King Charles, tied to Louis XIV by the secret Treaty of Dover, and wanting to avenge the Medway disaster, sought a suitable excuse for renewed war. The salute to the flag offered a pretext so in August 1671 the Merlin yacht was sent to Holland to contrive a live fire incident while carrying the wife of Charles's ambassador, who would have made a useful corpse. She avoided this fate as van Ghent saluted with guns without striking the flag.

Thus, the sovereignty of the British seas as manifested in the demand for salutes reached its peak as an element of policy. Inconsistencies remained in the union of English and Scottish maritime claims, with Scottish waters apparently having a separate value in relation to payments for fisheries. One who might usually have had an interest in that was the Scottish admiral, Lennox, but during the Third Dutch War he was preoccupied with ships rather than fish, contriving to get control of a navy frigate to cruise at navy expense. This meant that, in a war in which English and French lines of command featured prominently in the outcome, the nature of royal naval command in Scottish waters seemed on the verge of redefinition. However, it was his early death rather than his naval ambitions which signalled a different change to authority in Scottish waters as his office now became the duke of York’s, adding to the English admiralty he already held and uniting the two.

Authority and the British Seas in the Third Dutch War

The naval war opened with De Ruyter boldly picking up again where he left off at the Medway, attacking the royal navy and a supporting squadron of French under the comte D’Estrées at Solebay (28 May/7 June 1672). With the English and French moving away from each other, the Dutch were able to concentrate on mauling the English. Van Ghent's Groot Hollandia fought Sandwich's Royal James and both admirals were killed.

The spectacle of the English and French fleets sailing apart caused much recrimination. In a smaller way Scottish naval command had also set off in a new if not entirely divergent direction.