[a] Sir William Poole, distinguished by his share in the reduction of Tobago, this year.
[] William Bustow or Burstow, commanding the Mary yacht.
Copy of Captain Richard Haddock’s[a] Account, given his Royal Highness the Duke of York, of their Engagement, May 28th, 1672, in the Royal James.
In obedience to your Royal Highness’s commands, I here humbly present to your view a brief narrative of our actions on board the Royal James, the 28th May last past, as followeth:
Upon signal from our scouts of the Dutch fleet’s approach (betwixt 3 and 4, the wind E. by S.), we put our ships immediately into a fighting posture, brought our cable to the capston, and heaft a peak of our anchor, which, upon firing a gun and loosing foretop-sail of your Royal Highness’s ship, we presently weighed, and afterwards lay kedging with our headsails at the mast till our anchor was up; which done (steered N.E. by N.), we made sail and stood off, with our signal abroad for the squadron[] to draw into their line of battle, which was done as well as the short time we had would permit. But, finding myself one of the weathermost ships, I bore to leeward till I had brought ourselves in a line; the Vice Admiral and part of his division right a head, the Rear Admˡ and his right astern; only two or three frigates to leeward, and so near, one of them within call. The Dutch squadron, Van Ghent, attacked us in the body and rear very smartly, and let the van go ahead sometime without engaging them, so far as I could perceive. We engaged about an hour and an half very smartly. When the Dutch found that they could do no good on us with their men of war, they attacked us with two fire ships, the first of which we fired with our shott, the second disabled by shooting down his yards. Before which time I had sent our barge, by my Lord’s[c] command, ahead to Sir Joseph Jordaine,[d] to tack, and with his division to weather the Dutch that were upon us and beat them down to leeward of us, and come to our assistance. Our pinnace I sent likewise astern (both coxswains living) to command our ships to come to our assistance; which never returned, but were on board several who endeavoured it but could not effect it.
About two hours after we engaged we were boarded athwart hawse by one of their men of war, notwithstanding our endeavours to prevent him by wearing our ship two or three points from the wind to have taken him alongside. When he had been athwart our hawse some short time, my Lord would have had me boarded him with our men and taken him, which I refused to do by giving him my reason that it would be very disadvantageous to us: first, that I must have commanded our men from our guns, having then I believe 300 men killed and wounded, and could not expect but to lose 100 in taking him; secondly, had we so done, we could not have cut him loose from us, by reason the tide of flood bound him fast; and, thirdly, had we plyed our guns slowly by taking away our men, we had given cause to the enemy to believe we had been disabled, and consequently more of them would have boarded us, which might possibly have overpressed us, and would have been more dishonour to have lost her by that means than being at last burnt;—so that my Lord was satisfied with my reasons, and resolved we should cuff it out to the last man, still in expectation of assistance.
About 10 o’clock Van Ghent himself, finding those his other flags could do no good upon us, nor the party with them, came up with us himself, we having lost the conduct of our ship. He ranged along our side, gave us a smart volley of small shot and his broadside, which we returned to him with our middle and lower tier, our upper guns almost all disabled, the men killed at them. He passed ahead of us and brought his ship too to leeward, and there lay till I was gone off the deck.
Some short time after, Sir Joseph Jordaine (our barge having been with him and given him my Lord’s commands) passed by us very unkindly to windward, with how many followers of his division I remember not, and took no notice at all of us; which made me call to mind his saying to your Royal Highness, when he received his commission, that he would stand betwixt you and danger; which I gave my Lord account of, and did beleive by his acting yourself might be, in his view, in greater danger than we, which made my Lord answer me: “We must do our best to defend ourselves alone.”
About 12 o’clock I was shot in the foot with a small shot, I supposed out of Van Ghent’s main top, which pressed me after a small time to go down to be dressed. I gave my Lord account of it, and resolved to go up again as soon as was dressed. In the mean time, when I went off the deck, sent up both Sir Charles[e] and Lieutenant Mayo[f] to stand by my Lord; and, as soon as I came down, remembring the flood was done, sent up to my Lord to desire him to command the ship to anchor by the stern, which was immediately done; and, after we had brought up, the ship athwart our hawse fell away, and being entangled with our rigging our men boarded and took her, cut her loose from us, and, at my Lord’s command, returned all aboard again. Upon which I, hearing the ship was loose, sent up to my Lord that the cable might be cut and the ship brought to sail before the wind, and loose our mainsail; which was presently done. Then my Lord sent me his thanks for my advice, and withall doubted not but to save the ship. At that time the surgeon was cutting off the shattered flesh and tendons of my toe; and immediately after we were boarded by the fatal fire ship that burnt us.