Anglo-Dutch Wars

The engraving of the St. James Day Battle that list the ships, guns, and captains, also lists fireships and how they were distributed (English only, of course). White Squadron:

• Providence John Wood
• Fortune William Lee
• Richard Henry Brown
• Paul Captain Stevens
• Jacob William Humble

Red Squadron:

• Abigail Thomas Wilshaw
• Samuel Joseph Paine
• Bryer William Seally
• Lizard Joseph Harris
• Fox John Elliot
• Allepin Andrew Ball
• Charles John Johnson

Blue Squadron:

• Blessing William Maiden
• Gift John Kelsey
• Land of Promise Captain Matthews
• Mary William Flowers
• Virgin William Hughes

• Gorinchem, 4 guns crew 30 Dirk de Munnik Rotterdam
• Vrede, 2 guns crew 34 Jan Danielszoon van den Rijn Rotterdam
• Swol crew 20 Abraham Schryver Rotterdam
• Eenhoorn crew19 Piter Besaçon Rotterdam
• St. Salvador Andries Randel Amsterdam
• Sollenburgh Klaas Pieterszoon Schuit

fireships from Van Ghent's squadron:

• Velsen crew 22 Hendrik Hendrikszoon Amsterdam
• Windhond crew 22 Willem Willemszoon Amsterdam
• Beemster crew 22 Hendrik Rosaeus Amsterdam
• Sollenburg Jan Janszoon Bout Amsterdam
• Draak Pieter van Grootveldt Amsterdam
• Leydtstar Sybrant Barentszoon Amsterdam

fireships from Bankert's squadron:

• Middelburgh Willem Meerman Zeeland
• Prinsje Kornelis Ewouts Zeeland
• ? Herman Adriaanszoon Zeeland
• Hoop Antony Janszoon Zeeland
• Helena Leonora Pieter Syvertszoon Bokker Noorderkwartier

There are guns and crews listed later for some of these, but we really don't know how they were armed or what crew they had, as these varied over time.

I wondered what the burden is for the Amsterdam ship the Vrijheid built in 1651. I also wondered if the Jaarsveld built the same time was of similar dimensions: 134ft x 34ft x 13-1/4ft. It could have been as large as 300 lasts, although I would guess something more like 270 lasts. If the typical factor was something like 196, then the burden would definitely have been 300 lasts.

I have been studying De Vlootbouw in Nederland closely, and I realized several things. One is that the Frederick Hendrick and Huis van Nassau very likely belonged to the 128ft x 31-1/2ft x 12ft charter. I had not realized that the 128ft x 31-1/2ft x 12ft size was considered to be 250 lasts, so I had not equated these ships with those dimensions. A consequence of the 125ft x 29ft x 11-1/2ft dimensions being 200 lasts is that the Noorderkwartier ship Eenhoorn could well be of those dimensions. The "Staet van Oorlogh te Water voor den Jaere 1654" gives her dimensions as 125ft x 29ft, with no depth in hold listed. The depth could be 11-1/2ft instead of the 12ft that I would have expected. There is still great confusion over dimensions due, in part, to some ships being listed in Maas feet of 12 inches, while most ships are listed in Amsterdam feet of 11inches. The Aemilia and the Brederode are two prime examples. They are usually referred to as being 300 lasts, as their dimensions are quoted as 132ft x 32ft x 13-1/2ft. The only difficulty is that is in Maas feet (308mm) rather than Amsterdam feet (283mm). If you convert that to Amsterdam feet, the dimensions are something like 144ft x 35ft x 14ft-8in. That could give a burden way in excess of 300 lasts (more like 370 if we use a factor of 200).

• smallest: 132ft x 32ft x 13ft
• largest: 134ft x 34ft x 13-1/2ft

This assumes typical proportions. If the depth were greater or the beam greater, that would change things, of course.

This information is partly extracted and paraphrased from the English summary in Hoboken's book.

I keep going back into Dr. Elias' book Vlootbouw in Nederland, looking for nuggets that I might have previously missed (probably, I see things that I have previously seen but forgotten about). Today, on page 48, at the top of the page, I read about the "roeyjacht" Bommel. The data is from 5 February 1635, from the Resolutions of the Admiralty of Amsterdam. The specs:

• dimensions: 116ft x 22ft x 8-1/2ft

• crew: 70 sailors

• armament: 2-brass 12pdrs, 2-brass 8pdrs, 6-iron 8pdrs, 8-iron 5pdrs, 2-iron 3pdrs, and 6 steenstukken

The captain was Barend Dorrevelt.

• dimensions: 136ft x 34ft x 13-3/4ft

• armament: 2-brass 36pdr, 4-brass 24pdr, 18-iron 18pdr, 2-brass 16pdr, 6-brass 12pdr, 8-iron 12pdr, 6-brass 6pdr, 6-iron 6pdr, and 2-brass 5pdr.

This is my working list of Royalist ships at Kinsale at the beginning of September 1649. My information is based on The Letters of Robert Blake, Michael Baumber's book, General-at-Sea, Colledge's book Ships of the Royal Navy, Vol.I, R.C. Anderson's entry in Lists of Men-of-War 1650-1700 Part I English Ships 1649-1702, and R.C. Anderson's List of English Naval Captains 1642-1660. The last two are "Occasional Publications" of the Society for Nautical Research.

• Constant Reformation (52 guns)
• Swallow (36 guns)
• Convertine (42 guns)
• Washford frigate (14 guns)
• Ark (20 guns)
• Scots frigate (24 guns)
• James (29 guns) 300 tons
• George
• Culpepper (18 guns)
• Roebuck (12 guns) 90 tons
• Blackmoor Lady (18 guns) 180 tons
• Ambrose
• Charles

The English left at Kinsale in early September 1649 were:

• Lion (52 guns), flagship of Robert Blake
• Garland (44 guns)
• Elizabeth (36 guns)
• Nonsuch (36 guns)
• Guinea frigate (32 guns)

I have also consulted my notes from Powell's The Navy in the English Civil War, although that was not very helpful.

I have passed on to my webmaster a new document about Jacobean and Carolian "Middling Ships", to be posted on Kentishknock.com. Hopefully it will appear, and relatively quickly as well. These ships built during the reigns of James I and Charles I, and were developments of a moderate-sized galleon type used in the Elizabethan navy. Some of the ships were rebuilds of their Elizabethan ancestors. The survivors of this class of ships served as large 4th Rates in the First Anglo-Dutch War, were the Bonaventure (44 guns) blew up, the Garland (44 guns) was captured, as was the Leopard (48 guns).

R.C. Anderson says that there 18 ships in Captain Ball's squadron (in the book Naval Wars in the Baltic) The squadron was sent to Copenhagen to convoy home 18 merchant ships that had gathered there during the war. They had previously been at Helsingør as part of a group of 22 merchant vessels. The king of Denmark had invited them to Copenhagen, and 18 made the voyage. Ships and Captains known to be on the voyage to the Sound: Star (22 guns) Peter Mootham Tiger (36 guns) James Peacock Convert (20 guns) Stephen Rose Prosperous (42 guns) John Barker Recovery (26 guns) Francis Allen Greyhound (20 guns) Henry Southwood Elizabeth (a hired merchantman)

He served the Admiralty of Amsterdam. Extraordinary Captain in 1650, Ordinary Captain in 1653, Vice-admiral in 1665.

I am still pretty happy with my identification of the three-masted yacht Dordrecht as Pieter Gorcum's ship. My primary sources on this subject are The First Dutch War and Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Zeewezen. A table on page 762 of Vol. I confirms that the ship was in service in March 1653 (because the Dordrecht was the only 17-gun yacht used by Zeeland). From The First Dutch War, in the narrative from Witte de With's journal, leading up to the Battle of the Kentish Knock, we know that Pieter Gorcum commanded a Zeeland yacht. The other Zeeland yacht we know about was the Gloeyenden Oven (14 guns) commanded in 1652 by Adriaan Janszoon den Oven. On page 765, another table is derived form the "Staet van Oorlogh te water voor den jahre 1654", and gives the information for the Dordrecht. What I had not previously noticed is that the crew was 50 sailors. The length we already knew was 85 feet (Amsterdam feet of 283mm), measured from stem-to-sternpost.

I have only scratched the surface of analyzing the Dutch warship lists from 1628 to 1633. I will continue to publish tidbits, as I can, to give you a flavor for what we have. I picked out one ship for today, the Thetis, a ship of the Admiralty of Amsterdam. The Thetis was commanded by Captain van Abt. She carried 30 guns and had a crew of 100 sailors. We don't know dimensions, but we know she was of 250 lasts. To give you an approximate idea of how large a ship of 250 lasts was, I have two example sets of possible dimensions:

1) 130ft x 34ft x 13.5ft

2) 134ft x 32.25ft x 13.5ft

Amazingly enough, we know the list of guns for the Thetis:

2-24pdr, 2-Chambered 18pdr, 2-18pdr, 12-12pdr, 10-8pdr, 2-5pdr, 6-steenstukken plus 12 chambers for them

Chambered guns were typically lighter and made of brass. They had a chamber for gunpowder that was of smaller diameter than the gun bore. As for steenstukken, I had long assumed that they were similar to fowlers, but Jan Glete says that they were swivels, and despite their name, they probably fired iron shot, not stones, as least by this date.

I can at least list the Dutch warships in the Battle for the Smyrna Convoy in March 1672. The armed merchantships seem to be beyond our reach, at this point in time. The crew and gun lists are estimated based what is known about the ship's history. I thought that this could be helpful to gamers, in particular, as not many people have access to the Dutch ship information at this level of detail.

Ship name	Guns	Built	Captain	Admiralty	Crew	Length	Beam	Depth	Gun list
Vlissingen	50	1653	Adriaan de Haaze	Zeeland	200	130ft	34ft	13.5ft	2-24pdr, 4-18pdr, 26-12pdr, 12-6pdr, 4-3pdr, 2-unknown
Klein Hollandia	54	1654	Jan Jacobszoon van Nes	Rotterdam	215	133ft-10in	32ft-5in	13ft-3in	22-18pdr, 20-12pdr, 12-4pdr
Utrecht	48	1653	Cornelis Evertsen de Jongste	Zeeland	175	134ft	33ft	13.5ft	2-24pdr, 4-18pdr, 16-12pdr, 10-8 and 9pdr, 7-6 and 5pdr, 6-6pdr, 3-4pdr, and 2-unknown
Dordrecht	50	1653	Eland du Bois	Zeeland	200	130ft	34ft	13.5ft	2-24pdr, 4-18pdr, 16-12pdr, 12-8pdr, 16-6pdr
Delft	36	1664	possibly Salomon Le Sage	Zeeland	120	116ft	28.5ft	11.5ft	16-12pdr, 12-6pdr, 6-4pdr, and 2-unknown

This has been available to me for a decade, but the significance of it just hit me: on 14 June 1652, there are signatures on a letter about the battle that took place off Dover on 29 May 1652. Abel Roelants (or Roelantsz.) signed as the captain of the Brederode. I knew that Egbert Meussen Kortenaer was "steurman" (listed here as "stierman"). These signatures are on page 759 of Vol.I of Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Zeewezen. I had not been able to find any evidence of Abel Roelants (sometimes called "Vader Abel") prior to May 1653, when he assumed command of Witte de With's old flagship, the Prinses Louise (36 guns).

My approach for analyzing the Dutch navy in the First Anglo-Dutch War has been to organize information by captain's last names. The driving reason is that most lists from existing records only record captain's names. For example, we have Jan Evertsen's journal during the Dungeness campaign, and he lists the composition of the fleet. No ship names are mentioned. There are only the captain's names. I am fortunate to have a copy of the handwritten original, and have found that useful, as they transcription in The First Dutch War is of only mediocre quality. I am using an Excel spreadsheet as my current analysis tool to aid displaying information about captain, ship, battles, and operations. I kept wanting to use Word documents and tables, but they just don't work. You can't make a Word table wide enough. The only remaining choices are paper, which is a lost cause, or an Excel spreadsheet. I am going through and recording the data. I have not been able to put as much time into this effort as I would like, but I am up to 77 captains, so far. Where I only know ship names, I will just have to append them to the list in order by ship name, since we don't know their captain's name.

I am collecting information about the Battle of Scheveningen so as to be able to compile the Dutch OOB. Witte de With wrote the States General, on 11 August 1653, that he had sailed from the Texel on 9 August with 27 warships and 4 fireships. Tromp was able to easily draw the English fleet off, so that Witte de With was able to safely put to sea, and then they were able to again outmaneuver the English, so they could join. Apparently, the English misunderstood where the Dutch were, in relation to them. This was typical of the 17th Century, as neither the English nor Dutch understood how to effectively scout. After the Battle of Scheveningen, the Dutch had retreated into the Texel roads. They had about 90 warships, yachts, and service craft remaining, and only two flag officers with the fleet. They were Witte de With and Pieter Florissen. Tromp had been killed. Jan Evertsen was missing. Michiel de Ruyter had been heavily damaged and made for the Goeree Gat. The Dutch were very fortunate that the English were forced, by heavy damage and the need for stores, to give up the blockade. Another letter from De With on 11 August names ships, so this will be helpful in building the OOB for Scheveningen. There is also a damage report that adds further ship names.

I sent off a new document to be put into KentishKnock.com. it is a table of English ships and the battles in which they participated in the First Anglo-Dutch War. It will be available as soon as my webmaster finishes her work. I am at work on a richer table for the Dutch for the First Anglo-Dutch War. I keep learning new information, so this will be the best information, yet.

I have learned two new pieces of information about the First Anglo-Dutch War. At the Battle of Scheveningen, the ship that Jan Coenders commanded was the Frisian fluit Graaf Willem. We don't know anything more about the ship, except that she was hired by the Admiralty of Friesland. The other piece of news is that there was one more ship lost at the Battle of Scheveningen that I had not realized. Cornelis Pietersz. Taenman commanded the Noorderkwartier ship Prins Maurits (32 guns). At the Battle of Scheveningen, he acted as Vice-Admiral to Pieter Florissen. He fought in the rear-guard, protecting the retreating Dutch fleet. At the latitude of the North Maasbank, his ship was lost.

The dimensions published in Pepys' list for the Groningen and Edam got switched, by a copyist. That was Frank Fox's assessment quite a long time ago. Dr Weber incorporated that insite into his book De Vierdaagse Zeeslag 11-14 Juni 1666 published way back in 1984. I had noticed this anomoly, as well, but only in the last five years. The Edam (Black Bull in English service) had Dutch dimensions of 120ft x 28ft x 11ft. The Groningen was a much larger ship: 132ft x 31ft x 14-1/2ft. Yet, the dimensions reported by Pepys for the Groningen were 86ft x 28ft-4in x 12ft. The Edam's English dimensions were 103ft x 30ft x 13ft-6in. Clearly, there was something wrong, as we knew the Edam's Dutch dimensions from the 1654 list. Remember that Dutch dimensions were in Amsterdam feet of 11inches (283mm). The length was that from stem-to-sternpost and the beam was that inside the planking. The depth was that to the side of the main deck, not the center. English dimensions were the length on the keel, the beam outside the planking, and the depth from the top of the keel to the underside of the center of the deck, in English feet (305mm).

One wildcard in the process of accessing ship dimensions and the origin of the Convertine is that on July 21, 1653 (NS), Captain John Taylor reported that he had lengthened the Convertine (as well as the Welcome). Did that lengthening affect the keel length, or did he just extend the length from stem-to-sternpost? That would have meant just disassembling the bow and extending the timbers, then replanking. He could have just moved out frames, accordian-like. The goal was to make to make it possible to have more guns on the broadside of both ships. He wanted them to be able to comfortably mount 40 guns on each ship. That seemed a rather odd statement, as the Convertine was quite large, and ultimately mounted 54 guns. The Welcome was a rather odd ship and was quite small. The English measurements were 82ft x 29ft x 10ft-7in. My estimate is that translated to Dutch dimensions of no more than 114ft x 32ft x 12ft. The combination of short length and broad beam is unusual for a Dutch ship. Not infrequently, you would see length-to-beam ratios of 5:1. It seems that the Welcome, captured in 1652, would have to have been a merchantman, but I have not been able to confirm that. It still seems likely that the Convertine was just a captured Portuguese merchantman, although one that was strongly armed as if for the trade to the East Indies.