There was no glory abroad. Naval battles have often been described.
Sometimes they are inspiring through the suggestion of superior courage
or ability. Frequently they are very dull. Then they belong in a
handbook on naval tactics, but not in a popular history. We shall try to
make our readers happy by practising the utmost brevity. Paulus was
dead, and the new leaders of the navy department were inefficient. They
did their best, but private citizens are not changed into successful
managers of a navy over night. On paper (patient paper of the eighteenth
century, which had contained so many imaginary fleets) there were over
sixty Dutch men-of-war. Salaries were officially paid to 17,000 sailors
and officers. Of those not more than a score knew their business. The
old higher officers were all gone. They were sailing under a Russian
flag. They were fighting under the British cross or eking out a
penurious half-pay life in little Brunswick, near their old
commander-in-chief. As for the sailors, they had had no way of escaping
their fate. Poverty had forced them to stay where they were or starve,
and they had been obliged to take the new oath of allegiance to support
their families. Their quarterdeck now was beautiful with the new legend
of Fraternity, Equality, and Liberty painted in big golden letters.
Their masts still flew the old glorious flag of red, white, and blue,
but now adorned with a gaudy picture of the goddess in whose name war
was being waged upon the greater part of the civilized world. At times
the men could not stand it. Many a morning it was discovered that the
flag had been ruined over night. A hasty knife had cut the divinity out
of her corner and had thrown her overboard. But cloth was cheap. A new
flag was soon provided, and the goddess of liberty was sewn in once
more. To find the culprit was impossible, for upon such occasions the
whole fleet was likely to come forward and confess itself guilty. So
there the fleet lay, with mutiny averted by the near presence of a
French army, and forced to inactivity by the blockade of the British
fleet. The admiral of the Dutch squadron was the same Brigadier General
de Winter who the year before had tried in vain to reach the ocean. If
you look him up in the French biographical dictionary you will find him
as Count of Huissen and Marshal of the Empire. In plain Dutch, he was
just Jan Willem de Winter and an ardent believer in the most extreme
revolutionary doctrines. He had had a little experience at sea, but he
had never commanded a ship. Personally brave beyond suspicion, but not
in the least prepared for the work which he had been called to do, he
had again assumed the command with the cheerfulness with which
revolutionary people will undertake any sort of an impossible task. His
instructions were secret, or as secret as anything could be which during
a number of weeks had been carefully threshed out in all the leading
patriotic clubs. The whole plan of this expedition of which Admiral de
Winter was to be the head was of that fantastic nature so dearly loved
by those who are going to change the world over night. England, of
course, the stronghold of all anti-revolutionary forces, was to be the
enemy. And, by the way, what a provoking enemy this island proved to be!
The churches of the Kremlin could be made into stables for the French
cavalry; the domes of Portugal might be turned into pigstys; the palaces
of Venice could be used as powder magazines; the storehouses of Holland
might be changed into hospitals for French invalids; where French
infantry could march or French cavalry could trot, there the influence
of France and the ideas of the French could penetrate; but England, with
many miles of broad sea for its protection, was the one country which
was impregnable. French engineers could do much, but they could not
build a bridge across the Channel. French artillery could at times
perform wonders of marksmanship, but its guns could not carry across the
North Sea. French cavalry had captured a frozen Dutch fleet, but the sea
around England never froze. And French infantry, which held the record
for long distance marches, could not swim sixty miles of salt water. The
fleet, and the fleet alone, could here do the work. At first there had
been talk of a concerted action by the French, the Spanish, and the
Batavian fleets. But the Patriots would not hear of this plan.
Single-handed the Dutch fleet must show that the spirit of de Ruyter and
Tromp continued to animate the breasts of all good Batavianites. On the
6th of October, 1797, the fleet sailed proudly away from the roads of
Texel. The _Brutus_ and the _Equality_, the _Liberty_, the _Batavian_,
the _Mars_, the _Jupiter_, the _Ajax_, and the _Vigilant_, twenty-six
ships in all, ranging from eighteen to seventy-four cannon, set sail for
the English coast. For five days this mythological squadron was kept
near the Dutch coast by a western wind. Then it met the British fleet
under Admiral Adam Duncan. The British fleet was of equal
strength--sixteen ships of the line and ten frigates. But whereas the
Batavian fleet was commanded by new officers and manned by disgruntled
sailors, the British had the advantage of superior guns, superior
marksmanship, better leadership, and a thorough belief in the cause
which their country upheld. Off the little village of Camperdown, on the
coast of the Department of North Holland, the battle took place. It
lasted four hours. After the first fifty minutes the Dutch line had been
broken. After the second hour the victory of the British was certain.
Two hours more, for the glory of their reputation, the Dutch commanders
continued to fight. Vice-Admiral Bloys van Treslong, descendant of the
man who conducted the victorious water-beggars to the relief of Leyden
in 1574, lost his arm, but continued to defend the _Brutus_ until his
ship could only be kept afloat by pumping. Captain Hingst of the
_Defender_ was killed on the bridge. The _Equality_ suffered sixty
killed and seventy wounded out of a total of one hundred and ninety men.
The _Hercules_, set on fire by grapeshot, continued to fight until her
commander had been mortally wounded and the flames had reached the
powder-house, forcing the men to throw their ammunition overboard. The
_Medemblik_, rammed by one of her sister ships, lost fifty men killed
and sixty wounded, lost its mast, and was generally shot to pieces
before the fight had lasted two hours. And so on through the whole list.
Personal bravery could avail little against bad equipment and an
indifferent spirit. Ten vessels fell into British hands. One ship, with
all its men, perished during the storm which followed the battle.
Another one, on the way home, was thrown upon the Dutch coast and was
pounded to timber by the waves. All in all, 727 men had been killed and
674 wounded. A few ships, after suffering terribly, reached Dutch
harbours.
And for the first time in the history of the Dutch navy, a Dutch admiral
was on board a British ship as a prisoner of war.
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