Vice-admiral Sir William Berkley endeavoured to fight his way through the enemy, who were five to one. When his ship was a wreck, his crew almost cut to pieces, and himself desperately wounded, he continued to refuse quarter, killed with his own hand several of the enemy who attempted to board, and, at length, when mortally wounded by a musket-ball in the throat, retired into his cabin, where he was found dead, stretched at length upon the table, and covered with the blood which flowed from his wounds.
——— Joyful lines they hear
Of ships, which, by their mould, bring new supplies;
And in their colours Belgian lions bear.—St. 72. [p. 117.]
The Dutch, in the morning of the 2d of June, were reinforced by a fresh squadron of sixteen men of war, giving them a decided and dreadful superiority to the English, whom, at the very first, they had greatly outnumbered.
"If number English courages could quell,
We should at first have shun'd, not met our foes,
Whose numerous sails the fearful only tell;