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On a blustery November day
four centuries ago,
the English were preparing

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themselves for one of the greatest
national celebrations ever seen.

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Beneath the dome of St Paul's
they gathered to celebrate

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their tiny nation's victory over the
world's greatest superpower, Spain.

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On the walls hung the captured
ensigns of the Spanish fleet,
that was even then being dashed

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on the rocky shores of
Scotland and Ireland.

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The year was 1588...

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..and the battle was the Armada.

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Today's celebrations mark the
centenary of the Fleet Air Arm,
and it still seems

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like the most natural thing
in the world to devote
a great cathedral to the Royal Navy,

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a tradition that began on
that autumn day 400 years ago.

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1588 marked a turning point
in our national story.

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Victory over the Armada
transformed us

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into a seafaring nation
and it sparked a myth

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that would one day become a reality,
that the nation's new destiny,

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the source of her future wealth and
power, lay out there on the oceans.

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This series tells the story of how
the Navy expanded from a tiny force

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to become the most complex
industrial enterprise on Earth.

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Of how the need to organise it laid
the foundations of our civil service
and our economy.

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Of how it transformed our culture,
our sense of national identity

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and our democracy.

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It's a story of heroism
and innovation,

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but also of disasters
and dark chapters in our history.

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It's the remarkable story of a
400-year struggle, fought at sea

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and on land, of how the Navy drove
Britain into the modern age
and changed the world.

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Clear the hatch!
England's extraordinary journey

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from a third rate nation
to global superpower

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began on a clear October day
20 years before the Armada.

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OK, bring on the beer.

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Not that anything so grand
was on the minds of the sailors

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who scurried to and fro in
the old harbour in Plymouth,

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making a small fleet of six ships
ready for sea.

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The gangplank groaned as last minute
supplies were brought on board.

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Large barrels of fresh water
and beer and even whinnying goats,
and chickens as well.

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When anything was brought on board
they were lashed down

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to the bulkheads in
expectation of a bumpy passage.

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The two men in command were cousins.

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On that fine autumn day, they were
thinking not about making war
but about making money.

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The older of the two was John
Hawkins who, at the age of just 35,

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was already Plymouth's
leading merchant venturer.

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The younger was his cousin,

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a poor relation who'd grown up with
Hawkins, 27-year-old Francis Drake.

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They were leaving behind a poor,
insignificant town on the edge
of a poor, insignificant country

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which itself clung
to the fringes of Europe.

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But this place
had one thing going for it - this,

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one of the finest natural harbours
on Earth, gateway to the Atlantic
and, beyond that, the New World.

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First discovered
only 60 years before,

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the New World of the Americas
offered wealth beyond imagining -

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if they could get there
and bring it back, that is.

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A round trip of 12,000 miles.

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No mean feat in the 1560s.

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Stand by. Two, six!

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Two, six! Two, six!

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Take a break.

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Is that halfway? Yeah.
You're kidding me! No!

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This wonderful replica
of the Tudor ship, The Matthew,

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gives me a strong sense of what
life might have been like on board.

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Sailing one of these you're just so
struck by the ingenuity, aren't you?

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The sort of combination of wood,
rope, bit of metal,

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and you can sail
round the other side of the world.

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Among the profit-hungry investors in
the venture was the Queen herself.

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She'd lent two ships,
the Jesus of Lubeck and the Minion.

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Both were old, spent and rotten,
as were most of the vessels
in her tiny navy.

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The crew, too, would get
their share of the booty.

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All were young. Some were just boys,
among them Hawkins' nephew Paul

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and the 13-year-old Miles Philips,

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whose journal relates the terrors of
frequent storms and leaking hulls.

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There were no creature comforts
for those on board either.

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The single-minded Hawkins
made his men sleep on deck.

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Because every inch of hold space
was reserved for the cargo
that would make the cash.

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On that expedition,
the cargo was a human one.

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Drake and Hawkins have the
terrible distinction
of being the first Englishmen

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to bind African men,
women and children in chains

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and transport them in
the holds of ships like this.

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They were slave traders.

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Six weeks out of Plymouth,
they picked up 500 slaves in Guinea
then headed west.

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Few Englishmen
had ever made this journey.

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England had been slow to spot the
opportunities of the New World
and the Spanish had got their first.

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Now Spain jealously guarded
a lucrative American empire
stretching from South America

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through the Caribbean
to Mexico and further north.

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Drake and Hawkins just wanted
a little slice of the action.

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Nip in, sell a few slaves and return
home with a hold full of silver.

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The problem was that the Spanish
had banned foreigners from trading
within their lucrative empire.

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Hawkins had managed it once or
twice before and got away with it.

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He hoped to do so again.
But this time would be different.

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In the Caribbean they traded
their human cargo for silver, gold
and pearls, then turned for home.

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But it was hurricane season.

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Storms drove them to San Juan
on the coast of Mexico,

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where a powerful Spanish fleet
first promised them safe passage

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then decided to teach them
a violent lesson.

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In the fight that followed,
Hawkins lost three of his ships,

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including the Jesus of Lubeck
and 200 men killed or captured.

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He managed to escape on the Minion,

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and with him was the 13-year-old
Miles Philips,

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who watched what happened
to the prisoners.

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"They took our men ashore,"
he wrote,

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"and hung them up by their arms
until blood burst out
from their fingers' ends."

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And the moment of
personal tragedy for Hawkins -

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he realised that his nephew Paul
was among them.

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Disease and famine followed
and by the time they limped home

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fewer than 20 men were left alive
aboard the Minion.

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But, for the survivors,
this disaster acted

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not as a deterrent
but as a spur to action.

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The experience marked Drake and
Hawkins for the rest of their lives.

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Neither would ever forgive
the Spanish for their treachery,

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and they threw themselves
into a bitter, personal crusade
against Spain.

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It was fuelled by the heady mix of
a lust for cash, religious zealotry

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and a desire for personal revenge.

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In time, this crusade would become
a national enterprise

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and in doing so it would forge
a new idea of Englishness.

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But if England's seafarers
were to have any chance
of catching up with Spain,

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they would need
better ships to do it.

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Hawkins' answer was
the race-built galleon,

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his radical breakthrough
in warship design,

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preserved in these
original drawings.

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By using maths and geometry
instead of rule of thumb,

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by cutting down high decks
and by streamlining hulls,

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Hawkins produced the fastest ships
of their kind anywhere in the world.

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The first was built in 1570
at the Queen's dockyard in Deptford.

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More were to follow.

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With greater space for guns, they
were perfectly designed for war.

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But 20 race-built galleons, the
most the Tudor state could afford,

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would not be enough on their own.

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Hawkins landed a job
on the Navy Board, the committee
that ran the Queen's modest fleet.

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And, in 1582,
the board commissioned
a series of extraordinary surveys

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preserved here
at the National Archives.

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I've read about this
but never seen it before.

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This is a list of every ship
in England compiled under
Hawkins' leadership.

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And as you can see,
it's broken up by county.

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Here Norfolk, Suffolk,
absolutely meticulously written down
It's beautiful.

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Every single ship, with the tonnage
here, so these ones are St Mary,
the Solomon, 200 tonnes.

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Absolutely incredible.

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As we go further on, here,
they didn't just list the ships,

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they list the masters
and then the number of mariners

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and seamen there are as well
for each port.

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So here we go. In Cornwall,
there are 108 masters,

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626 mariners and 1,184 seamen.

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So precise. Incredible.

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This information is being gathered
centrally in London at the beck
and call of the Tudor state.

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It's actually very moving
seeing the names of people that
lived all those centuries ago.

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Once you have a list like this,
when war comes, when there's
a national emergency,

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you can knock on the door
of men like John Cooper
and Peter Dolomore

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and say, "Right, mate, you're coming
in the Navy to protect the country."

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It does make you wonder whether men
like William Bennett, William Mort

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from Littleham, whether they end up
fighting against the Spanish Armada.

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And this is just fantastic.
You get right to the end.

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The total number of mariners
available to the Tudor state,

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16,259.

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Men that could be mobilised
to protect little England

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against the greatest superpower
in the world.

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Drake, meanwhile, was taking
his revenge on Spain
in a much more direct fashion.

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On an April day in 1587,
the residents of Cadiz
woke to the sound of gunfire.

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By the end of the day,
over 30 Spanish ships lay
at the bottom of the harbour

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and Drake's fleet had sailed away
with holds full of treasure.

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It was the culmination of
a ten-year pillaging spree

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that had seen Drake
circumnavigate the globe,

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attack Spanish colonies
and steal their loot.

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Belligerent, venal,
a peerless seafarer,

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he was Protestant England's
new hero.

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In Catholic Spain,
he was anything but.

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Standing here, looking at it
from the Spanish point of view,

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the English appear
little different from Vikings.

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Men who came from the north in ships
bent on plunder and destruction,
to whom nothing was sacred.

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The most infamous of all was Drake,

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still hated, still known as
El Draque, The Dragon.

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And now The Dragon
had pushed the King of Spain

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to take his own terrible revenge
on Drake and England.

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That revenge came in July 1588.

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When the Armada appeared
off England's coast,

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one eye witness wrote that the
ocean groaned under their weight.

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It had taken Spain three years
and a titanic amount of silver
to assemble it,

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while the English fleet had been
mobilised in just three months.

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The battle raged for several days.

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But the leadership of men
like Drake and Hawkins had given
the English a decisive edge.

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People have tended to attribute
victory over the Spanish Armada

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to the courage
of the English sailors

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or the intervention of divine wind.

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But the Spanish fought
equally bravely,

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and at different stages
of the campaign
the wind favoured both sides.

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The real reason
is a lot less glamorous, it's the
inspired organisation of Hawkins.

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He ensured that England had a fleet
of fast, manoeuvrable ships,

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each of which carried something like
three times the weight in armament
of its Spanish equivalent.

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He laid the foundations
for modern naval warfare,

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bringing ships, men
and cannon together

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in a decisive combination.

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So when the great and the good
arrived in their finery at St Paul's
on that day in November 1588,

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they were celebrating
not just a victory,

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but the beginning of a new future.

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The Queen, as one author wrote,
was carried in a golden chariot

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through her city of London
in robes of triumph...

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while the still bloody heads
of Catholic traitors,

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executed for praying
for the Armada's success,

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stared down from spikes nearby.

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The Tudor PR machine
went into overdrive.

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A new portrait showed the Queen
triumphant, her hand on a globe,

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the Spanish ships crushed
on the rocks behind her.

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The scale of the victory
expanded the horizons
of a small, impoverished nation.

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One commentator wrote,

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"The sea had become
a means to seek new worlds,

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"for gold, for praise, for glory."

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# God save our gracious Queen... #

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The English had been given a bright
vision of a glittering future,

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of riches beyond imagination,

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of new frontiers that stretched way
beyond the shores of tiny England.

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Above all, it was a future that
would be played out on the seas,

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by the ships of the Navy and by
a new breed of heroic seafarer.

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England's view of its place in the
world would never be the same again.

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Guard of Honour, slope arms!

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Right turn!

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The Queen's navy had become a source
of national pride as never before

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and there was an insatiable demand
for stories of seafaring
adventure and discovery.

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A new national identity -
aggressive, ambitious
and Protestant - was in the making.

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If Hawkins was the architect
of that new identity
and Drake its firebrand,

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then Richard Hakluyt
was its biographer.

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In 1589, the year after
the Spanish Armada, he wrote this.

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"The Principal Navigations, Voyages,
Traffics and Discoveries
of the English Nation."

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00:20:17,640 --> 00:20:20,840
An account of 1,600 years of history

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00:20:20,840 --> 00:20:25,880
containing over 250
seafaring adventures by Englishmen.

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00:20:25,880 --> 00:20:28,600
A mix of storytelling
and myth making.

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Here at the back of this one,
for example, we have

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Hawkins's ill-fated trip
to the Caribbean,
with Miles Philips' gruesome account

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of the barbarous treatment
they received at the hands
of the Spaniards.

223
00:20:42,720 --> 00:20:49,160
Here in the next volume we have
the accounts of the defeat of the
Spanish Armada itself, which ends

224
00:20:49,160 --> 00:20:55,880
with this incredible paragraph that
says, "Thus the magnificent, huge
and mighty fleet of the Spaniards

225
00:20:55,880 --> 00:21:00,680
"in the year 1588
vanished into smoke."

226
00:21:03,400 --> 00:21:06,320
This was history with a purpose,

227
00:21:06,320 --> 00:21:11,440
a call to arms to a nation
on the verge of a new destiny.

228
00:21:11,440 --> 00:21:14,520
That destiny could not have been
made more obvious

229
00:21:14,520 --> 00:21:17,800
than it was in a subsequent edition
of Hakluyt's work,

230
00:21:17,800 --> 00:21:22,080
which contained this stunning map.

231
00:21:22,080 --> 00:21:24,280
This piece of paper
is 400 years old.

232
00:21:24,280 --> 00:21:26,560
It's incredibly beautiful.

233
00:21:26,560 --> 00:21:28,160
Just look at the detail

234
00:21:28,160 --> 00:21:31,680
of the world's coastlines
and ports and rivers.

235
00:21:32,840 --> 00:21:36,680
What's so remarkable about this map
is that medieval maps show England

236
00:21:36,680 --> 00:21:39,920
as an insignificant island
clinging to the edge of Europe,

237
00:21:39,920 --> 00:21:42,600
but now England's not at the edge.
It's been picked up

238
00:21:42,600 --> 00:21:44,760
and moved right to the heart
of the world.

239
00:21:48,880 --> 00:21:54,760
It's an image of the world
we all recognise, but this map
showed it for the first time.

240
00:21:56,760 --> 00:22:01,400
It was a potent symbol of a nation
that now had global ambitions.

241
00:22:02,920 --> 00:22:05,520
Ships poured out of England,

242
00:22:05,520 --> 00:22:10,360
bound for the Americas, Africa,
Asia and the Baltic.

243
00:22:10,360 --> 00:22:15,440
Numerous and aggressive,
these English pioneers
steadily eroded Spanish power

244
00:22:15,440 --> 00:22:20,600
and founded the colonies
that formed the beginnings
of Britain's future empire.

245
00:22:28,360 --> 00:22:32,080
Abroad and at home,
business was booming.

246
00:22:32,080 --> 00:22:36,800
Ports like East Looe in Cornwall
now had scores of fishing boats

247
00:22:36,800 --> 00:22:39,760
trading as far away
as North America.

248
00:22:40,840 --> 00:22:46,320
In these new, confident times
they called themselves
the western adventurers.

249
00:22:49,400 --> 00:22:54,640
But economic success brought a new
threat that no-one had foreseen.

250
00:23:07,720 --> 00:23:13,480
Suddenly, whole fleets -
10 or 12 ships - would head out
to sea and simply vanish.

251
00:23:16,360 --> 00:23:19,640
There are reports of ships found
floating out there in the Atlantic

252
00:23:19,640 --> 00:23:22,080
without their crews,
who were never seen again.

253
00:23:22,080 --> 00:23:24,120
On one night in the summer of 1631,

254
00:23:24,120 --> 00:23:27,400
in the village of Baltimore
in southern Ireland,

255
00:23:27,400 --> 00:23:30,280
over 100 people were removed
from their beds,

256
00:23:30,280 --> 00:23:32,320
leaving the place a ghost town.

257
00:23:38,720 --> 00:23:46,600
A remarkable letter, written
in August 1625, reveals the scale
and horror of the problem.

258
00:23:48,240 --> 00:23:52,960
It's from the mayor of Plymouth,
Thomas Seeley,
to the king's council.

259
00:23:54,560 --> 00:23:59,560
"One poor maritime town in Cornwall
called Looe hath within ten days

260
00:23:59,560 --> 00:24:04,040
"lost 80 mariners, bound in
fishing voyages to the deeps

261
00:24:04,040 --> 00:24:08,040
"and there have been taken
by the Turks."

262
00:24:12,280 --> 00:24:17,520
Back then, Turks meant Muslims,
and these were in fact
pirates from North Africa.

263
00:24:17,520 --> 00:24:19,360
Barbary pirates.

264
00:24:19,360 --> 00:24:24,240
They came to these shores
and took people as slaves
back to North Africa.

265
00:24:24,240 --> 00:24:26,680
It was a barbarous practice
but it was, of course,

266
00:24:26,680 --> 00:24:30,200
what these West Countrymen had been
doing to Africans for decades now.

267
00:24:30,200 --> 00:24:36,640
Even so, it turned the sea here
from a source of wealth
and prestige for England

268
00:24:36,640 --> 00:24:38,640
into a place of terror and slavery.

269
00:24:39,760 --> 00:24:44,360
The ports and fishing villages,
it's said, were filled with

270
00:24:44,360 --> 00:24:48,320
the pitiful lamentations
of the victims' families.

271
00:24:49,480 --> 00:24:54,680
In the next few years, Devon
and Cornwall would lose a fifth
of their shipping and crews.

272
00:24:59,400 --> 00:25:05,000
This extraordinary and little-known
episode in English history was
to have far-reaching consequences.

273
00:25:05,000 --> 00:25:09,720
Englishmen were bred on the myth
of maritime invincibility.

274
00:25:09,720 --> 00:25:12,960
But now they had to face
hard truths.

275
00:25:12,960 --> 00:25:18,480
Once the predators, they were now
the prey, and people did what
they usually did in a crisis.

276
00:25:18,480 --> 00:25:21,920
They blamed the government.
And they weren't entirely wrong.

277
00:25:25,800 --> 00:25:28,640
Fishing vessel Trevose,
fishing vessel Trevose.

278
00:25:28,640 --> 00:25:32,520
This is protection vessel Tyne
calling you channel one-six, over.

279
00:25:32,520 --> 00:25:34,560
Tyne, Trevose.

280
00:25:36,160 --> 00:25:41,200
I'm on one of the modern Navy's
fishery protection vessels
about 30 miles from Cornwall.

281
00:25:41,200 --> 00:25:43,240
Just the territory
where Barbary pirates

282
00:25:43,240 --> 00:25:45,800
were seizing English shipping.

283
00:25:51,000 --> 00:25:55,680
Trevose, this is Tyne.
It's my intention to send
a routine boarding team over to you.

284
00:25:55,680 --> 00:26:00,200
My team will be with you
in two-zero minutes, over.

285
00:26:00,200 --> 00:26:06,800
In Elizabeth's time, the Queen's
ships and the private vessels
of freebooters like Drake

286
00:26:06,800 --> 00:26:08,720
had kept these waters safe.

287
00:26:08,720 --> 00:26:11,760
But the Queen was now dead.

288
00:26:13,960 --> 00:26:20,600
The new Stuart regime
had made peace with Spain
and the Navy had been cut back.

289
00:26:22,480 --> 00:26:25,520
With a predilection
for self-aggrandisement,

290
00:26:25,520 --> 00:26:27,720
the regime had spent its cash,

291
00:26:27,720 --> 00:26:31,560
some of it raised illegally
by notorious ship money,

292
00:26:31,560 --> 00:26:33,760
on a few grand, vanity ships,

293
00:26:33,760 --> 00:26:36,720
designed to impress
the kings of Europe.

294
00:26:41,200 --> 00:26:47,920
The trouble was, fishery protection
wasn't the kind of job that these
showy vessels were designed to do.

295
00:26:47,920 --> 00:26:51,800
Just as the job that
these guys do couldn't be done
by an aircraft carrier.

296
00:26:56,160 --> 00:27:00,480
In the absence of this kind of
protection, the king's subjects,

297
00:27:00,480 --> 00:27:04,360
particularly down here in the West
Country, were completely vulnerable.

298
00:27:04,360 --> 00:27:10,000
They and their cargoes
made irresistible targets
for North African pirates.

299
00:27:13,920 --> 00:27:17,080
Shocked by the magnitude
of the crisis,

300
00:27:17,080 --> 00:27:22,480
West Country MP Sir John Elliot
wrote to the king's council
begging for action.

301
00:27:22,480 --> 00:27:24,560
But the government did nothing.

302
00:27:24,560 --> 00:27:27,360
Elliot was furious.

303
00:27:29,360 --> 00:27:32,120
And he wasn't the only one.

304
00:27:33,640 --> 00:27:36,160
Anger also oozes
from the pages of this,

305
00:27:36,160 --> 00:27:40,040
a best seller written around
the time of the disappearances
from East Looe.

306
00:27:40,040 --> 00:27:42,440
It's called
Sir Francis Drake Revived.

307
00:27:42,440 --> 00:27:44,720
It's written by Drake's nephew,

308
00:27:44,720 --> 00:27:50,240
and he recounts the glories
and successes of what now seemed
like a vanished age.

309
00:27:50,240 --> 00:27:55,880
It's an indictment on the present
with its all-pervasive sense of fear
and its insecurity.

310
00:27:55,880 --> 00:27:59,840
But it's also a call to arms,
as the author makes very clear
on the title page.

311
00:27:59,840 --> 00:28:04,560
He writes, "Calling upon
this dull or effeminate age,

312
00:28:04,560 --> 00:28:08,720
"to follow his noble steps
for gold and silver."

313
00:28:12,800 --> 00:28:14,840
Sir John Elliot caught the mood,

314
00:28:14,840 --> 00:28:19,400
calling for a return to the
aggressive policies of the past.

315
00:28:19,400 --> 00:28:23,920
England's new King, it seemed,
was listening.

316
00:28:25,560 --> 00:28:28,840
Charles I had been on the throne
for just a few months

317
00:28:28,840 --> 00:28:33,720
and, like a modern leader
seeking crowd-pleasing policies
in troubled times,

318
00:28:33,720 --> 00:28:36,320
he funded an expedition
to attack Spain.

319
00:28:41,480 --> 00:28:48,880
It set sail from Plymouth
in October 1625, waved off
by a delighted John Elliot.

320
00:28:53,640 --> 00:28:56,480
Their target was none other
than Cadiz.

321
00:28:58,440 --> 00:29:02,560
Their mission, a Drake-style
smash and grab, returning home

322
00:29:02,560 --> 00:29:05,080
with holds full of treasure
to public acclaim.

323
00:29:09,840 --> 00:29:12,080
But it didn't work out that way
at all.

324
00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:19,840
The expedition was commanded by
Viscount Wimbledon, a man who'd
never served at sea before

325
00:29:19,840 --> 00:29:25,160
and was so indecisive his men
quickly gave him the nickname
"Viscount Sit Still".

326
00:29:25,160 --> 00:29:26,840
Confusion reigned.

327
00:29:26,840 --> 00:29:30,680
Ships collided and masts and rigging
tumbled overboard.

328
00:29:30,680 --> 00:29:35,480
When Sit Still
ordered his captains to attack,
many of them simply ignored him.

329
00:29:35,480 --> 00:29:39,200
The lack of an experienced,
charismatic commander, like Drake,

330
00:29:39,200 --> 00:29:42,160
exposed terrible weaknesses
in the English fleet.

331
00:29:42,160 --> 00:29:46,200
Even with Drake in charge
it would have been hard enough
to impose order.

332
00:29:46,200 --> 00:29:48,840
Now, many captains
simply did as they wished.

333
00:29:48,840 --> 00:29:50,600
They were a rabble.

334
00:29:57,720 --> 00:30:01,880
The chaos continued when they
landed 2,000 troops on the beach

335
00:30:01,880 --> 00:30:03,920
but failed to give them any water.

336
00:30:06,080 --> 00:30:09,280
The weather was scorching.

337
00:30:09,280 --> 00:30:15,640
When they finally got into the town,
these thirsty Englishmen
stumbled on a warehouse.

338
00:30:17,480 --> 00:30:20,320
It was full of wine.

339
00:30:22,720 --> 00:30:24,520
All hell broke loose.

340
00:30:24,520 --> 00:30:29,080
The men started drinking,
and although the officers tried
to stop them, it was no use.

341
00:30:29,080 --> 00:30:31,400
"The whole army was drunken,"

342
00:30:31,400 --> 00:30:38,240
wrote one eye witness, "and in one
common confusion, some shooting at
one another amongst themselves."

343
00:30:38,240 --> 00:30:43,240
This wouldn't, of course,
be the last time drunken English
behaved disgracefully abroad.

344
00:30:43,240 --> 00:30:47,160
But on this occasion,
with the expedition descending
into total farce,

345
00:30:47,160 --> 00:30:50,360
the commanders
had no choice but to call it off.

346
00:30:58,480 --> 00:31:03,160
On the way home, farce turned
to tragedy as disease took hold.

347
00:31:06,440 --> 00:31:12,200
By the time they reached Plymouth,
hundreds were dead
and hundreds more were dying.

348
00:31:15,760 --> 00:31:18,200
And who was standing up here
waiting for them?

349
00:31:18,200 --> 00:31:20,760
None other than Sir John Elliot.

350
00:31:20,760 --> 00:31:24,880
The man who in October had waved
them off with such high hopes

351
00:31:24,880 --> 00:31:30,240
now stood on a miserable day
just before Christmas 1625,
as the fleet limped in.

352
00:31:31,240 --> 00:31:34,360
"The miseries before us are great,"

353
00:31:34,360 --> 00:31:39,280
he wrote,
as he watched corpses being tossed
into the harbour from the ships.

354
00:31:39,280 --> 00:31:43,640
And later he saw sailors drop down
dead in the streets of Plymouth.

355
00:31:43,640 --> 00:31:49,280
But soon his compassion
for the sailors
turned into another emotion - rage.

356
00:31:56,640 --> 00:31:58,920
News of the fiasco
soon reached London,

357
00:31:58,920 --> 00:32:03,520
and when Parliament convened,
John Elliot was on his feet,

358
00:32:03,520 --> 00:32:07,000
his anger echoing around
St Stephen's Hall.

359
00:32:08,600 --> 00:32:11,360
"Our honour is ruined.
Our ships are sunk.

360
00:32:11,360 --> 00:32:17,200
"Our men are killed, not by the
sword, nor by the hand of an enemy,

361
00:32:17,200 --> 00:32:19,440
"but by those we trust."

362
00:32:19,440 --> 00:32:24,720
Those words, spoken by Elliot
in this chamber, where the House
of Commons used to meet,

363
00:32:24,720 --> 00:32:29,480
were the sharpest denunciation
of royal government
ever heard in Parliament.

364
00:32:29,480 --> 00:32:35,400
Cadiz, Elliot said, proved that
the King was unfit to run the Navy.

365
00:32:35,400 --> 00:32:39,480
In a series of extraordinary
speeches in here, Elliot demanded

366
00:32:39,480 --> 00:32:44,400
that Parliament take a greater role
in overseeing the affairs of state.

367
00:32:44,400 --> 00:32:47,760
When the Speaker, who sat
in his chair on this spot,

368
00:32:47,760 --> 00:32:52,680
tried to shut him up, Elliot
hired three thugs to hold him down.

369
00:32:52,680 --> 00:32:56,080
If it seemed like revolution
was in the air, it was.

370
00:32:56,080 --> 00:33:02,600
The King's failure
to run a modern, efficient navy
had sparked a constitutional crisis.

371
00:33:06,680 --> 00:33:10,080
John Elliot was thrown
into the Tower.

372
00:33:10,080 --> 00:33:11,920
But a new generation of MPs,

373
00:33:11,920 --> 00:33:17,600
immortalised here in St Stephen's
Hall, took up his call for liberty.

374
00:33:19,400 --> 00:33:23,080
Relations between King
and Parliament collapsed.

375
00:33:23,080 --> 00:33:27,960
In 1642, Charles fled London
and the Civil War began.

376
00:33:36,240 --> 00:33:40,720
By fleeing the capital, Charles
lost control both of the Navy

377
00:33:40,720 --> 00:33:45,360
and of the new, burgeoning
maritime economy that it supported.

378
00:33:45,360 --> 00:33:49,240
It made his defeat inevitable,
and in 1649,

379
00:33:49,240 --> 00:33:54,320
on the orders of England's
new republic, he was executed.

380
00:33:59,160 --> 00:34:06,080
Parliament acted quickly to secure
control over the Navy, putting
men of proven loyalty in charge.

381
00:34:06,080 --> 00:34:08,480
They were known
as the "generals at sea".

382
00:34:12,520 --> 00:34:17,560
One of them was Robert Blake, West
Country MP, hero of the Civil War,

383
00:34:17,560 --> 00:34:20,000
and a radical protestant to boot.

384
00:34:34,800 --> 00:34:38,200
Blake had never fought at sea.

385
00:34:38,200 --> 00:34:44,520
Not a brilliant start for a man
charged with protecting England's
coasts against a multitude of foes.

386
00:34:44,520 --> 00:34:46,760
But Blake understood
warfare and men,

387
00:34:46,760 --> 00:34:52,320
and he knew that chaos
and indiscipline were as dangerous
at sea as they were on land.

388
00:34:52,320 --> 00:34:57,120
Command problems that had dogged
the English expedition to Cadiz
still remained.

389
00:34:57,120 --> 00:35:02,960
In one of his first battles,
he was appalled to see his captain
disobey his orders and flee.

390
00:35:02,960 --> 00:35:07,840
He knew he had to find a way
to assert his control.

391
00:35:11,320 --> 00:35:14,360
His solution was to produce
the Navy's first ever

392
00:35:14,360 --> 00:35:17,440
set of rules and regulations,

393
00:35:17,440 --> 00:35:22,520
the Laws of War and Ordinances
of the Sea, in 1652.

394
00:35:24,080 --> 00:35:30,280
For the first time, it gave English
commanders a fighting chance of
issuing orders that would be obeyed.

395
00:35:30,280 --> 00:35:32,320
Port 15.

396
00:35:32,320 --> 00:35:35,200
It was a list of 39 offences,

397
00:35:35,200 --> 00:35:39,920
from stealing to spying,
from cowardice to sleeping on duty.

398
00:35:39,920 --> 00:35:42,680
Most were punishable by death.

399
00:35:45,800 --> 00:35:49,800
Blake even sacked his own brother
for discipline offences.

400
00:35:51,400 --> 00:35:55,680
The Laws of War offered
a blueprint for structure
and discipline at sea...

401
00:35:57,680 --> 00:36:01,840
..that would later be applied
through all areas of government.

402
00:36:05,440 --> 00:36:10,000
Blake was just what the Navy needed,
a tough outsider.

403
00:36:10,000 --> 00:36:14,360
He could see that
over the previous 50 years
the Navy had vacillated wildly

404
00:36:14,360 --> 00:36:20,080
between great successes like
the Armada and total failures like
Cadiz, but there was no reliability.

405
00:36:20,080 --> 00:36:25,000
Under charismatic leadership
of men like Drake, the English
could be great successes.

406
00:36:25,000 --> 00:36:29,000
But otherwise,
denied that leadership,
failure was often the result.

407
00:36:29,000 --> 00:36:31,920
Blake imposed order and discipline.

408
00:36:31,920 --> 00:36:37,520
He ensured that no matter who was in
charge, the Navy would be effective.

409
00:36:42,400 --> 00:36:48,200
Blake left behind a navy that was
larger and more disciplined than
the country had ever known before.

410
00:36:51,160 --> 00:36:56,760
The powerful fleet had protected
the young republic
from its foreign enemies.

411
00:36:56,760 --> 00:37:03,440
But it could not fill
the vacuum created when Cromwell,
the English dictator, died.

412
00:37:03,440 --> 00:37:06,160
A new era was coming.

413
00:37:13,440 --> 00:37:18,160
On May 26th 1660,
one of the Navy's grandest ships,

414
00:37:18,160 --> 00:37:21,480
the Royal Charles,
came within sight of England.

415
00:37:24,600 --> 00:37:30,560
On board was a man making
his triumphant return home
after years in exile.

416
00:37:31,680 --> 00:37:37,320
It was Charles,
son of the murdered king,
soon to be crowned King Charles II.

417
00:37:41,720 --> 00:37:47,240
The journey was the result of
weeks of plotting between senior
naval officers and exiled royalists

418
00:37:47,240 --> 00:37:49,000
to bring back the monarchy.

419
00:37:51,200 --> 00:37:54,800
The new king was eager to lay claim
to England's potent navy.

420
00:37:54,800 --> 00:37:59,000
He gave gold to the sailors
and rebranded the fleet.

421
00:37:59,000 --> 00:38:00,920
It was now the Royal Navy.

422
00:38:07,680 --> 00:38:11,320
Disembarking with the royal party
was the younger cousin

423
00:38:11,320 --> 00:38:14,440
and newly appointed secretary
to the ship's commander.

424
00:38:22,560 --> 00:38:24,960
The young man was honoured
to be given the job

425
00:38:24,960 --> 00:38:27,720
of taking the King's spaniel
off the ship.

426
00:38:27,720 --> 00:38:30,240
He wrote in his diary,
"It shit the boat,

427
00:38:30,240 --> 00:38:33,200
"which made us laugh
and methink that the King

428
00:38:33,200 --> 00:38:36,720
"and all that belong to him
are but just as others are."

429
00:38:39,920 --> 00:38:43,040
As they came ashore,
the young man saw huge crowds

430
00:38:43,040 --> 00:38:47,560
of nobles and citizens alike who'd
turned out to welcome their king.

431
00:38:47,560 --> 00:38:50,000
"The shouting and joy
expressed by all,"

432
00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:53,120
he wrote, "was past imagination."

433
00:38:53,120 --> 00:38:58,000
The 27-year-old from London had just
completed his second sea voyage.

434
00:38:58,000 --> 00:39:02,400
He didn't know it then,
but this was just the start
of an extraordinary naval career.

435
00:39:02,400 --> 00:39:05,120
His name was Samuel Pepys.

436
00:39:08,440 --> 00:39:10,440
Pepys was from humble origins,

437
00:39:10,440 --> 00:39:13,120
the son of a poor tailor
and a washerwoman,

438
00:39:13,120 --> 00:39:17,160
but he left behind
two extraordinary legacies.

439
00:39:17,160 --> 00:39:22,240
He would transform
the administration of the Navy
like no-one before him,

440
00:39:22,240 --> 00:39:25,800
and leave behind one
of the most vivid

441
00:39:25,800 --> 00:39:28,480
and colourful diaries of all time.

442
00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:33,640
And here it is, volume one
of Samuel Pepys' diary,

443
00:39:33,640 --> 00:39:36,480
started on January 1st 1660,

444
00:39:36,480 --> 00:39:39,320
possibly in response
to a New Year's resolution.

445
00:39:39,320 --> 00:39:41,880
It's in shorthand,
so takes a bit of deciphering,

446
00:39:41,880 --> 00:39:44,920
but it's an incredibly honest
account of a colourful life.

447
00:39:44,920 --> 00:39:47,720
There are descriptions
of his trips to the theatre,

448
00:39:47,720 --> 00:39:52,520
drinking, his affairs, music, money
and even arguments with his wife.

449
00:39:52,520 --> 00:39:57,800
That's all interspersed
with descriptions of a job he loved.

450
00:39:57,800 --> 00:40:01,120
Or at least, he came to love it.

451
00:40:01,120 --> 00:40:05,320
When he first landed the job of
Clerk of the Acts to the Navy Board,

452
00:40:05,320 --> 00:40:07,920
he hadn't the foggiest idea
what it entailed.

453
00:40:07,920 --> 00:40:11,640
But he was delighted with the pay -
£350 a year,

454
00:40:11,640 --> 00:40:14,640
more than he'd ever earned
in his life.

455
00:40:19,080 --> 00:40:23,000
Eager to learn, Pepys threw himself
into the complex new world

456
00:40:23,000 --> 00:40:26,480
of the Navy's dockyards at Chatham,
Woolwich and Deptford.

457
00:40:27,520 --> 00:40:30,280
All are now long gone.

458
00:40:30,280 --> 00:40:32,560
But this yard on the Dutch coast

459
00:40:32,560 --> 00:40:35,400
is building a replica ship
of the same era.

460
00:40:38,880 --> 00:40:41,880
The project manager is Aryan Klein.

461
00:40:41,880 --> 00:40:44,080
It's great to see the ship
at this stage,

462
00:40:44,080 --> 00:40:46,240
cos you see what gives it
its strength.

463
00:40:46,240 --> 00:40:48,480
Usually you just see it
floating around.

464
00:40:48,480 --> 00:40:51,120
Yeah, it's all
heavy timber construction.

465
00:40:51,120 --> 00:40:55,120
So how many oak trees go into
the building of this then?
Several hundred.

466
00:40:55,120 --> 00:40:59,320
Really? The estimates vary
from 400-600 fully grown trees.

467
00:40:59,320 --> 00:41:03,440
And some of these trees will be
maybe 100 years old, maybe older.

468
00:41:03,440 --> 00:41:06,920
How long would it have taken to
build this back in the 17th century?

469
00:41:06,920 --> 00:41:09,080
About nine months.
Wow, that's quick.

470
00:41:09,080 --> 00:41:12,840
Very hard labour. Hundreds of men
working day and night almost.

471
00:41:12,840 --> 00:41:15,000
And as soon as the ships
were watertight,

472
00:41:15,000 --> 00:41:16,840
they would be put into the water

473
00:41:16,840 --> 00:41:19,880
to make room
for the next ship on the slipway.

474
00:41:19,880 --> 00:41:23,320
It just shows the value of the goods
these ships were bringing back.

475
00:41:23,320 --> 00:41:26,640
They were being built to
bring back the riches of the world.

476
00:41:26,640 --> 00:41:29,840
Well, yeah, the big
East Indiamen were built for trade,

477
00:41:29,840 --> 00:41:33,280
but this particular ship we're
standing in now was a Man of War.

478
00:41:33,280 --> 00:41:35,560
Who was it built to fight
against, then?

479
00:41:35,560 --> 00:41:37,520
The English, I'm afraid!

480
00:41:37,520 --> 00:41:39,080
THEY CHUCKLE

481
00:41:39,080 --> 00:41:42,400
The Dutch had a really large stake
in world trade at that time

482
00:41:42,400 --> 00:41:46,600
and England, of course, thought,
"Well, we'll have some
of that trade."

483
00:41:46,600 --> 00:41:51,600
And it erupted into trade wars
between Holland and England.

484
00:41:51,600 --> 00:41:55,480
This ship is basically the result
of an arms race between
the two countries.

485
00:41:58,440 --> 00:42:00,720
The Dutch had overtaken Spain

486
00:42:00,720 --> 00:42:03,960
to become England's
new maritime rivals.

487
00:42:03,960 --> 00:42:09,640
They were aggressive, protestant and
organised, just like the English.

488
00:42:12,920 --> 00:42:18,480
To combat the Dutch threat, England
was now spending a mighty 25%

489
00:42:18,480 --> 00:42:21,000
of the national budget
on her navy,

490
00:42:21,000 --> 00:42:25,000
making it by far the country's
largest industrial enterprise.

491
00:42:27,520 --> 00:42:31,040
The dockyards consumed materials
in vast quantities.

492
00:42:31,040 --> 00:42:33,560
150 tonnes of iron a year,

493
00:42:33,560 --> 00:42:35,240
100 miles of rope,

494
00:42:35,240 --> 00:42:37,880
and had a vast workforce to match.

495
00:42:39,280 --> 00:42:44,800
And, as Pepys soon discovered,
corruption was rife.

496
00:42:44,800 --> 00:42:49,080
Pepys reported corrupt officials to
the Navy Board, but he soon realised

497
00:42:49,080 --> 00:42:52,720
that the worst corruption was
actually on the Navy Board itself.

498
00:42:52,720 --> 00:42:56,200
He refers to his colleagues as
"old fools and rogues"

499
00:42:56,200 --> 00:42:58,640
and realised that one of them
was even stealing

500
00:42:58,640 --> 00:43:02,400
from the sailors' pension fund,
known as the Chatham Chest.

501
00:43:02,400 --> 00:43:07,080
The problem was that the Navy
had become a vast receptacle
of public funds.

502
00:43:07,080 --> 00:43:09,960
There were no systems in place
to spend that money,

503
00:43:09,960 --> 00:43:12,800
and if a few thousand went missing,
who would care?

504
00:43:16,560 --> 00:43:21,160
Pepys cared, and realised that every
aspect of the Navy had ballooned,

505
00:43:21,160 --> 00:43:23,680
except for
the central administration.

506
00:43:25,240 --> 00:43:30,680
The fleet had grown far beyond
the ability of the medieval
Navy Board to manage it.

507
00:43:31,840 --> 00:43:35,360
Back in the office,
Pepys hired a team of clerks.

508
00:43:35,360 --> 00:43:37,600
He gave them desks,
with regular hours,

509
00:43:37,600 --> 00:43:41,040
and together they set out
imposing some order.

510
00:43:41,040 --> 00:43:43,880
They spent a lot of time
making lists.

511
00:43:43,880 --> 00:43:46,520
This one here
is an alphabetical list

512
00:43:46,520 --> 00:43:50,240
of all naval officers
that served in the Navy

513
00:43:50,240 --> 00:43:52,480
during Pepys' time in office,

514
00:43:52,480 --> 00:43:54,480
starting up here with A,

515
00:43:54,480 --> 00:43:57,600
coming all the way down
to Z down here.

516
00:43:57,600 --> 00:44:00,120
The amazing thing is
it contains information

517
00:44:00,120 --> 00:44:04,080
about their service records,
dates on which they were
in different ships -

518
00:44:04,080 --> 00:44:06,280
in some cases,
it even has their fate.

519
00:44:06,280 --> 00:44:07,880
So, for example,

520
00:44:07,880 --> 00:44:10,360
this man died,

521
00:44:10,360 --> 00:44:12,560
George Colt drowned,

522
00:44:12,560 --> 00:44:16,000
and Humphrey Connisby was discharged
by his Royal Highness.

523
00:44:16,000 --> 00:44:19,600
Lists like these imposed
a manageable symmetry

524
00:44:19,600 --> 00:44:22,880
on the anarchic world that Pepys
found himself in,

525
00:44:22,880 --> 00:44:26,560
and he became an expert
in the complex gathering

526
00:44:26,560 --> 00:44:28,960
and storage of information.

527
00:44:30,000 --> 00:44:34,840
He was determined
to professionalise every aspect
of the Navy's operations.

528
00:44:34,840 --> 00:44:39,560
He designed a call book to keep
records of dockyard hours worked,

529
00:44:39,560 --> 00:44:42,400
compiled an alphabetical list
of all contracts,

530
00:44:42,400 --> 00:44:45,960
and kept detailed notes
of everything he did.

531
00:44:47,600 --> 00:44:51,120
Pepys wasn't the first naval
administrator to make lists,

532
00:44:51,120 --> 00:44:55,320
but he was the most systematic, the
most brilliant, the most obsessive.

533
00:44:55,320 --> 00:44:59,040
He adored the Navy, not because he
loved storming aboard enemy ships

534
00:44:59,040 --> 00:45:01,280
with the smell of gunsmoke
in his nostrils,

535
00:45:01,280 --> 00:45:03,440
but because he loved
the bureaucracy.

536
00:45:03,440 --> 00:45:07,880
He delighted, he wrote,
"in the neatness of everything".

537
00:45:21,840 --> 00:45:25,360
But the Samuel Pepys of the diary
emerges as a man

538
00:45:25,360 --> 00:45:29,960
who was far from being a dull
paper-pusher and list-maker.

539
00:45:32,640 --> 00:45:35,280
Here's a not untypical entry.

540
00:45:35,280 --> 00:45:39,480
He has an orgy with the wife of one
of his colleagues on the Navy Board

541
00:45:39,480 --> 00:45:41,040
and her daughter.

542
00:45:41,040 --> 00:45:43,960
He wrote, "There are a great many
women in the chamber,

543
00:45:43,960 --> 00:45:47,720
"My Lady Penn and her daughter among
them, whereupon My Lady Penn

544
00:45:47,720 --> 00:45:51,560
"flung me down upon the bed
and herself and others,

545
00:45:51,560 --> 00:45:55,480
"one after another upon me
and very merry we were."

546
00:45:55,480 --> 00:45:57,440
Well, I'm not surprised!

547
00:45:57,440 --> 00:46:02,400
Every man has his vice they say,
and for Pepys it was definitely
the ladies...

548
00:46:02,400 --> 00:46:07,760
Well, and bouts of heavy drinking,
and fine dining, and nice clothes,

549
00:46:07,760 --> 00:46:12,640
and music,
and he loved the theatre, of course,
and, well, you get the idea.

550
00:46:12,640 --> 00:46:16,280
The point is Pepys was a man
who lived life to the full.

551
00:46:16,280 --> 00:46:20,840
But what really shines out in these
diaries is his love of his work.

552
00:46:20,840 --> 00:46:24,240
"My business,"
he wrote "is all my delight."

553
00:46:31,760 --> 00:46:35,360
The Navy's officer training college,
here at Dartmouth,

554
00:46:35,360 --> 00:46:38,360
was built long after Pepys' time,
but the idea

555
00:46:38,360 --> 00:46:43,120
of professionally trained
and qualified officers was his.

556
00:46:47,520 --> 00:46:50,400
Anyone with the right connections,
Pepys realised,

557
00:46:50,400 --> 00:46:52,400
could become an officer,

558
00:46:52,400 --> 00:46:56,440
leaving the Navy's valuable ships
in often unreliable hands.

559
00:46:56,440 --> 00:46:58,880
There was no quality control.

560
00:46:59,840 --> 00:47:02,360
Midshipman Briers! Sir.

561
00:47:02,360 --> 00:47:04,840
Pepys' solution - exams.

562
00:47:05,880 --> 00:47:10,760
The verbal test that he introduced
for all would-be lieutenants
still exists.

563
00:47:12,200 --> 00:47:14,320
Midshipman Briers,
take a seat, please.

564
00:47:14,320 --> 00:47:16,720
These days,
they call it Fleet Board.

565
00:47:17,480 --> 00:47:18,920
The first question is,

566
00:47:18,920 --> 00:47:24,200
what are the responsibilities
of the CBM at State One?

567
00:47:24,200 --> 00:47:26,720
He's on upper deck roaming, sir,

568
00:47:26,720 --> 00:47:30,280
looking mostly
for fire fighting events. OK.

569
00:47:30,280 --> 00:47:35,760
The whole idea
of assessment and interview
seems deeply familiar to us.

570
00:47:35,760 --> 00:47:39,360
What items of seamanship rigging
must always be fully rigged?

571
00:47:39,360 --> 00:47:41,360
The safety net underneath, sir.

572
00:47:41,360 --> 00:47:42,960
But that's because of Pepys.

573
00:47:42,960 --> 00:47:46,800
When he introduced his exam for
lieutenants, it was the first time

574
00:47:46,800 --> 00:47:50,560
any employee of the English state
had ever been tested in this way.

575
00:47:50,560 --> 00:47:52,560
And where is it located?

576
00:47:52,560 --> 00:47:54,240
Quick release marker buoy, sir.

577
00:47:54,240 --> 00:47:57,040
It's usually found on
the quarter deck. OK.

578
00:47:57,040 --> 00:48:00,400
Thank you very much,
Midshipman Briers. Please carry on.

579
00:48:02,880 --> 00:48:05,720
Using pen, paper and a tidy mind,

580
00:48:05,720 --> 00:48:08,360
Pepys had done for the Navy
as an institution

581
00:48:08,360 --> 00:48:10,840
what Hawkins
had done for its ships,

582
00:48:10,840 --> 00:48:14,040
and Blake for the discipline
of its crews.

583
00:48:14,040 --> 00:48:17,960
But could it survive
the ultimate test -

584
00:48:17,960 --> 00:48:19,720
war?

585
00:48:23,200 --> 00:48:28,040
In 1665 came the inevitable clash
with the Dutch.

586
00:48:30,520 --> 00:48:34,960
A series of English victories
early on seemed to augur well.

587
00:48:36,200 --> 00:48:38,000
But Pepys was worried.

588
00:48:38,000 --> 00:48:41,680
He'd said from the start that
Parliament hadn't voted enough money

589
00:48:41,680 --> 00:48:46,960
to fund the war and, just as he
predicted, the money was soon gone.

590
00:48:46,960 --> 00:48:50,200
The Navy lunged from triumph

591
00:48:50,200 --> 00:48:51,680
to crisis.

592
00:48:54,400 --> 00:48:56,520
Things soon reached boiling point.

593
00:48:56,520 --> 00:49:00,320
The Navy was terribly in debt
and sailors went unpaid.

594
00:49:00,320 --> 00:49:04,400
In the dockyards, Pepys saw
workers walking around like ghosts

595
00:49:04,400 --> 00:49:06,680
and he heard the lamentable moans

596
00:49:06,680 --> 00:49:09,640
of sailors that lay destitute
in the street,

597
00:49:09,640 --> 00:49:13,280
a sight which he said
"troubled him to his heart".

598
00:49:13,280 --> 00:49:16,280
To add to the sense of crisis,
plague broke out in London

599
00:49:16,280 --> 00:49:19,080
and Pepys and his clerks came here
to Greenwich,

600
00:49:19,080 --> 00:49:23,520
where they took up residence
in this, one of Charles II's
unfinished palaces.

601
00:49:23,520 --> 00:49:25,840
But that put them
in the heart of the fleet

602
00:49:25,840 --> 00:49:28,480
with all the disgruntled sailors
around them.

603
00:49:28,480 --> 00:49:30,480
One day, their windows were broken

604
00:49:30,480 --> 00:49:33,800
and Pepys and his staff were
threatened with physical violence.

605
00:49:38,880 --> 00:49:43,800
Pepys spent 24 hours composing
a desperate letter to the King.

606
00:49:45,120 --> 00:49:49,720
It's unambiguous and it would
have made very disturbing reading
for his royal master.

607
00:49:49,720 --> 00:49:53,360
Pepys begins by apologising
for being troublesome, he says

608
00:49:53,360 --> 00:49:56,600
"troubling His Majesty on the
subject which we often have done,

609
00:49:56,600 --> 00:49:59,560
"the want of money,
the effects of that want,

610
00:49:59,560 --> 00:50:03,680
"under which His Majesty's service
under our care

611
00:50:03,680 --> 00:50:05,720
"hath long been sinking."

612
00:50:05,720 --> 00:50:07,760
So Pepys is in no doubt
that his Navy

613
00:50:07,760 --> 00:50:12,120
is facing utter ruin and he comes up
with a typically Pepysian solution.

614
00:50:12,120 --> 00:50:14,040
He gives a list, carefully costed,

615
00:50:14,040 --> 00:50:17,240
of everything that he thinks
is necessary to prevent that.

616
00:50:17,240 --> 00:50:21,560
He starts up here by saying
55 anchors of various weights,

617
00:50:21,560 --> 00:50:24,640
800 bales of sailcloth,
4,000 loads of plank,

618
00:50:24,640 --> 00:50:29,000
400 dozen oars,
12 tons of brimstone,

619
00:50:29,000 --> 00:50:30,920
10,000 spars of all sorts,

620
00:50:30,920 --> 00:50:33,440
and comes up
with the incredibly precise figure,

621
00:50:33,440 --> 00:50:37,040
as only Pepys could do,
of the money required

622
00:50:37,040 --> 00:50:40,160
to stave off disaster
for the Navy and for England.

623
00:50:40,160 --> 00:50:46,000
And that sum is 179,793 pounds

624
00:50:46,000 --> 00:50:48,880
and ten shillings.

625
00:50:48,880 --> 00:50:53,560
But the King had nothing to give
and would not humiliate himself

626
00:50:53,560 --> 00:50:57,360
by going cap in hand
to Parliament to ask for more.

627
00:50:57,360 --> 00:51:02,440
Just a few months later came the
naval disaster Pepys had predicted.

628
00:51:06,640 --> 00:51:08,960
It was the summer of 1667.

629
00:51:08,960 --> 00:51:13,560
The fleet had been laid up
because there was no money
to pay crews to man it.

630
00:51:15,800 --> 00:51:19,920
Upnor Castle,
30 miles up the Thames from London,

631
00:51:19,920 --> 00:51:23,840
had been built in Elizabeth's
time to protect the fleet

632
00:51:23,840 --> 00:51:26,040
across the River Medway
at Chatham.

633
00:51:26,040 --> 00:51:30,040
The exhausted and unpaid garrison
were not at their best.

634
00:51:31,680 --> 00:51:36,120
On that June day, the horrified
defenders of this fort watched

635
00:51:36,120 --> 00:51:40,320
as 62 Dutch ships made their way
up the river on the rising tide.

636
00:51:41,440 --> 00:51:44,080
Anchored here
was much of Charles' fleet,

637
00:51:44,080 --> 00:51:46,720
including four
of his finest battleships.

638
00:51:46,720 --> 00:51:50,480
In a desperate measure, the English
sank some of their own ships here

639
00:51:50,480 --> 00:51:53,000
to try and block the river,
but that didn't work

640
00:51:53,000 --> 00:51:56,760
and their cannon on shore opened up
to try and turn the Dutch back.

641
00:51:56,760 --> 00:51:59,080
But someone had delivered
the wrong ammunition

642
00:51:59,080 --> 00:52:02,000
and many of the cannonballs
didn't even fit the barrels.

643
00:52:03,920 --> 00:52:08,760
The Dutch ships ploughed in amongst
the English ships with impunity,
capturing them,

644
00:52:08,760 --> 00:52:12,880
burning others, including three of
the finest battleships in the land.

645
00:52:14,480 --> 00:52:16,600
The river was covered in wreckage

646
00:52:16,600 --> 00:52:19,040
and in the sky,
there was a pall of smoke.

647
00:52:19,040 --> 00:52:22,480
One of Pepys' clerks who lived
and worked down here wrote,

648
00:52:22,480 --> 00:52:25,040
"The destruction of those three
glorious ships

649
00:52:25,040 --> 00:52:29,640
"was one of the most dismal sights
my eyes have ever beheld."

650
00:52:29,640 --> 00:52:34,040
"It was enough," he said,
"to make the heart of every
true Englishman bleed."

651
00:52:46,960 --> 00:52:48,600
In a final humiliation,

652
00:52:48,600 --> 00:52:52,640
the Dutch towed back to Holland
the Royal Charles itself,

653
00:52:52,640 --> 00:52:54,800
a moment immortalised on canvas,

654
00:52:54,800 --> 00:53:00,040
showing the pride of England's fleet
flying the Dutch flag.

655
00:53:03,600 --> 00:53:07,560
The Dutch raid on the Medway was at
the time, and remains to this day,

656
00:53:07,560 --> 00:53:12,000
the most embarrassing defeat
in the history of the Royal Navy.

657
00:53:12,000 --> 00:53:15,280
Not even the brilliant Pepys
could avert this catastrophe.

658
00:53:15,280 --> 00:53:17,520
The simple fact
was that King Charles

659
00:53:17,520 --> 00:53:19,920
just couldn't afford a modern navy.

660
00:53:29,560 --> 00:53:32,360
The Medway disaster set the King
and Parliament

661
00:53:32,360 --> 00:53:34,360
on another collision course

662
00:53:34,360 --> 00:53:37,400
over how the Navy
was to be funded and controlled.

663
00:53:43,080 --> 00:53:45,560
When Charles died in 1685,

664
00:53:45,560 --> 00:53:48,000
relations between
King and Parliament

665
00:53:48,000 --> 00:53:51,280
were at their lowest ebb
since the Civil War.

666
00:53:56,720 --> 00:53:59,600
He was succeeded
by his brother, James.

667
00:53:59,600 --> 00:54:03,840
Now he had had a rather
successful career as an admiral
in the Royal Navy.

668
00:54:03,840 --> 00:54:07,440
Could he be the man to work together
with politicians and financiers

669
00:54:07,440 --> 00:54:12,800
and businessmen to build a new
kind of constitutional monarchy?

670
00:54:12,800 --> 00:54:14,840
Well...

671
00:54:14,840 --> 00:54:16,000
no.

672
00:54:16,000 --> 00:54:20,640
And this extraordinary portrait
tells us why.

673
00:54:21,720 --> 00:54:25,480
James has had himself painted
in the garb of a roman emperor,

674
00:54:25,480 --> 00:54:27,720
with a haughty stare,

675
00:54:27,720 --> 00:54:32,000
his golden tunic, magnificent purple
robe flowing off his shoulders

676
00:54:32,000 --> 00:54:37,600
and decked out in jewels at his
throat, sword hilt and sandals.

677
00:54:37,600 --> 00:54:40,640
And out at sea his navy,
his plaything,

678
00:54:40,640 --> 00:54:44,400
the royal banner
flying from the main topmast.

679
00:54:44,400 --> 00:54:49,440
This was not how the English wanted
their kings to see themselves.

680
00:54:49,440 --> 00:54:54,960
To make matters worse,
James was openly, proudly Catholic.

681
00:54:54,960 --> 00:54:58,760
He appointed Catholics to key
positions in the armed forces.

682
00:54:58,760 --> 00:55:02,320
He even put one of them in charge
of the Royal Navy.

683
00:55:02,320 --> 00:55:06,480
This was clearly a man who wouldn't
send his Royal Navy out to attack

684
00:55:06,480 --> 00:55:08,800
the great Catholic powers
of Europe.

685
00:55:08,800 --> 00:55:13,880
This was not a man to protect
the legacy of Drake and Hawkins.

686
00:55:13,880 --> 00:55:16,840
He would have to go.

687
00:55:24,800 --> 00:55:30,160
In July 1688, a figure dressed as
a common sailor arrived in Holland.

688
00:55:33,800 --> 00:55:35,440
Beneath the disguise

689
00:55:35,440 --> 00:55:40,280
was England's premier naval officer,
Admiral Arthur Herbert.

690
00:55:40,280 --> 00:55:43,400
Or, rather, ex-admiral.

691
00:55:43,400 --> 00:55:47,600
He'd resigned weeks before,
refusing to serve under King James.

692
00:55:50,480 --> 00:55:53,240
Herbert was carrying
an extraordinary letter.

693
00:55:53,240 --> 00:55:57,400
It was signed by seven Englishmen,
all grandees in the armed forces,

694
00:55:57,400 --> 00:56:00,840
church and state, and it was
addressed to the Dutch Prince,

695
00:56:00,840 --> 00:56:03,400
William of Orange,
who was not only protestant

696
00:56:03,400 --> 00:56:06,720
but he was married
to James II's daughter, Mary.

697
00:56:06,720 --> 00:56:11,200
It was an appeal for William's help
against their tyrannical king.

698
00:56:11,200 --> 00:56:15,440
This was high treason, but Herbert
and his fellow conspirators

699
00:56:15,440 --> 00:56:19,040
were the desperate men
from an exasperated nation.

700
00:56:19,040 --> 00:56:21,960
And in William,
they'd found their man.

701
00:56:28,920 --> 00:56:34,360
On November 1st 1688,
a vast Dutch invasion fleet -

702
00:56:34,360 --> 00:56:38,480
463 vessels, 40,000 men -

703
00:56:38,480 --> 00:56:41,640
left Holland, bound for England.

704
00:56:48,080 --> 00:56:52,080
It was almost exactly 100 years
since the Spanish Armada,

705
00:56:52,080 --> 00:56:56,280
but this time
not a single shot was fired.

706
00:57:07,840 --> 00:57:11,000
On the top mast of William's
flagship, he flew a banner

707
00:57:11,000 --> 00:57:13,520
with his family motto on -
"I will maintain".

708
00:57:13,520 --> 00:57:15,880
But he added, in letters
three-feet-high,

709
00:57:15,880 --> 00:57:19,160
"the liberties of the English
and the protestant religion".

710
00:57:19,160 --> 00:57:22,200
The message was clear
and when William landed here

711
00:57:22,200 --> 00:57:25,200
on the south coast of England,
he was greeted with cheers.

712
00:57:25,200 --> 00:57:26,760
Over the next few weeks,

713
00:57:26,760 --> 00:57:30,080
it became obvious the English
weren't going to fight for James II

714
00:57:30,080 --> 00:57:34,000
and he fled the country
and was replaced as king by William.

715
00:57:41,920 --> 00:57:45,000
James, like his brother
and his father before him,

716
00:57:45,000 --> 00:57:49,240
had proved himself incompatible
with the new idea of Englishness

717
00:57:49,240 --> 00:57:52,280
that had crystallised
since the days of the Armada.

718
00:57:52,280 --> 00:57:55,640
That idea was opposed to absolutism
and Catholicism

719
00:57:55,640 --> 00:57:57,920
and proud of Parliament, liberty

720
00:57:57,920 --> 00:58:02,160
and of sending the English Navy
out against England's
traditional enemies.

721
00:58:03,920 --> 00:58:10,920
William's invasion of 1688
represented the final victory
of those values.

722
00:58:10,920 --> 00:58:13,840
It was the myth of the Armada
made real.

723
00:58:18,760 --> 00:58:20,480
In little over 100 years,

724
00:58:20,480 --> 00:58:24,240
a rabble of West Country seafarers
and a few royal ships

725
00:58:24,240 --> 00:58:27,480
had become a recognisably
modern institution,

726
00:58:27,480 --> 00:58:32,560
with staff and systems to manage
a vast, efficient navy.

727
00:58:32,560 --> 00:58:35,520
This was England's heart of oak,

728
00:58:35,520 --> 00:58:41,800
a navy that now lay at the centre of
the national project and its future.

729
00:58:45,000 --> 00:58:49,920
Next week - how the Navy triggered
a series of revolutions

730
00:58:49,920 --> 00:58:51,960
in finance, industry
and agriculture,

731
00:58:51,960 --> 00:58:54,640
generating unimaginable wealth

732
00:58:54,640 --> 00:58:57,200
and propelling Britain
into the modern world.

733
00:59:19,080 --> 00:59:21,920
Subtitles by Red Bee Media

734
00:59:21,920 --> 00:59:24,880
Email subtitling@bbc.co.uk