I'm not sure if there are just a lot of common names, or if the fireship list in Pepys' papers (printed by the Navy Records Society) really will help with dimensions for hired ships, some of which served in the First Anglo-Dutch War. Certainly, Frank Fox's article from 1998 also helps.
Frank Fox's theory is that everything we could ever want to know is there, waiting to be found. The problem is the large volume of unsorted and uncataloged papers, at least in the UK.
The problem in the Netherlands is finding everything that was known to exist in the 1916 to 1930 period, and noted by Dr. Elias. The archives changed their numbering system at least once, and Dr. Elias' footnotes are not always comprehensible. Still, there is enough there to really make me anxious to go dig for what is there.
