Cromwell’s Navy: The Fleet and the English Revolution, 1648-1660

In this book Capp explores the nature and role of the navy during the English Revolution. After the king’s execution in 1649, the navy’s leadership was drastically remodelled, with republican and Puritan outsiders being brought into key positions. Capp examines the fleet’s part in the political history of the period, both domestic and international, and its intervention in the critical months before the Restoration. He also surveys the navy’s social life–the characteristics of the officers and seamen, volunteers and the press gang, as well as the mental world of the seventeenth-century mariner.