Pennington, a notable naval officer of that period, has several incidents of a similar kind to relate in his _Journals_ on board H.M.S. _Convertive_,[32] _Vauntguard_, and _Swiftsure_, between 1631 and 1636. He tells us that sailing in the first-mentioned ship, together with the _Assurance_ and a couple of small vessels known as "whelps"--in search of "Rovers and Pyrates"--he met a fleet of eleven Dutch men-of-war in Dover Roads, "whereof two were soe stoute that they would not so much as settle their topp-sayles untill wee made a shott at each of them, soe--they doinge their dutyes--wee stood on our course". A few days later "There came up 4 Dunkerke men-of-warr unto us, who in all submissive wise, with their topp-sayles and top-gallant sayles lowrd upon the capp, saluted us accordinge to the custome of the sea"! All this seems summary and drastic enough for anybody, so that it is curious to find the celebrated Sir Walter Raleigh not long before lamenting British decadence in this respect. "But there's no state grown in haste but that of the United Provinces, and especially in their sea forces.... For I myself may remember when one ship of Her Majesty's would have made forty Hollanders strike sail and come to an anchor. They did not then dispute _De Mare Libero_, but readily acknowledged the English to be _Domini Maris Britannici_. That we are less powerful than we were I do hardly believe it; for, although we have not at this time 135 ships belonging to the subject of 500 tons each ship, as it is said we had in the twenty-fourth year of Queen Elizabeth; at which time also, upon a general view and muster, there were found in England of able men fit to bear arms, 1,172,000, yet are our merchant ships now far more warlike and better appointed than they were, and the Royal Navy double as strong as it then was." Possibly Raleigh's words had borne fruit in increased vigilance on the part of the captains of English men-of-war. But the Hollanders were determined to put the matter to the test. Possibly they thought that as there was no King of England after the martyrdom of Charles I there could be no king of the English seas. They began by forbidding their captains to pay the usual salute under pain of death. It was not long before Van Tromp sailed defiantly through Dover Straits with all his flags aloft. He got what he was asking for, a volley of round shot from Robert Blake, who was on the look-out for him, and at once both fleets went for each other "tooth and nail". The Dutch were beaten, but in a second encounter--for by now English and Dutch were openly at war--Blake got the worst of it, and was driven into the Thames to refit. "Tromp meanwhile sailed up and down the Channel as a conqueror, with a broom at his mast-head, thus braving the English navy in those very seas in which she claimed unrivalled sovereignty".[33] [Illustration: THE BATTLE OF THE NORE, JUNE 1653, BETWEEN THE ENGLISH AND DUTCH]