Discussion devoted mainly to the Anglo-Dutch Wars (at sea), including ships, battles, and persons. Our website, kentishknock.com, is the primary outlet for artwork, research results, and more formal analysis and commentary. Copyright (c) 2003-2007 James C. Bender
Monday, December 08, 2003
English Ships in the First Anglo-Dutch War
I have started (again) a list of English ships that participated in the First Anglo-Dutch War. My intent is to estimate all information that is not known, because I want to use the list as the basis for comparing Dutch and English fleets at all the battles of the war.
With few data points about English armaments, what I will have is a rather more speculative than I would like. Besides my last posting, there are some armaments listed in Michael Oppenheim's book, A History of the Administration of the Royal Navy 1509-1660.
My sense is that the armaments were not radically different from what we know from 1666. The main difference was that the ships were not so heavily over-gunned. That was carried to extremes in the Restoration navy. I am indebted to Frank Fox for his detailed English armament information. He has done more research beyond what was published in his last book, A Distant Storm: the Four Days Battle of 1666.
Amazingly enough, I have quite detailed information about Dutch armaments for the First Anglo-Dutch War. Naturally, what is known is still a small percentage. Sadly, there are still a large number of ships for which we only know the captain's name, at a certain date. If we are lucky, we have number of guns and crew (such as the Hollandsche Mercurius list republished in The First Dutch War, Vol. I).