerine, Venetian and Maltese fleets, though no longer limited to galleys, did not count outside the Mediterranean (ch. XVII) and none of them dominated it. Denmark-Norway and Sweden maintained larger and more efficient fleets than did any of the Mediterranean states except France, but neither was able to win hegemony in the Baltic or forbid the intervention of outside navies there. By 1721 decisive changes had taken place. The Danish and Swedish navies were weaker, and Russian warships were cruising in the Baltic for the first time (ch. XXI). The Ottoman fleet had undergone the reforms of Mezzomorto (ch. XIX). The great tradition of Spanish naval shipbuilding had been revived by Admiral Antonio de Gastañeta and Josef Patiño. As was shown in 1718 by the battle of Cape Passaro, however, Britain had the will and the means to delay the recovery of Sicily and Naples, which had made Spanish warships and galleys an undeniable nuisance to the French in the 1690s. Her new control of Gibraltar and Minorca signified Britain's status as the predominant European naval power. The Dutch, who in 1689 had contested English command of the combined sea forces, were hard-pressed to get eight ships together in 1714 as an escort for King George I: their contribution to the confederate line of battle had fallen from a third to a fifth between 1702 and 1710, from which year they could no longer afford a North Sea squadron at all.