The Gewapende Ruyter

I had never seen the ship Gewapende Ruyter mentioned in any document from the Nationaal Archief in The Hague before yesterday. That is no longer the case. Yesterday, I received photographs of a letter from Admiralty of Amsterdam secretary David de Wildt, from 18 November 1653, with what Jane's Fighting Ships used to call "War Losses". These were the ships lost by the Admiralty of Amsterdam in the First Anglo-Dutch War. The second ship mentioned was the Gewapende Ruyter (kapitein Boëtius Schaeff), 36 guns. David de Wildt categorized the Gewapende Ruyter as being taken and brought to The Downs.

My possible Dutch connection

I found out today that my ancestor's name was not Matilda Lemon, but Matilda Lehman. Lehman is apparently a Mennonite name, and this page makes it seem plausible that Matilda Lehman could have a Netherlands connection. Lehmans moved to Ohio, at one point, and the Beardsleys lived in Ohio at the right period. It was in an 1870 census where Solomon Beardsley said that his mother was born in "Holland". Matilda Lehman is said to have been born in 1812 and died in 1860.

Bronze 15pdr guns

I had thought that I did not know the weight of any 15pdr guns, but from a page dated 27 March 1653, I have the weights of two bronze 15pdr guns carried by the Zeeland ship Hollandia, commanded by kapitein Adriaen Banckert. The two guns were 2750 and 2733 pounds.

Copper 6pdr guns for the Gorcum

I was surprised to see that the Rotterdam ship Gorcum (or Gorinchem) carried two copper 6pdr guns in 1652. The Friesland ship Breda had copper 4pdr guns at the same time. The Admiralty of Friesland had acquired the Breda from Amsterdam, as I recall. Nico Brinck had told me that the "copper" guns were actually made from a composite of iron, lead, and beaten copper. The copper was not cast, but beaten to shape with hammers. As far as I can tell, the Gorcum had the copper 6pdrs replaced by Jun3 1653.

Amsterdam ships completed in the summer of 1653

I was working on my annotated list of ships that fought in the Battle of Lowestoft in 1665, when I noticed that the Oosterwijk was 140ft long. The Amsterdam and the Oosterwijk were built under the First Anglo-Dutch War building program and came into service late in the summer, after the Battle of Scheveningen. They were both 140ft long ships. They were a non-standard size, as supposedly, they were going to build 150ft, 136ft, and 130ft ships under the two thirty ship programs. In fact there were many deviations.

My estimate of the 1628 bronze 24pdr drake gun weight

My first attempt at an estimate where I have an idea of dimensions for a gun is a 24pdr bronze drake from 1628. I have a lower resolution scan of Nico Brinck's drawing, so I had some trouble reading the numbers. The gun is about 2273mm long (8ft long in Amsterdam feet). My weight estimate, based on metal volume is 2739 pounds (Amsterdam pounds of 494.09 grams). I do all the important calculations in metric measurements.

I have more from Nico Brinck

Thanks to what Nico Brinck has given me, including in May, I have enough to make more progress on a Dutch gun model. There seems to be value in switching to metric lengths and estimating the actual bore length and diameter. Unlike the English, gun lengths are not on even 6in intervals. I am also using metric weight measures, the motivation for metric is to be able to deal with things like Rijnland feet and Amsterdam feet interchangeably as well as Swedish feet and pounds.