I may have accidentally deleted another good email

As it was on the way to being deleted, I noticed that the subject of an email included "Karel V". It was too late, but I concluded that I had just deleted an email that I would rather have not deleted. If you sent me such an email, please send it again. I get thousands of emails a day in Yahoo Mail (where I also forward my KentishKnock mail). Most of that is caught in the Yahoo Mail spam bucket. I try to review all the mails to be sure not to delete a good email, but I sometimes miss them.

English ships and armaments in 1652 to 1654

I had spent a great deal of time in the past studying English ships during the First Anglo-Dutch War. The main problem with that period for me is ship armaments. I don't have that much trouble with having many ships with estimated dimensions based on the burden, but all my armaments in the past have been concocted. I had seen the gun lists from 1664 and later and those from Oppenheim. There are also a few tidbits in Brian Lavery's books, but the real armament information either does not exist or has not been found. We might argue that the Commonwealth, under Cromwell, was unconcerned with administration and did not keep records, although I am unconvinced. Does anyone have any idea about where to look?

If there was a Fries ship named Gelderland in 1652

There is scant evidence for the existence of a Fries ship named Gelderland and commanded by Laurens Degelcamp (or Degelencamp). The only page with that information is from the papers of De Ruyter from 1652. I admit that the most likely explanation is that it was a mistake and that Laurens Degelcamp's ship in August 1652 was the Groninger Nicolaes. I find the X mark by the Gelderland and the Sint Nicolaes fascinating, however. Perhaps I was hallucinating, but I swore that I saw a page with a ship named Gelderland and the dimensions and guns similar to the Groninger Nicolaes. My explanation would be that two ships were hired built to the same specifications. One was named Gelderland and one was named Groninger Nicolaes. Perhaps the Gelderland was lost in the Battle of Plymouth in August and Laurens Degelcamp moved to the Groninger Nicolaes. I think that the possibility that this is the case is very low, but not impossible.

The mystery around the reference to a Friesland ship named Gelderland in 1652

The First Dutch War, Vol.VI has a list of ships from Michiel De Ruyter's fleet in late July 1652. The editor of the volume, C. T. Atkinson, didn't recognize the list because of his lack of familiarity with the material. The volume was also published much later than the preceding volume. I actually have the document that the list is drawn from. The list gives the name of Laurens Degelcamp's ship as Gelderland. The Gelderland and the St. Nicolaes have big X marks next to them. My interpretation is that both ships were lost. We know that the St. Nicolaes was lost in a collision with the Rotterdam ship Gelderland. We have no other certain reference about the Gelderland, and you could easily question the existence of such a ship. I was certain, in the spring of 2007, that I saw a photograph of a page that showed the Gelderland as having the same dimensions and gun list as the Groninger Nicolaes. If I had such a page, I lost it when I ran out of email storage space and had a problem with duplicate file names of photographs. So the mystery remains. Why have we seen no other reference to a Friesland ship named Gelderland during 1652? The St. Nicolaes continued to be included in the list of Friesland ships through the war with the notation that the ship had been lost. Either the Groninger Nicolaes and the Gelderland were the same ship, or the list mentioning the Gelderland is in error. That possilibility also seems unlikely, as the rest of the information in the list is accurate.

Admiralty of the Noorderkwartier 1648-1654

We know somewhat more about the ships of the Admiralty of the Noorderkwartier in 1654, but for completeness, I think that we need to consider the entire period from the peace treaty with Spain in 1648 up through the end of the First Anglo-Dutch War. I am fairly familiar with what is in the Nationaal Archief from this period and I would agree that we do not know a very complete story about this admiralty during 1648-1654. We have hypothesized that either there is more in the Westfries Archief in Hoorn, or else the rest of the information is lost. I hope that it exists somewhere, because we have relatively good information about the other admiralties during this period.

Jan Glete's paper about the Dutch navy and state

I enjoyed reading Jan Glete's paper from 2001 about the Dutch navy and state: "The Dutch navy, Dutch state formation and the rise of Dutch maritime supremacy".

Paper for the Anglo-American Conference for Historians:
The Sea, 4-6 July 2001
University of London,
Institute of Historical Research