The Royal Navy and northeastern North America, 1689-1713

Abstract

This thesis examines warships of the English/British Royal Navy sent to North America during the Nine Years War (1689-1698) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1713). Particular attention is placed on station ships and convoys sent to New England and Newfoundland. The Royal Navy represented a routine and constant transatlantic link as North Atlantic colonies began to merge with a centralised imperial bureaucracy. The ships and men sent overseas were not afterthoughts of naval administration, but directly connected with their brethren serving in the main fleets. Given the erratic nature of squadron deployment to North America during this period, the dispatch of small groups of ships offered a more stable naval presence. Trends within naval and colonial historiography have often determined such links to be unimportant. However, utilisation of recent transatlantic analyses can provide a framework for studying the smaller ships of Europe's largest navy.