"WAFTING."

Evening Post, Volume L, Issue 48, 24 August 1895, Page 1 (Supplement)

" WAFTING."

* In the sixteenth century the business of escort was called '" wafting," and the small ships of war engaged in it were called " wafters." But bigger ships, bound on longer voyages, were not wafted ; they carried arms and did their own fighting, if need were. Hawkyns, for instance, and other Elizabethan adventurers, made their trade at the point of the sword, and contrived to blend the two professions very happily. In the next century, however, our ships trading in the Mediterranean regularly carried an escort; the Smyrna fleet and the Levant fleet were institutions ; and though the merchant vessels were expected to defend themselves if attaoked, they had always the man-of-war in support. The Dutoh followed the same system, protecting their Levant trade with so fine an i array of armed ships that more than one English squadron, attacking in force, was beaten off without any conspiouous success. But our most important failure with the Dutch Mediterranean trade befell us in November, 1652. In that month our hero Blake had no less than 300 Dutch merchantmen shut up in the Texel, and there he had kept them all the summer and autumn. Matters were bo serious that the Dutch Government called upon their old Admiral Tromp, who undertook with twenty ships of war to see them on their way. He was burning for a return match with Blake, and setting to work in a way that showed he meant business, sailed with his whole fleet to the Downs, where he caught Blake napping, and inflicted* on him a nasty defeat. Blake had to withdraw for a while, and shut himself up in the Thames. Thereupon Tromp ordered out his crowd of merchantmen, and lay by the French coast with his men-of-war, till every ship was clear, when he quietly followed down Channel as a rearguard. It was a beautiful plan, beautifully carried out by one of the greatest commanders England has ever had to encounter on the sea.-— From " The Story of the Sea."