The World Turned Upside Down - The British Civil Wars 1638-1651 · The World Turned Upside Down

Making the Protectorate the strongest naval power of the age – Robert Blake (1598-1657)

·37 min·2 clips

Historians call Robert Blake the chief architect of England's supremacy at sea.

1. The World Turned Upside Down episode on Robert Blake links The Protectorate to England's rise as a naval power. 2. Publisher Mike Gibbs interviews Dr. Richard Blakemore, Associate Professor of Social and Maritime History at the University of Reading, because he studies Blake's life and naval warfare. 3. The episode asks why historians call Blake the 'chief architect of England's supremacy at sea.' 4. Blakemore says Blake was born in Bridgewater in Somerset in 1598 and came from a merchant family with a manor. 5. Blake studied at Oxford, wanted an academic career, and applied unsuccessfully for a fellowship at Merton College. 6. He worked in trade in the 1620s and 1630s, sat in Parliament in 1640, and then joined Parliament's forces as an officer. 7. At the siege of Bristol in 1643, Blake held one of the forts even after the town surrendered. 8. He later governed Lyme Regis and Taunton, where he helped those towns survive multiple sieges. 9. Blakemore says Lyme Regis was supplied by the Navy, which may have built Blake's later naval connections. 10. Blake's rivalry with Prince Rupert and Prince Maurice runs through the Civil Wars and becomes personal and theatrical. 11. Blakemore contrasts Rupert's dashing royalist image with Blake as a stocky, fiery Puritan Republican. 12. Blake's first naval task in 1649 was to hunt Rupert and accuse him of piracy. 13. The Commonwealth navy was much stronger than the Royalists' fleet, which relied mainly on privateers and small forces. 14. Parliament also worried about sailor loyalty after some crews refused to support the king's execution in January 1649. 15. Blake and two other politically reliable Army officers, Robert Dean and Edward Popham, were put in command at sea. 16. Blake chased Rupert from the Netherlands to Kinsale, Lisbon, the Mediterranean, and eventually toward the Caribbean. 17. He also led campaigns against the Channel Islands, the Scilly Islands, and the Isle of Man because they could serve as invasion bases. 18. Blakemore says Blake combined tactical flair, hard-won judgment, and a willingness to take diplomatic risks when conditions were right. 19. The episode's tone is analytic and chronological, with long explanatory answers rather than rapid debate. 20. Listeners interested in naval history and the British Civil Wars will get the most from it; listeners wanting quick entertainment may skip it.

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A sharp portrait of Blake's rise from land commander to naval leader.

This episode gives Robert Blake a clear arc: first a Civil Wars commander on land, then a major naval figure. The storytelling keeps moving, and it treats him as a working strategist rather than a bronze statue, which helps.

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Follow Blake from Civil Wars commander to a key figure in England's rise at sea.

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