While investigating a tranche of captains in the mid-eighteenth century in The National Archives, a unique cache of documents was found in the letters to the Admiralty in Captain Archibald Kennedy's file. The importance of these documents is that they reveal the events in New York and the eastern seaboard of North America during the Stamp Act crisis which occupied the last three months of 1765, as they impinged on a naval captain – not a politician, colonial official or merchant. This perspective is different from that usually described in histories and is worthy of a wider audience.

Captain Kennedy was senior naval officer at New York from 1763, and most of his correspondence with the Admiralty had to do with the difficulties of impressing men from the merchant vessels trading in and out of New York. Trade was booming in the years after what was known in America as the French and Indian War and in Britain as the Seven Years’ War. Merchant vessel owners could afford to pay their crews more than the navy offered, which made manning his vessels difficult. Kennedy reported to his Commander-in-Chief Lord Colvill, stationed in Halifax, and copied his letters to the Admiralty when it seemed likely that ships would reach England more quickly than ice-bound Halifax. He deployed the three sloops he had at his disposal as best he could to meet the many conflicting demands of the local colonial officials.

In 1764 everything changed. The Grenville administration had long planned to recoup from the colonists themselves some of the costs of protecting the American colonies from the French. Leading lawyers from the colonies, such as John Tabor Kempe, the young Attorney General in New York, had discussed this in London. Politicians in Britain anticipated no difficulty in levying taxes in America. If they had realised that the cost of collecting customs dues charged on American trade was three times the amount that officials raised in money they might have thought again. It is easy with hindsight to see that politicians in London should have paid more attention to the warnings of colonial administrators in America who were unable to persuade the colonial assemblies to vote them any income. Trading with the enemy was not confined to the American colonies: the Irish supplied beef to the French army despite being much more closely governed than the colonies were.

In the immediate aftermath of Edward's death on 6 July, the navy found itself in what could have been the front line. This was because the King had attempted to decree that his successor should not be his Catholic half-sister Mary, who was the heir both by statute and by their father's will, but rather his Protestant cousin the former Lady Jane Grey, now married to Northumberland's youngest son. Jane apparently had the support of the Council, and was duly proclaimed. Mary made her way to Kenninghall in Norfolk, which was in the heart of her own estates, and in turn proclaimed her right. By 13 July the Council believed that she was in flight for the Low Countries and sent a squadron of half a dozen ships to intercept her [II.1]. Mary, however, had no such intention. Not only was she the lawful heir, she was also the popular choice. First at Kenninghall and then at Framlingham in Suffolk her supporters rallied to her and she soon had a formidable force, led by her committed servants. Meanwhile the naval operation had been frustrated by bad weather; five of the ships sheltered in the Orwell, while the sixth, Greyhound, ended up at Lowestoft [II.2]. There the captain, Gilbert Grice, was arrested, but Mary's Council duly accepted his submission on the 17th, and he was continued in command of his ship [II.3]. Perhaps inspired by Grice's example, or perhaps solicited by Sir Henry Jerningham on Mary's behalf, the other ships followed suit, and some of their guns were transported to the Queen's camp at Framlingham. As a temporary measure, the six ships under the Queen's control were, on 19 July, put under the charge of an experienced shipman, Sir Richard Cavendish. On the 25th he was superseded by William Tirrell, appointed as Vice-Admiral [II.4]. The Lord Admiral, Lord Clinton, made his peace with the new regime, though his actual submission is not recorded. The rapprochement was brief because in November he was dismissed in favour of Lord William Howard [II.5–7]. Then William Winter, the Surveyor, was suspected of involvement in Sir Thomas Wyatt's rebellion of January 1554, which was provoked by the Queen's intended marriage.

Duckworth's ship, Orion (74) was retained at Spithead for two months once the French Revolutionary War began, when Duckworth had nothing to do but a series of administrative tasks, impeded fairly effectively by Admiralty bureaucratic procedures [2, 4–9]. He was a notable mentor to young midshipmen, including the future Admiral William Parker, the nephew of Earl St Vincent [1, 3]. He knew the ship was destined for foreign service, but not until March was the destination clear, with the formal notification from the Admiralty and Admiral Gardner [10, 12]. Once at sea, however, all communication, at least in written form, ceased.

In the Leeward Islands, Admiral Gardner, having failed in an attack on Martinique [14–16], was soon sending Duckworth on independent missions, none of them at first very notable [17, 18], but at the end of July he was sent to assist the Jamaica convoy past the French colony of St Domingue, and then on to a delicate diplomatic mission to Virginia [19]. A fairly ludicrous internal dispute between two of his officers was composed by Duckworth by the simple expedient of isolating the disputants until they had cooled down and had considered the consequences [20–22].

The Admiralty's pernickety behaviour and the nonsensical sensitivity of the officers are both indications that the Navy as a whole was not yet free of the more relaxed procedures of peacetime – though the officers’ behaviour persisted throughout the war, particularly among the senior ranks.

The detachment to Virginia missed the Jamaica convoy he had been told to watch for. He made a good impression as he approached Norfolk, Virginia, by the capture of the French privateer Sans Culotte [23]. Duckworth rapidly established cordial relations with the British consul in Norfolk, John Hamilton, and his presence was evidently regarded with interest and approval by the local gentleman – the capture of the privateer probably helped here [24–32]. He carefully avoided, by sensible research, becoming involved in fighting another French privateer which was not only in American waters but actually in the harbour, despite being urged by the consul to seize it [25], but he carefully gathered information about the French naval presence in American ports, noting that the discipline of the ships was particularly bad [26, 27]. His earlier experience in American waters as a lieutenant was clearly valuable in his estimation of the value of information.

Ramsay's Essay originated as a long private letter he wrote when he was a ship's surgeon to an aspiring young officer, a midshipman about to be commissioned in 1760. The same material was given a further airing in 1762 to prepare a petty officer for the life he was hoping for as a commissioned officer. The recipient of this second letter was a seaman whose abilities had attracted the attention of Captain Charles Middleton, who advanced him to the command of a small armed vessel with the local rank of lieutenant. As he was a poorly educated man who might soon be expected to hold his own amongst the more polished lieutenants of the wardroom, Ramsay wanted him to have advice tailored to his situation. He explains he could find no book that gave the kind of advice he felt necessary for any young officer, and he therefore had his original letter of 1760, with the additional material of 1762 as an appendix, published anonymously in book form by a London printer in 1765.

Fifteen years later no comparable work on officer-training had appeared in print, while the need for capable officers had become still more urgent in the face of the dangers threatening Britain from her enemies in arms. Middleton, comptroller of the navy from July 1778, was in anxious correspondence with his friend and former shipmate Richard Kempenfelt, now chief of staff in the Channel fleet, as they considered ways to strengthen the navy materially, tactically and morally. Middleton sounded out Ramsay's availability to help with his paper work in 1779; and, with danger in the background and reform in the offing, the times seemed to call for a reissue of his treatise on the duties of sea officers. An improved and extended second edition appeared in February 1780, followed by a third later the same year, and others in translation. The time for anonymity had passed, and the author was declared to be the Reverend James Ramsay, chaplain in his Majesty's navy.

Despite its success the book was long lost to view and its significance overlooked. For many years the Essay was wrongly attributed to Admiral Sir Charles Knowles since the Bodleian Library's copy of the first anonymous edition bore his name on the cover.

Direct evidence of a struggle between two Tudor politicians for the same office is rare in itself; the more so over the Admiralty, because it seems only to have been in Mary's reign that appointment to this office was politically contentious. The replacement of Lord Clinton is documented from the State Papers Foreign simply because his chosen successor Lord William Howard was then serving as Deputy of Calais [II.5–7].

The Queen's marriage to Philip of Spain created an unprecedented constitutional uncertainty, never fully resolved. Unlike the consorts of later Queens Regnant, Philip had the title of King, and all official documents were issued jointly by the King and Queen. Philip's kingship was also expressed in regnal years running in complicated canon with those of his wife. Yet it was never clear just what power Philip had in his own right. While he was in England he acted jointly with the Queen; when he was in Brussels (which was most of the time) she sought his advice on all important issues. Philip also maintained direct contact with English ministers, including the Lord Admiral. For some while after his first departure in September 1555 he communicated (in Latin) with a select group of Privy Councillors, returning their regular reports with his minuted decisions and comments. One such exchange [II.8] shows the King acknowledging the Royal Navy's fundamental value to the nation's defence. Though there is a certain irony in this observation from the future sender of the Invincible Armada, the second half of Philip's reply reveals his real interest. The English fleet now under his control was a valuable accession in protecting the passage between Spain and her territories in the Low Countries. There was, however, a failure in providing a suitable escort for Philip's own crossing to Calais, prompting a frosty rebuke to the Lord Admiral [II.9]. Soon afterwards the Privy Council ordered a thorough review and overhaul of the navy, though the only direct evidence of this is an entry in the Council Register [II.10]. A year later this was followed by a radical reform of naval financing, replacing piecemeal supply with a fixed budget. For this we have only the registered decision [II.11], with no indication of the debate which prompted it.