Produced by Brian Coe, MWS and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net Transcriber’s Notes Minor punctuation errors repaired. Inconsistent spelling of proper names has been retained. Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. In this book, English and British ships' names are in small caps, other vessels' names in italics. In the plain text version, small capped ships' names only have been marked by =equal signs=. All other small caps have been changed to all caps or lower case as appropriate. A SHORT HISTORY OF THE ROYAL NAVY A SHORT HISTORY OF THE ROYAL NAVY 1217-1815 BY DAVID HANNAY VOLUME II 1689-1815 METHUEN & CO. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON _First Published in 1909_ PREFACE I submit this second part of the _Short History of the Royal Navy_ to the kindness of the reader and the animadversions of reviewers with a profound sense of its deficiencies. That some were inevitable where so much had to be told in so narrow a space is no excuse for such errors as I have committed. It is my sincere hope that they are not very frequent nor very gross, and that my book does at least indicate the main outlines of the polity and the achievements of the navy. It is my pleasant duty to thank the Reverend William Hunt for his kindness in revising my proofs, and for the many excellent suggestions he made. I have also to present my thanks to Messrs. Blackwood for giving me their permission to make use in Chapter III. of matter published in _Blackwood’s Magazine_; and to the proprietors of the _Saturday Review_ for allowing me to make use of articles on the mutinies of 1797, formerly published in that periodical. DAVID HANNAY CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. The War with France till 1693 1 II. Expeditions, Convoy, and the Privateers 49 III. The Men and the Life 80 IV. The Two Colonial Wars 98 V. The Seven Years’ War till 1758 133 VI. The Years of Triumph 166 VII. The American War till 1780 204 VIII. The American War till the Fall of Yorktown 243 IX. The Close of the War and the East Indies 271 X. The First Stage of the War 293 XI. The War till the End of 1797 323 XII. The Mutinies 355 XIII. The Nile 385 XIV. Invasion till the Close of 1801 411 XV. Trafalgar 436 XVI. The Command of the Sea 467 Index 493 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE ROYAL NAVY CHAPTER I THE WAR WITH FRANCE TILL 1693