Dutch and English trade and naval rivalry was enduring and embittered as both nations contested the resources and routes of the North Sea. Their multidimensional competitiveness, counterbalanced by common expertise of North Sea navigation, recurrent naval personnel interchange, and aspects of political and religious culture, underpinned the Anglo-Dutch wars, determining their defensive and offensive infrastructures. In the mid-seventeenth century Dutch financial and political institutions were better placed than the English to support their navies, dockyards and defence. Naval organisation was highly fragmented and its shore facilities (bases, stores, yards) divided among five regional admiralties: one in Zeeland, one in Friesland and three in Holland (Northern Quarter, Amsterdam and Rotterdam/Maas). Although accountable to the States General, the admiralties in many ways were tied to local customs, economy and political influence. On their provisional recognition in 1597, future unification had been intended, but in the end the arrangement of five separate admiralties endured until 1795. Each admiralty was presided over nominally by the admiral-general of the republic, usually the stadtholder, but this custom lacked constitutional foundation, as two stadtholder-less eras demonstrated (1650–72, 1702–47). Meanwhile the logistical organisation of the navy remained largely as before, scattered across a dozen bases.

In the period 1650–70 the traditional Dutch fleet, until then reliant largely on recruiting merchantmen, was replaced by a standing fleet with purpose-built men-of-war, to be maintained in peacetime. A permanent Dutch fleet entailed expansion of existing shore facilities, previously rudimentary. It also had far-reaching consequences for Dutch society, as naval shipbuilding grew exponentially while separating itself from private enterprise. With the development of line tactics, the sea officers became professionalised, warships were specialised and both civilian commanders and merchantmen disappeared from the fighting fleet. Finally, from 1672 naval deployment followed the changes in defence policy due to growing external threats and alliance obligations, which at the national level further separated the fleet from maritime enterprise, as we shall see.

English aspirations to counter or emulate the Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch overseas expansion were supported from the sixteenth century by permanent naval dockyards at Portsmouth, Deptford, Woolwich and Chatham, the largest and most expensive state-funded installations. Private yards on the Thames and southern coasts provided supplementary shipbuilding.