THE BATTLE OFF THE GUNFLEET
1666
The decline of Spain as a great power was largely due to the unsuccessful
attempt to coerce the Dutch people. Out of the struggle arose the Republic
of the United Provinces, and Holland, won from the sea, and almost an
amphibious state, became in a few years a great naval power. A hardy race
of sailors was trained in the fisheries of the North Sea. Settlements were
established in the Far East, and fleets of Dutch East Indiamen broke the
Spanish monopoly of Asiatic trade. It was to obtain a depot and
watering-place for their East Indiamen that the Dutch founded Cape Town,
with far-reaching results on the future development of South Africa.
A Dutch fleet had assisted in defeating the Armada, but the rise of this
naval power on the eastern shores of the narrow seas made rivalry with
England on the waters inevitable. In the seventeenth century there was a
series of hard-fought naval wars between England and the United Provinces.
Under the two first Stuart Kings of England there were quarrels with the
Dutch that nearly led to war. The Dutch colonists and traders in the Far
Eastern seas had used high-handed measures to prevent English competition.
Nearer home there were disputes as to the right claimed by the King's ships
to make any foreign ship lower her flag and salute the English ensign. But
it was not till the days of the Commonwealth that the first war broke out.
It was a conflict between two republics. Its immediate cause was Cromwell's
Navigation Act, which deprived the Dutch of a considerable part of their
carrying trade. The first fight took place before the formal declaration of
war, and was the result of a Dutch captain refusing the customary salute to
a Commonwealth ship.
In this, as in the later conflicts with Holland, while England was still
able to live on its own products, the Dutch were in the position in which
we are now, for the command of the sea was vital to their daily life. Their
whole wealth depended on their great fishing fleets in the North Sea; their
Indiamen which brought the produce of the East to Northern Europe through
the Straits of Dover; and the carrying trade, in which they were the
carriers of the goods of all Central Europe, which the Rhine and their
canals brought into their ports. The mere prolongation of a naval war meant
endless loss to the merchants and shipowners of Holland.
The development of ocean-borne commerce had led to great improvements in
shipbuilding in the three-quarters of a century since the days of the
Armada, and the fleets that met in the Channel and the North Sea during
Cromwell's Dutch war were far more powerful than those of Medina-Sidonia
and Howard. The nucleus of the English fleet had been formed by the
permanent establishment created by Charles I, but the ships for which he
had levied the "Ship Money" were used against him in the Civil War, for the
seafaring population and the people of the ports mostly sided with the
Parliament. The operations against Rupert in the Mediterranean, the war
with the Algerines, and the expeditions to the West Indies had helped to
form for the Commonwealth a body of experienced officers and seamen, and in
Blake, Cromwell had at least one admiral of the first rank. The fleets on
both sides sometimes numbered as many as a hundred sail. The guns mounted
in broadside tiers had come to be recognized as the weapons that must
decide a sea-fight, and in this first Dutch war we see on both sides
attempts to use tactical formations that would give the best scope to gun
power.
Though a battle was always likely to develop into an irregular melee, in
which the boldest exchanged broadsides and the shirkers hung back, there
were attempts to fight in regular lines, the ships giving each other mutual
support. Want of traditional experience, marked differences in the speed
and manoeuvring power of ships, and the rudimentary character of the
signalling, made it difficult to keep the line, but it was early recognized
as an ideal to be aimed at.
The old oar-driven galleys, with their heavy batteries in the bows and all
the guns pointing ahead, went into battle, as at Lepanto, in line abreast.
The broadside battleship would thus have her guns pointed at her consorts.
The line abreast was used only to bear down on the enemy. The fighting
formation was the line ahead. This was adopted at first as a fleet running
down from windward closed upon its enemy. Unless they were actually running
away, the other side would be sailing in line ahead with the wind abeam. It
was soon realized that in this formation an admiral had his fleet under
better control, and gradually the normal formation for fleets became line
ahead, and hostile fleets either fought running on parallel courses on the
same tack, or passed and repassed each other on opposite tacks. But this
was the result of a long evolution, and the typically formal battles fought
out by rule in the "close-hauled line ahead" belong to the eighteenth
century.
The first Dutch war ended with Blake's victory off the Kentish Knock. The
second war, in the days of Charles II, is best remembered in England in
connection with a national disgrace, the Dutch raid on Chatham and the
blockade of the Thames. This disaster was the result of a piece of almost
incomprehensible folly on the part of the King and his advisers. But it
came shortly after a great naval victory, the story of which is by most
forgotten. It is worth telling again, if only to show that the disaster
in the Thames was not the fault of the British navy, and that even under
Charles II there were glorious days for our fleet. It is also interesting
as a typical naval battle of the seventeenth century.
[Illustration: THE "SOVEREIGN OF THE SEAS," LAUNCHED 1637.
A TYPICAL WARSHIP OF THE 17TH CENTURY
_After the painting by Vandervelde_]
Hostilities began in 1664 without a formal declaration of war, the conflict
opening with aggressions and reprisals in the colonial sphere of action.
English fleets seized Dutch trading ships on the African coast and Dutch
islands in the West Indies. In North America the Dutch settlement of New
Amsterdam, at the mouth of the Hudson, was occupied, annexed, and renamed
New York in honour of His Highness the Duke of York, the brother of the
King. England drifted into the war as the result of conflicts in the
colonies, and was in a state of dangerous unreadiness for the struggle on
the sea. "God knows how little fit we are for it," wrote Pepys, who as
Secretary of the Navy knew the whole position. There was the utmost
difficulty in obtaining men for the ships that were being got ready for
sea. The pressgangs brought in poor creatures whom the captains described
as a useless rabble. There were hundreds of desertions. Happily the Dutch
preparations were also backward, and England had thus some breathing time.
In June the two fleets, under the Duke of York and the Dutch Admiral Opdam,
each numbering nearly a hundred sail, were in the North Sea, and on the 3rd
they met in battle, some thirty-five miles south-east of Lowestoft. Opdam
was driven back to the Texel with the loss of several ships. The Duke of
York had behaved with courage and spirit during the fight, and was covered
with splashes of the blood of officers killed beside him on the
quarter-deck, where he himself was slightly wounded. But he showed
slackness and irresolution in the pursuit, and failed to reap the full
results of his victory.
During the rest of the summer there were more or less successful
enterprises against Dutch trade; but the plague in London, in the ports
and dockyards, and even in the fleet itself, seriously interfered with the
prosecution of the war. As usual at that time, the winter months were
practically a time of truce. In the spring of 1666 both parties were ready
for another North Sea campaign.
The Dutch had fitted out more than eighty ships under Admiral De Ruyter,
and the English fleet was put under the command of Monk, Duke of Albemarle,
with Prince Rupert, the fiery cavalry leader of the Civil War, as his
right-hand man. Both were soldiers who had had some sea experience. It was
still the time when it was an ordinary event for a courtier to command a
battleship, with a sailor to translate his orders into sea language and
look after the navigation for him. Pepys tells how he heard Monk's wife,
the Duchess of Albemarle (perhaps echoing what her husband had said in
private), "cry mightily out against the having of gentlemen captains, with
feathers and ribbons, and wish the King would send her husband to sea with
the old plain sea-captains that he served with formerly."
Monk and Rupert went to join the fleet that was assembling at the Nore on
23 April. It was not ready for sea till near the end of May. On 1 June,
when part of the fleet was detached under Rupert to watch the Straits of
Dover, Monk met De Ruyter (who was in superior force) off the Essex coast
and began a battle that lasted for four days. The news of the first day's
fighting set London rejoicing, but soon there came disappointing reports of
failure.
The four days' battle had ended in defeat. Outnumbered as he was, Monk had
made a splendid fight on the first two days, hoping from hour to hour for
Rupert's arrival. On the third day, the Sunday, he had to retire towards
the Thames, covering his retreat with a rearguard of sixteen of his best
ships. Several of these touched on the Galloper Sand, and Ascue's ship, the
"Prince," ran hard aground on the bank. Ascue struck his flag, and the
Dutch burned his ship, abandoning an effort to carry her off because at
last Rupert's squadron was in sight. On the fourth day a confused melee of
hard fighting off the Thames mouth ended in Monk retiring into the river.
He had lost twenty ships and some three thousand men; but he had fought so
well that the Dutch bought their victory dearly, and, after attempting for
a few days to blockade the Thames, had to return to Holland to refit and
make good their losses.
Amid the general discouragement at the failure of the fleet there was an
outburst of mutual accusations of misconduct among the captains, and even
some bitter attacks on Monk, the "General at Sea." Fault was found with the
dividing of the fleet on a false report; with Monk's haste to attack the
Dutch when he was short of ships; and, finally, with his retreat before the
enemy into the Thames. Monk, however, did not bear himself like a beaten
man. He spoke of the long battle as, at the worst, an indecisive
engagement, and said he had given the Dutch as many hard knocks as he had
taken, and now knew how to defeat them. He had sufficient influence at
Court to be able to retain his command, and so could look forward to trying
his fortune again before long.
The work of refitting the fleet was taken in hand. At any cost, the danger
of a blockade of the Thames must be averted, so the merchants of the City
combined to help with money, and even some of the rich men of the Court
loosed their purse-strings. A fine three-decker launched at Chatham was
named the "Loyal London," in compliment to the exertions of the City, and
work was pushed on so rapidly that she was soon ready for commission. Many
of the ships had been shorthanded in the four days' battle. The pressgangs
were now set vigorously to work, and, though there was a constant drain of
desertions to contend with, the numbers on board the ships at Chatham and
in the lower Thames rose day by day.
At the end of June a new impetus was given to the preparations by the
reappearance of De Ruyter's fleet. He had repaired damages more quickly
than his opponents, and put to sea to blockade the Thames. It was on 29
June that the fishermen of Margate and Broadstairs saw a great crowd of
strange sail off the North Foreland. It was the Dutch fleet of over a
hundred ships, great and small, and commanded by De Ruyter, Van Tromp, and
Jan Evertszoon. Some of the ships stood in close to Margate. The militia of
the county was called out, and the alarm spread along the southern coast,
for the rumour ran that the Dutch had come to cover a French invasion. But
no Frenchmen came, and the Hollanders themselves did not send even a boat's
crew ashore. They were quite satisfied with stopping all the trade of
London by their mere presence off the Thames, and they had the chance too
of picking up homecoming ships that had not been duly warned. So, favoured
by fine summer weather, the Dutch admirals cruised backwards and forwards
in leisurely fashion between the North Foreland and the outer end of the
Gunfleet Sand. They watched with their light craft all the channels that
traverse the tangle of sandbanks and shallows in the estuary of the river;
but their main fleet was generally somewhere off the Essex coast, for on
that side of the estuary lay the channels then best known and most used,
the Swin and the Black Deep.
The fleet which thus for some three weeks held possession of the very
gateway to the Thames numbered seventy-three line-of-battle ships,
twenty-six frigates, and some twenty light craft fitted to be used as
fireships. By great exertions Monk and Rupert had got together in the lower
Thames eighty-seven fighting-ships and a squadron of fireships. Some
fifteen more frigates might have been added to the fleet, but it was
thought better to leave them unmanned, and use their crews for
strengthening those of the larger ships. The fleet assembled at the Nore
had full complements this time. The men were eager to meet the enemy, and
numbers of young gallants from the Court had volunteered for service as
supernumeraries. The "Loyal London," fresh from the builders' hands at
Chatham yard, with her crew of eight hundred men, was said to be "the best
ship in the world, large or small." Pepys noted that it was the talk of
competent men that this was "much the best fleet, for force of guns,
greatness and number of ships, that ever England did see." England had
certainly need of a good fleet, for she never met on the sea a more capable
and determined enemy than the Dutch. In fact, the republic of the United
Provinces was perhaps the only state that ever contended on anything like
equal terms against England for the command of the sea.
When at last Monk and Rupert were ready to sail they had to wait for a
favourable wind and tide, and, with the help of their pilots, solve a
somewhat delicate problem. This problem was something like that which a
general on land has to solve when it is a question of moving a large force
through defiles of which the other end is watched by the enemy's main army.
But it had special complications that the soldier would not have to take
into account.
Monk's fleet sailing in line ahead, the only order in which it could
traverse the narrow channels, would cover about nine miles from van to
rear. There were then no accurate charts of the Thames estuary such as we
now possess, and the pilots of the time believed the possible ways out for
large ships to be fewer and more restricted than we know them to be at
present. They advised Monk to take his fleet out from the Nore through the
Warp and the West Swin, which form a continuous, fairly deep channel on the
Essex side of the estuary along the outer edge of the Maplin Sands. At the
outer end of the Maplins a long, narrow sandbank, known as the Middle
Ground, with only a few feet of water over it at low tide, divides the
channel into two parallel branches, the East Swin and the Middle Deep. At
the end of the Middle Ground these two channels and a third (known as the
Barrow Deep) unite to form the broad King's Channel (also known as the East
Swin), where there is plenty of sea room, and presently this again expands
into the open sea.
In those old days of sailing-ships a fleet working its way out of the
narrower channels inside the Middle Deep in presence of an enemy would
court destruction if the whole of its fighting strength could not be
brought out into the wide waters of the King's Channel on a single tide. If
only part of it got out before the tide turned, the van might be destroyed
during the long hours of waiting for the rearward ships to get out and join
in.
On 19 July Monk brought his ships out to the Middle Ground, beside which
they remained anchored in a long line till the 21st, waiting for a
favourable wind and a full tide. The ebb flows fast through the narrows
from west to east, and weighing shortly before high water on the 22nd, the
fleet spread all sail to a fair wind, and led by the "Royal Charles" with
Monk and Rupert on her quarter-deck, the long procession of heavy
battleships worked out into King's Channel, soon helped by a racing ebb.
Those who saw the sight said that no finer spectacle had ever been
witnessed on the seas, and certainly England had never till then challenged
battle with a more powerful fleet. Officers and men were in high spirits
and confident of victory, Rupert as eager as when in his younger days he
led his wild charges of cavaliers, Monk impatient with prudent counsels
urged by timid pilots, and using sharp, strong language to encourage them
to take risks which he as a landsman did not appreciate. Not a ship touched
ground. Some Dutch ships were sighted on the look-out off the edge of the
Gunfleet, but they drew off when Captain Elliot, in the "Revenge," led a
squadron of nine ships-of-the-line and some fireships to attack them. De
Ruyter, who had been waiting with his main fleet off the Naze, stood out to
sea, having no intention of beginning a battle till there were long hours
of daylight before him. As the sun went down the English fleet anchored in
the seaward opening of the King's Channel, with the "Royal Charles" near
the buoy that marked the outer end of the Gunfleet Sands, and on both
sides men turned in with the expectation of hard fighting next morning.
At daybreak the English fleet weighed anchor. The Dutch fleet was seen some
miles to seaward and more to the south, sailing in three divisions in line
ahead. Evertszoon was in command of the van; De Ruyter of the centre; Van
Tromp of the rear. There were more than a hundred sail. Monk stood towards
them before a light breeze, challenging battle in the fashion of the time
with much sounding of trumpets and beating of drums. But De Ruyter kept his
distance, working to the southward outside the tangle of shallows in the
Thames estuary. All day the fleets drifted slowly, keeping out of gunshot
range. Towards evening the wind fell to a sullen calm with a cloudy sky,
and Monk and De Ruyter both anchored outside the Long Sand. After sunset
there came a summer storm, vivid flashes of lightning, heavy thunder-peals,
and wild, tempestuous gusts of wind. The anchors held, but Monk lost one of
his best ships, the "Jersey." She was struck by lightning, which brought
down a mass of spars and rigging on her decks, and so crippled her that she
had to leave the fleet at dawn.
The Dutch fleet had disappeared. De Ruyter had weighed anchor during the
storm and run out to sea. Monk suspected that he had gone back to his old
cruising ground off the Naze, and when the wind fell and the weather
cleared up in the afternoon of the 24th he weighed and sailed for the end
of the Gunfleet to look for the enemy in that neighbourhood. He found no
trace of him, and anchored again off the Gunfleet that evening, getting
under way again at two in the morning of the 25th.
De Ruyter's light craft had kept him informed of Monk's movements. The
Dutch admiral had avoided battle, when it was first offered, because he
hoped to manoeuvre for the weather gage, but the failing wind before the
storm had made it hopeless to attempt to work to windward of the English.
At a council of war held on board De Ruyter's flagship on the evening of
the 24th it was decided to accept battle next day, even if the Dutch had to
fight to leeward. When the sun rose the two fleets were in sight, "eight
leagues off the Naze," De Ruyter in his old position to seaward and
southward of Monk.
The English "general at sea" had ninety-two battleships and seventeen
fireships at his disposal. Following the custom of the time, the English
was, like the Dutch fleet, organized in three divisions. The van,
distinguished by white ensigns, was commanded by Sir Thomas Allen; the
centre, or red division, flew the red ensign (now the flag of our merchant
marine), and was under the personal command of Monk and Rupert; the rear,
under Sir Jeremy Smith, flew the blue ensign. Battles at sea were now
beginning to be fought under formal rules which soon developed into a
system of pedantic rigidity. It was a point of honour that van should
encounter van; centre, centre; and rear, rear. The Dutch were moving slowly
under shortened sail in line ahead to the south-east of the English. Monk
formed his fleet in line abreast on the port tack. The orders were that as
they closed with the enemy the ships were to bear up on to a course
parallel to that of the Dutch and engage in line ahead, division to
division and broadside to broadside. Training cruises and fleet manoeuvres
were still things of a far-off future, and the ships of Monk's three
divisions were all unequal in speed and handiness, so the manoeuvre was not
executed with the machine-like regularity of a modern fleet. The van and
centre came into action fairly together, but the rearward ships straggled
into position, and Tromp was able to give some of the first comers a severe
hammering before their consorts came into action and relieved them of some
of the brunt of his fire.
The first shots had been fired between nine and ten a.m. Till after two in
the afternoon there was a close engagement, a steady, well-sustained
cannonade, with no attempt at manoeuvring on either side, the fleets
drifting slowly before the light wind, wrapped in powder smoke, in the
midst of which both sides made attempts to use their fireships against each
other. The only success was secured by the Dutch, who set the "Resolution"
ablaze. She drifted out of the line and burned to the water's edge after
her crew had abandoned her. There was heavy loss of life in both fleets.
For want of anything but the most rudimentary system of signalling,
admirals had little control of a fight once it was begun. Monk, in the
"Royal Charles," had to content himself with marking out De Ruyter's
flagship, the "Seven Provinces," as his immediate opponent, and fighting a
prolonged duel with her. He walked his quarter-deck chewing tobacco, a
habit he had acquired as a precaution against infection during the London
plague. He spoke at the outset with undeserved contempt of his opponent.
"Now," he said, "you shall see this fellow come and give me two broadsides
and then run." But De Ruyter's broadsides thundered for hour after hour.
However, the dogged persistency of the Dutch was met with persistent
courage as steady as their own.
London listened anxiously to the far-off rumbling of the cannonade on the
North Sea waters. Mr. Pepys went to Whitehall and found the Court "gone to
chapel, it being St. James's Day." Then he tells how--
"by and by, while they are at chapel and we waiting chapel being
done, come people out of the park, telling us that the guns are
heard plainly. And so everybody to the park, and by and by the
chapel done, the King and Duke into the bowling-green and upon
the leads, whither I went, and there the guns were plain to be
heard; though it was pretty to hear how confident some would be
in the loudness of the guns, which it was as much as ever I
could do to hear them."
All the Eastern counties must have heard the cannon-thunder droning and
rumbling like a far-off summer storm through the anxious hours of that
July day. As the afternoon went on even Dutch endurance found it hard to
stand up against the steadily sustained cannonade of Monk's centre and van
divisions, and De Ruyter and Evertszoon began to make sail and work further
out to sea, as if anxious to break off the fight. Monk, Rupert, and Allen,
with the White and Red Divisions, followed them up closely, making,
however, no attempt to board, but keeping up the fire of their batteries,
and waiting for a chance to capture any crippled ship that might fall
astern. Four of the enemy were thus taken. So the main bodies of both
fleets worked out into the North Sea on parallel courses, making no great
way, for the wind was falling.
The rear divisions, Tromp's and Jeremy Smith's ships, did not follow the
general movement, for Tromp had never quite lost the advantage he had
gained in the opening stage of the battle. He kept his ships under
shortened sail, and hammered away doggedly at the Blue Division. This was
the moment when Monk might well have either reinforced Smith, or turned
with all his force on Tromp, and overwhelmed and destroyed his squadron. It
was made up of twenty-five line-of-battle ships and six frigates, and its
loss would have been a heavy blow to Holland. But on sea as on land there
was still little of the spirit of ordered combination. Just as Rupert at
Marston Moor had destroyed the opposing wing of the Roundheads with a
fierce charge of his cavaliers, and then pursued, without a thought of
using his advantage to fall upon the outnumbered and exposed centre of the
enemy, so now Monk and Rupert pressed upon De Ruyter and Evertszoon, though
Tromp was at their mercy, and Smith was in serious peril. Thus the
engagement broke into two separate battles as the summer evening drew on.
Darkness ended the fight, and in the night the wind fell almost to a calm.
Sunrise on the 26th showed the fleets drifting in disorder on a smooth sea,
with their heavy sails hanging loose from the yards, only filled now and
then by disappointing flaws of wind. The crews were busy repairing damages
and transferring the wounded to the lighter craft. All day the only shots
fired were discharged by a couple of brass toy cannon mounted on a pleasure
yacht which Rupert had brought with him. Taking advantage of a mere ruffle
of wind, so light that it could not move the big ships, the Cavalier Prince
ran his yacht under the stern of the huge flagship of De Ruyter, and fired
into him. The Dutchman had no guns bearing dead aft, and the Prince was
able to worry him for a while, till there came one of those stronger gusts
of wind that filled the sails of the "Seven Provinces," and she swung
round, showing a broadside that could blow the yacht out of the water. But
before a gun could be fired the yacht, with all sails spread, was racing
back to the English fleet, and Rupert returned to the "Royal Charles" as
pleased as a schoolboy with his frolic.
During the night of the 26th the wind rose, and De Ruyter steered for the
Scheldt, followed up by Monk's two divisions. The Dutch admiral covered his
retreat with his best ships, and a running fight began at dawn. Even before
the sun rose the sounds of a heavy cannonade had come through the darkness,
telling that Tromp and Smith were hard at it again in their detached
battle. Early in the day Monk abandoned the chase of the Dutch, and steered
towards the sound of the cannonade. Soon the fleet came in distant sight of
the battle. Tromp with the "Zealand squadron" was making a dogged retreat,
working to the south-east, close-hauled on the wind from the north-east.
Monk tacked and made more than one attempt to place himself across the
course of the Dutchmen, hoping to catch them between his fleet and Smith's
Blue Division as between hammer and anvil. But Tromp slipped between his
enemies and was before long in full sail for Holland, with the three
English divisions combined in a stern chase. Monk said that if Smith had
pressed Tromp closer early in the day, his retreat would have certainly
been cut off. Smith and his friends protested that if the "general at sea"
had laid his fleet on a better course, Tromp would have been taken. The
honours of this last move in the game were with the Dutchman.
A substantial victory had been gained, though there were few trophies to
show for it. The enemy had been met and forced by sheer hard knocks to
abandon his station off the mouth of the Thames, and take refuge in his own
ports. Monk was on the Dutch coast, picking up returning merchantmen as
prizes, blockading the outgoing trade, and keeping the great fishing fleet
in ruinous idleness. With the help of information supplied by a Dutch
traitor, Monk reaped further advantage from his victory and inflicted heavy
additional loss on the enemy. On 8 August the fleet sailed into the
roadstead behind the long island of Terschelling, one of the chain of
islands at the mouth of the Zuyder Zee, and burned at their anchors a
hundred and sixty Dutch merchantmen that had taken shelter there, including
several great East Indiamen. Next day landing-parties burned and plundered
the ranges of warehouses on the island, and destroyed the town of
Terschelling. The loss to the Dutch traders was estimated at over a million
sterling.
The victorious battle off the Thames in July, 1666, is practically
forgotten, so far as the popular tradition of our naval successes goes. It
has not even a name by which it might live in the memory of our people. But
it practically broke the power of Holland and brought the war to an end.
What men do remember, and what has banished from their minds the living
tradition of the great North Sea battle, is the ugly fact that in the
following year De Ruyter sailed unopposed into the Thames, and captured and
burned in the Medway dismantled ships that had fought victoriously against
him in the North Sea battle--the "Royal Charles" being among his prizes.
The fleets had, as usual at the time, been laid up for the winter. The
money available for fitting them out in the following spring was diverted
to other purposes and squandered by the King and the Court. Charles counted
on having no need to commission a great fleet in the summer. He knew the
Dutch were feeling the strain of the war and the destruction of their
trade, and would soon have to patch up a peace, and he opened preliminary
negotiations. Such negotiations must be prudently backed by an effective
force on the war footing. The King had practically disarmed as soon as
there was a prospect of peace. But the Dutch had fitted out the fleet in
view of possible contingencies, and De Witt and De Ruyter could not resist
the temptation of revenging the defeat of 1666 and the sack of Terschelling
by a raid on the Thames and Medway. It was the dishonesty and incapacity of
the King and his parasite Court that laid England open to the shameful
disaster that dimmed for all time the glory of Monk and Rupert's victory.
But even after De Ruyter's exploits at Chatham the Dutch had no hope of
continuing the war, and within a few weeks of the disaster peace was signed
at Breda. The story of the Dutch raid is a lasting lesson on the necessity
of an island power never for a moment relaxing the armed guard of the sea.