This afternoon, I read Peter Padfield's account of the Battle of Portland (Tide of Empires, Vol. 1), and then read Michael Baumber's account (General-at-Sea). There is no indication that the Dutch had fired off ammunition at shore batteries or castles in either of these books.
I'm sorry to say that Baumber's book has many factual mistakes about the various battles of the First Anglo-Dutch War. Unless I am able to do some "fact checking" and corroborate what he has written, I would hesitate to use what he says. I hope he is generally correct, but I need to read his book more closely, and do some cross-checking before I would be ready to affirm that estimate.
Another thing I noticed is that Peter Padfield's map, showing the squadron positions, differs radically from Dr. Ballhausen's map. Peter Padfield shows Monck's squadron to the Southeast, instead of the Northeast.
