MARITIME HISTORY coming up Channel, Ruyter hastened westwards, but the convoy had put into Dartmouth and the admiral did not like the look of the preparations made to receive him. He withdrew, but by moving backwards and forwards along the coasts of Devonshire and Cornwall kept them in a continual alarm. At Falmouth there was ' nothing but beating of drums and sound of trumpets,' but the martial fervour was wasted when the Dutch did not appear there. Learning from a privateer that a convoy had put into the Scillies a squadron was sent there, but found nothing in the anchorage but a dismantled wreck. St. Mary's was well fortified, no guns being mounted, 1 and there was nothing to be gained by an attack. Fortune seemed to offer Ruyter another opportunity when the Virginia fleet of some thirty-five or forty sail entered the Channel ; he hastened to intercept it, but a fortunate gale delayed him, and the English ships, being warned, fled to various ports, the majority, some thirty in number, taking refuge in Fowey during the second week of August. Their escape was con- sidered marvellous, and preparations were made for a strenuous defence ; batteries mounting fifty guns were thrown up, fifteen companies of militia marched into the place, and boats got ready to grapple and tow off fireships. 2 On 15 August the Dutch appeared, and Ruyter decided to send in fireships under cover of the fire from four frigates handy enough to work close in with the shore. The wind was unfavourable, and the fireships did not even attempt to enter ; only one frigate got in near enough to engage for two hours, the English boasting that the only casualty on their side was an old woman killed by its fire. 3 The wind remained contrary ; it was seen that the merchantmen had been towed higher up the harbour, and that a boom had been improvised across the entrance, so that there seemed to be no hope of using fireships successfully, and on 21 August 4 Ruyter sailed away, thus ending the last attempt by a foreign fleet on a Cornish port. In October, 1667, a Genoese ship, of the reputed value of 100,000, was lost off the Lizard ; this and other losses of the kind led to applications to the crown for licences to salve wrecks, such speculations, like the fashion for lighthouse patents, being a ' humour of the times.' The treasure lost at the Lizard, and perhaps the legend of the ship of i6i9, 5 caused diving operations to be undertaken at several periods, and the locality became a favourite one for the trial of new inventions in diving. In 1704 Robert Davis, a shipbuilder of Leith, claimed that he had descended several fathoms at Polpear in his ' diving engine, and did say the Hundredth Psalm under water ' at the Bumble Rocks, where bars of silver had previously been recovered, and that although other inventors had brought their machine there, none had been so successful as he. 6 While most people tried to profit by wrecks, a few endeavoured to prevent them, and Henry Jones and Ralph Michell, an engineer, petitioned Parliament on the desirability of constructing a harbour in Whitsand Bay, at the Land's End. 7 They proposed to build a breakwater between Cowloe Rock and the shore, thus enclosing an area sheltered from the westward. Their petitions contain some interesting informa- tion, especially as to the inability of the Scillies to supply a convoy. While Michell was writing, 120 sail, with five men-of-war, had put into the islands ; but the warships, being in danger of starvation, had to run for Ireland, and when the convoy put to sea several were picked up by privateers. To show the need for a harbour the writers recall the loss of 70 out of 100 sail on the north coast of Cornwall in 1693 by a gale which shifted from east to west, the wreck of H.M.S. Colchester in Whitsand Bay on 16 January, 1703-4, when 170 men were drowned, and three vessels and sixty-two lives recently lost on the Land's End. It seemed to them that a further necessity was a lighthouse at the Land's End, for want of which ships sometimes ran into the Bristol instead of the English Channel, the East India fleet of 1703 having sighted Lundy before discover- ing the mistake. 8 Could the writers return to life they would find that lighthouses are no panacea, and that shipmasters sometimes still fall into the same error. The war which followed the accession of William III was largely naval, leading to a corre- sponding increase in the size of the navy, and consequently the existing dockyard accommodation was found to be insufficient. Plymouth had for long been a more or less permanent station and seemed to be entitled by prescription to be chosen as the locality of the new yard; although ultimately it was selected the choice was made only after some hesitation. Even then an additional dockyard was proposed, and would no doubt have been established had money been more plentiful. Plymouth was hardly in working order when the Navy Board had Falmouth in view, and in January, 1693, the possibilities of the place were reported on, but unfavourably. 9 The subject dropped until 1698, 1 S.P. Dom. Chas. II, ccxiii, 9 ; 9 Aug. 1667. ' Ibid. 123, 125, 126. Sir Thomas Allin, a good seaman, and the earl of Bath, the Lord-Lieutenant of Cornwall, were in the town (Ibid, ccxiv, 85). * Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. xii, App. vii, 52. 4 Brandt, Vie de Michel de Ruiter, 433. " Ante, p. 496. 6 Hist. MSS. Com. (Portland MS.) v, 350. ' H. Jones, Reasons for Building a Pier at Whitsand Bay, 1702 ; R. Michell, Reasons, etc. (1704). 8 In 1758 the Bellijueux, 64, bound from Quebec to Brest, was making Lundy instead of Brest when she was captured. 9 Add. MS. 9,314, fol. 93 ; Admir. Sec. Min. ix, 21 July, 1693. There was a sufficient number of men-of-war calling to make it necessary to appoint an agent Daniel Gwin to report their movements to the Admiralty (Ibid, x, 2 April, 1694). 503
