Robert Blake
Robert Blake commanded the English navy under Cromwell and is generally reckoned second only to Nelson. Born at Bridgwater in Somerset in 1598, the eldest son of a merchant, he studied at Oxford for years, failed to obtain a fellowship, and worked in trade until he was over forty. He entered parliament in 1640 and, when the civil war began, held Bristol, Lyme Regis and Taunton for parliament in sieges of great tenacity — at Taunton he is said to have replied that he had four pairs of boots and would eat three before surrendering. He was appointed a general at sea in 1649 at fifty-one, having no naval experience whatever. He pursued Prince Rupert's royalist squadron across the Atlantic and into the Mediterranean and destroyed it, and took the Scilly Isles and Jersey. In the First Dutch War from 1652 he fought Tromp and de Ruyter repeatedly — beaten off Dungeness, victorious at Portland and the Gabbard — and the war established English naval supremacy in the Channel. He then commanded in the Mediterranean, where no English fleet had operated seriously before. He forced the Duke of Tuscany and the Knights of Malta to pay compensation, and in 1655 destroyed the Barbary corsair base at Porto Farina in Tunis, burning nine ships under the guns of the shore batteries — the first time a fleet had defeated fortifications without landing troops. In April 1657 he destroyed a Spanish treasure fleet at Santa Cruz de Tenerife in a defended harbour. He wrote the Sailing Instructions that shaped English tactics, and died at sea approaching Plymouth in 1657.
- Lived: 1598 CE – 1657 CE
- Nationality: English
- Roles: admiral, naval_commander, parliamentarian
