ear continuity from Henry to Elizabeth. But the Elizabethan tactical debate, and the closely related debate over ship types, evolved without direct reference back to the Henrician experience. We can only infer that the men who argued these subjects in the 1570s and 1580s were well-aware of what had happened in the 1540s, and had it at least somewhere in the backs of their minds.
The first element of continuity in the Royal Navy was its continued existence and administrative structure. Henry's navy was allowed to decline after his death in 1547, but it was not sold into extinction as Henry V's had been a century earlier. It is true that it was not yet a "national" fleet--that would not come until the Commonwealth--but nor was it a mere appurtinance of the royal household. It belonged to the Crown, but it was something more than the private property of the reigning monarch. The King's Council of his Marine, the nascent Navy Board, remained in operation.
Admittedly the post-Henrician years were less than glorious. Protector Somerset made his brother, Sir Thomas Seymour, Lord High Admiral. Instead of fighting pirates, then active in the Channel, Seymour colluded with them, though his attentions were primarily devoted to power struggles with his brother and dalliance with the teenaged Princess Elizabeth. In 1549 he went to the block, and his brother the Protector followed in 1552. During the brief interlude of Lady Jane Grey, the navy was called upon to defend her against a rising on behalf of Mary Tudor; instead, the ships went over to Mary's faction, helping to seal Lady Jane's fate.
Mary thus owed a good deal to her fleet, but she paid no particular attention to it. None the less, it was not allowed to lapse entirely. In 1557, the Privy Council devoted special attention to the restoration of naval readiness--though not enough for the fleet to be in a position to forestall the French capture of Calais in 1558. But...