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Podcast: The Mariner's Mirror Podcast
Episode: The Royal Navy at the time of the Great Fire of London
Description: The 1660s were a time of great turmoil in England. In 1666 the great fire of London had destroyed much of the country’s capital and just a year earlier the great plague had killed a fifth of the city’s population. In amongst this chaos the new King, Charles II, recently restored to the throne after the English Civil War, began to build an extraordinary navy. From the mid-seventeenth century onwards the capabilities of seapower dramatically and exponentially increased. European powers began to take up permanent positions in foreign countries laying the foundations for the subsequent colonialism that shaped the...