30.  That if any of the ships belonging to any squadron or division happened to be absent or not ready in convenient time and place to keep and make good the order herein prescribed, then every squadron and division should maintain these directions as near as they could, although the number of ships in every division were the less, without attending the coming in of all the ships of every division.

31.  And that these ten ships, in regard of the munition and materials for the army and the horses which were carried in them, should attend the rear-admiral and not engage themselves without order, but should remain and expect such directions as might come from our admiral or rear-admiral.

Peter Bonaventure Captain Johnson
Sarah Bonaventure Captain Carew
Christian Captain Wharey
Susan and Ellen Captain Levett
William of London Captain Amadas
Hope Sir Thomas Pigott, Knt. 
Chestnut
Fortune
Fox
Truelove

There was no difference between the articles for the admiral’s squadron and those for the vice-admiral’s and rear-admiral’s, save in the names of the ships of every division, and that their squadrons had not any particular reserve, nor above five or six ships apiece in the third division, for want of ships to make up the number of nine; the munition and horse ships which belonged to their squadrons being unapt to fight, and therefore disposed into a special division of ten ships by themselves to attend the general reserve.

* * * * *

At the rising of the council a motion was made to have some of the best sailers of our fleet chosen out and assigned to lie off from the main body of the fleet, some to sea and some to shoreward, the better to discover, chase, and take some ships or boats of the enemy’s; which might give us intelligence touching the Plate Fleet, whether it were come home or no, or when it would be expected and in what place, and touching such other matters whereof we might make our best advantage.  But nothing herein was now resolved, it being conceived, as it seemed, that we might soon enough and more opportunely consider of this proposition and settle an order therein when we came nearer to the enemy’s coasts; so the council was dissolved.

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] A Relation Touching the Fleet and Army of the King’s most excellent majesty King Charles, set forth in the first year of his highness’s reign, and touching the order, proceedings, and actions of the same fleet and army, by Sir John Glanville, the younger, serjeant-at-law, and secretary to the council of war. [Printed for the Camden Society, 1883, N.S. vol. xxxii.]

[2] Elsewhere in the MS. spelt ‘Boteler.’  Probably Nathaniel Boteler, author of the Dialogues about Sea Services.

[3] MS. ‘carthouses.’

[4] MS. ’pridie’=Boteler’s ‘predy.’  ‘To make the ship predy,’ he says, is to clear for action.  ’And likewise to make the hold predy is to bestow everything handsomely there and to remove anything that may be troublesome.’—­Dialogues, 283.