Robert Blake
Admiral
Robert Blake was one of the most important naval commanders of the seventeenth century and played a major role in the rise of England as a maritime power. Serving during the Commonwealth, he became associated with disciplined fleet action and the increasingly professional use of naval force by the state.
His campaigns against Dutch, royalist, and Mediterranean opponents helped establish patterns of command and aggression that influenced later naval development. Blake’s service belonged to the formative period out of which the later Royal Navy emerged.
He is significant because his career stands near the beginning of England’s transition into a major naval power. Blake belongs to the early operational and institutional history of British sea warfare.