HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

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consequence been in the smallest degree foreseen. On every other occasion,this excepted, the attention of the king kept pace with his wishes to encreasethe commercial wealth and naval influence of his country, by the most unre-mitting and fostering care of both. Tangier, on the coast of Africa, andBombay, in the East-Indies, were received by him with avidity, as the prin-cipal part of his queen’s portion, when by an exchange of those settlementsfor bullion, which the Portuguese government would gladly have made, hemight have much more effectually ministered to his own private gratification.Though the speculation was in some measure unwise, yet the intention wasevidently good. Tangier was on one hand considered as opening a new channelfor the extension of the African commerce, and Bombay was naturally held ofequal consequence in regard to that of India. In short, measures so decidedlytaken to eclipse the pursuits of the Hollanders, rendered it extremely evident,that one of the parties must quickly forego its pretensions, or that a contest forsuperiority must inevitably be the consequence. The navy still encrcased instrength ; new ships were perpetually launching; and the repair of others,which, according to the ordinary course of decay, or the intervention of someunfortunate accident, became rendered, for a time, unfit for service, wererepaired with a promptitude that could scarcely have been exceeded, in thehour when the safety of the nation was considered to depend on the most ar-duous exertions.

Holland had not been less active ; and as a natural consequence resulting froma supposed parity of strength on both sides, each country, in its turn, committeddepredations on the other. Between the intervals of warfare, remonstranceand superficial negotiation seemed contrived only to defer the hour when theflame should burst forth, and not in the smallest degree calculated to extinguishit. In 1665, the long-gathering fever reached its crisis. The fleet of Bri-tain, amounting to one hundred and fourteen sail, all of them ships of the line,as they were then esteemed, and frigates, besides twenty-eight others, of differentdescriptions, the usual concomitants of so vast an armament, appeared first at sea.The Dutch quickly made their appearance, with a force, varying, according tothe accounts of different authors, from rather more than one hundred, to onehundred and twenty sail. The British fleet, however, notwithstanding its num-bers, had left behind a reserve of some of the largest ships, which were equipping,to replace any that might be unfortunately disabled, or lost, during the impend-ing contest. The duke of York himself, who acted as commander in chief,

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