A Short History of the Royal Navy, 1217 to 1688

by David Hannay

On the morning of the 23rd, both fleets weighed anchor. The Dutch were farther out than the English, and a little to the south of them. Monk and Rupert desired to force an action at once, but the enemy worked away to the southward, and could not be brought to battle. Our fleet had started beating drums and preparing for action, with the pomp and circumstance beloved by the fighting men of former times. The wind was light, and fell before evening almost to a calm, so that we anchored at dark on the outskirts of the shallows of the Thames estuary. The fall of the wind was followed by a violent gale, which raged all through the night and the early hours of the 24th of July. The Jersey was struck by lightning, and so disabled that she was compelled to make her way to Harwich. Her captain, Digby, pleaded to stay as a volunteer in the flagship, but was ordered to go with his ship. Towards the afternoon the wind moderated, the fleet weighed anchor and again moved in pursuit of the Dutch, of whom it had lost sight during the previous evening. Little progress was made, and the generals anchored at nightfall eight leagues east of the Naze. It is possible that De Ruyter, who had fallen back on the 23rd, returned when the gale had exhausted its force. For on the morning of the 25th he was seen to the south of the English fleet. The generals had again got under way at two o'clock in the morning, and at daybreak the Dutch were seen to leeward of the English. From the account given in Brandt's Life of Michael de Ruyter, of the council of war held on board the Seven Provinces, it appears that the Dutch had decided to accept battle to leeward.

In strength the fleets about to engage were almost exactly equal. The fleet of the United Provinces consisted of seventy-three warships, and twenty-six frigates and look-out vessels, with twenty fireships. It was divided into three squadrons. The van was under the command of Lieutenant-Admiral Jan Evertszoon. The second in command under Evertszoon was Lieutenant-Admiral Tjerk Hiddes de Vries. The third was Vice-Admiral Bankert, the fourth Vice-Admiral Koenders, and there were under them two officers known by a title peculiar to the Dutch Navy—that of Schoutbynacht, of which the literal meaning is the Command-by-night. It answered to the Rear-Admiral of our navy. Their names were Evertszoon and Brunsvelt. Jan Evertszoon, though equal in rank to De Ruyter, carried a flag, of which the Dutch name is Wimpel, at the foremast, as his actual office was only that of leader of the van. De Ruyter commanded in the centre. His second in command was the Lieutenant-Admiral van Nes. His third was Vice-Admiral de Liefde, his fourth the Schoutbynacht, Jan van Nes. De Ruyter's flag was at the mainmast; the rear was commanded by Tromp; Lieutenant-Admiral Meppel, Vice-Admirals van Schram and Sveers, with W. van der Zaan and G't Hoen in the rank of Schoutbynacht. Tromp, as commander of the rear, had the Wimpel at the mizen.

The strength of the English fleet was put in the official account at ninety, but it appears really to have consisted of ninety-two ships fit to lie in a line of battle. We did not as yet distinguish between battleships and light ships, and in fact there were fewer of the latter with us than with the Dutch, so that the ninety-two of the English were equal in effective strength to the ninety-nine of the Dutch. Our fireships were seventeen in number. The van of the English fleet—that is to say, the White Division—was commanded by Sir Thomas Allen, with Sir Thomas Teddiman as vice-admiral, and Captain Utbar as rear. The rear, or Blue Division, was commanded by Sir Jeremy Smith, with Sir Edward Spragge as vice-admiral, and Kempthorne was rear-admiral. The Red or Central Division was under the direct command of the generals, Monk and Rupert, who were together in the flagship, the Royal Charles. Sir Joseph Jordan was vice-admiral, and Sir Robert Holmes rear-admiral.

Though the enemy had been sighted at daybreak, the battle did not begin until nine or ten o'clock; both hours are mentioned by eye-witnesses, and it may be that neither is quite accurate. Estimates of time taken in such circumstances, and hurriedly reported after a battle, can hardly be minutely accurate. The English fleet bore down on the Dutch in a line abreast from the north-west, sailing on the port tack. They stood on their course till they were parallel with the enemy, and then bore up all together, and engaged him from end to end of the line. Sir Thomas Allen in command of the White Squadron engaged the Dutch van under the command of Evertszoon. The Red Squadron came into action with De Ruyter, and Sir Jeremy Smith with Cornelius van Tromp. In accordance with an almost universal experience, the rear division of the English was in some disorder when it engaged Tromp. Part of the ships were out of their place, with the result that some of them were under the fire of the Dutch before the others. For five hours the action raged with very equal fortunes. We do not hear of any manœuvres on either side, unless it be in the boast of the English that they engaged the enemy so close as to give him no opportunity to tack. As the afternoon wore on, the English began to gain the upper hand. The Dutch van and centre began to flinch, and fall away to leeward. In the rear the course of battle had been somewhat different. Sir Jeremy's Smith's squadron was considered weaker than the other two. As it was not inferior in numbers to the centre, this estimate was probably made to console the national complacency for the failure of the squadron, which might be sufficiently accounted for by the disordered state of the English ships at the beginning of the battle. Tromp, who at all times showed a wilful preference for acting by himself, took advantage of his comparative success against the Blue Squadron to break away from his admiral. When De Ruyter and Evertszoon fell away to leeward, he did not follow them, but remained closely engaged with the English rear. Thus the battle broke into two, the Dutch van and centre retreating towards their own coast, with the English Red and White Squadrons in pursuit, whilst the Dutch rear division and the English Blue Squadron remained behind, cannonading one another with fairly equal fortunes.

By the time that De Ruyter and Evertszoon were undeniably in retreat, it was almost dark. The night put a stop to the battle. Next day, the 26th of July, the wind had almost fallen to a calm, and the two fleets remained within sight of one another, but neither able to move except at a very slow rate. Prince Rupert took advantage of the helplessness of the enemy to play off a piece of bravado on De Ruyter. He had bought a little sailing-yacht, which he named the Fan-fan, and towed about with him behind the flagship. She carried two toy pop-guns for ornament. A little craft of this kind could be easily handled in breezes which produced no effect on the bulk of the Seven Provinces. Rupert sent her out with orders to take her place opposite the stern of De Ruyter's flagship and fire into her, by way of insult and derision. The calm was so great that the little Fan-fan was able to enjoy the amusement of banging away at the big Dutchman with her pop-guns for two hours, before the enemy was able to move. At last the breeze got up again. The Fan-fan ran back into our fleet, and the pursuit was resumed. De Ruyter kept in the rear of his flying fleet, gallantly supported by some of his captains. The historian of his life says that in his anguish he called for death, and regretted that none of the many bullets flying about had struck him. At last, on the evening of the 26th, the Dutch ran into the shallow water near Flushing, and so escaped. The English fleet anchored outside.

While two-thirds of the fleet on either side were drifting or sailing towards Flushing, Cornelius van Tromp and Sir Jeremy Smith were fighting their detached action on their own account. During the night of the 26th the sound of their guns was heard by ships at anchor off Flushing. The English fleet got under way and stood out in the hopes of intercepting the Dutch rear division. It would have added immensely to the glory of the victory if they could have carried out their purpose. Only four prizes had been taken on the 25th, and against this we have to set off the loss of one vessel of our own, the Resolution. Tromp had with him twenty-five battleships, six frigates, and eight fireships. If their road home could have been barred by the White and Red Squadrons at a time when Sir Jeremy Smith was pressing on them from behind, it is probable that every one of the thirty-nine might have fallen into our hands, and then the disaster to Holland would have been crushing. In the hope of fulfilling their triumph on this splendid scale, the English fleet stood out to sea on the 27th of July. The wind was at the N.E. Tromp and Smith were seen far out, engaged with one another. The White and Red Squadrons stood out until they were opposite to Tromp, and then tacked to put themselves in the direction he was following, and bar his road home. It was maintained at the time that if the admiral of the Blue had handled his squadron with spirit, he would have driven Tromp into the bulk of the English fleet. He was violently accused not only of incompetence, but of personal cowardice. The latter accusation may be dismissed as being only a form of calumny common at that time, but it does seem that Smith showed some want of skill. He might have excused himself by alleging that he had done as well as anybody else. The two generals who directed the fleet had little right to complain of the mismanagement of a subordinate officer. With the wind in the N.E., they surely had it in their power to force an action with Tromp. They were to windward, and he was making his way homeward against the wind. Yet they were content to lie in wait for the Dutchmen at the point to which they took it for granted he would be driven by the Blue Division. The upshot of it was that he slipped between the two. During the night of the 27th the Blue Squadron lost sight of the enemy, and Tromp, skilfully avoiding the White and Red Squadrons, joined De Ruyter in harbour.

Although the battle had produced few prizes, and the escape of Tromp had shorn it of its hoped-for fair proportions, it was the subject of great and legitimate rejoicing in England. De Ruyter had been driven from his cruising-ground at the mouth of the Thames. We had again proved that we could overcome the Dutch in battle, and were masters of the sea. Monk and Rupert made a vigorous use of their success. They swept along the coast of Holland, driving the enemy's commerce into port, or capturing all ships that dared to remain out. An opportunity of inflicting a great blow on a Dutch corporation which was regarded with peculiar animosity in England, was put in their way through the treason of a Dutch officer who had been dismissed from the service. This ignoble scoundrel informed the English admirals that a number of vessels belonging to the Dutch East India Company were lying inside of Vlieland and Terschelling, two islands north of the Texel and opposite the coast of Friesland. There were also a number of other merchant ships, some from the Baltic, and some from the coast of Africa, lying in the same roadsteads. The islands of Vlieland and Terschelling contained large magazines belonging partly to the Dutch East India Company and partly to the States. Here was a mass of plunder which it was neither the interest nor, indeed, the duty of the English admirals to neglect. It was decided to sail in and attack. The squadron detached for the purpose was put under the command of Sir Robert Holmes, the rear-admiral of the Red Squadron. On the 8th of August the fleet was close to Vlieland, but, the wind not being favourable for an attack on that island, it turned into the roadstead of Terschelling on the 9th, and there destroyed one hundred and sixty merchant ships, and two men-of-war that had been told off for their convoy. To the end that the work of injuring the Dutch should be done thoroughly, orders were given that the vessels captured should be fired at once, lest the temptation to look after the prizes should distract the attention of the officers and men. There was a real disinterestedness in this, for the captain who fired a richly-laden Dutch merchant ship was in fact burning his own chance of a fortune. It must be put to the credit of a greedy time that these orders were thoroughly obeyed. The Dutch were fired, and not taken off as prizes. On the following day a naval brigade was landed in the island of Terschelling, and one of the towns was burned to the ground. The stores found in the warehouses were carried off to the ships, as some compensation to the men for the loss of the merchant ships the day before. The taking of the plunder was in accordance with the military practices of all times, but the burning of the town was a cruel act, and compares very unfavourably with the conduct of De Ruyter at Chatham in the following year. The loss to the Dutch was estimated at £1,200,000. After inflicting this severe retaliation for the injury which De Ruyter had caused by his occupation of the mouth of the Thames, the English fleet returned home.

Yet the Dutch were not so seriously injured but that they were at sea again within a month. The French king, provoked perhaps by the injury inflicted on the commerce of his country by English cruisers, was at last showing some serious signs of an intention to reinforce the fleet of his ally. A French squadron was sent into the Channel, under the command of the Duke of Beaufort. The Dutch, in hopes of meeting him, stood along the French coast as far as Boulogne. They were at once followed by the English, under the sole command of Prince Rupert. The great fire of London had taken place during the interval. Amid the terror and confusion it had caused, there was a loud cry for the presence of Monk. The Lord General was one of the few leading men of the day who had not fled from the plague. He had stood his ground, and had kept order whilst the pestilence was at its worst, showing no other sign of anxiety for his own safety than to indulge rather more than usual in his habitual practice of smoking and chewing tobacco. He chewed tobacco and spat about the deck when yardarm to yardarm with De Ruyter, and he did it during the plague, to keep out the germs of death. The nation had profound confidence in the stolid courage and unfailing loyalty to duty of the man who had restored the monarchy. The scandal of the time asserted that he had been recalled from the fleet in disgrace, but there can be no doubt that he was summoned to London because he was one of the very few who could be trusted to put his hand to a piece of public work, with the intention of doing it first, and of attending to his own pecuniary interests afterwards. Rupert's cruise in the Channel was so far successful that no junction took place between the Dutch and French. De Ruyter drew his vessels into the shallow water near Boulogne, and, when bad weather drove the English fleet off, took the opportunity to turn home. The bulk of the French fleet did not come into the Channel, but some of them advanced far enough to give us the only chance we had hitherto had of punishing them for joining the Dutch. When Rupert was driven off the coast of Boulogne, he fell back to St. Helens. The squadron of Sir Thomas Allen was kept at sea to watch for the French. Three or four of their vessels were met in the Channel in the course of September, and one of them, the Ruby, of seventy guns, was taken. Beaufort did not venture to come on, and, as the autumn was now begun, the fleets on both sides retired into harbour.

The great war may be said to have come to an end with the withdrawal of the main fleets in the early autumn of 1666. There were still some operations of squadrons in distant seas, and the country had one disgrace to undergo unparalleled in our own history, or, considering the circumstances, in any other. At least it would be difficult to find a case in which a powerful nation was compelled to see its ships burnt within earshot of its capital, and its coast insulted, at the close of a successful war. This disgrace was the direct result of corruption and bad management on the part of the Government. The excuse made for Charles II. by official apologists is that he allowed himself to be surprised at the end of the second Dutch war, solely because he was candid enough to rely for his protection on the peaceful negotiations then in progress with the Dutch. The plain English of this very lame apology is that the king was compelled to seize upon the first plausible pretext for opening negotiations with the Dutch, by the state of penury to which mismanagement had reduced his treasury, and that, having provided himself with an excuse for not keeping his fleet on a war footing by opening a correspondence with the enemy, he took advantage of it to divert the money voted for the war to other purposes. Hence it was that in the spring of 1667 the country was found unprepared, and that the Dutch, under the command of De Ruyter, who was accompanied by Cornelius de Witt in the capacity of delegate of the States, was able to burn the ships at Chatham.