My translation of Dr. Elias on the storm off the Texel in November, 1653

This is my attempt at a translation of what Dr. Elias wrote in Vol.VI, pages 121-122, of the storm off the Texel in November 1653. I did a bit of editing of the translation, which a native Dutch speaker could do better (primarily to make the word order match English better):

The Zeeland Directors’ ship Gekroonde Liefde was the first, having been stranded on the shore at the Huisduinen on Sunday afternoon, November 9, at 2 o'clock. The whole crew, Captain Hartman included, met their end in the waves. The entire night the storm continued to rage with undiminished strength; but on, November 10, the fourth day, Monday, under dense hailstorms and hunting snow, the storm reached its peak. The Directors’ ships, particularly, which were generally sparingly provided with anchors and cables, had struggled to resist the hurricane. Of the many vessels which were stripped of their anchors and drifted landwards, the majority were of the Directors. Against two war ships of the state (the Gouda of Amsterdam under captain Ooms, who with the loss of half of its crew, was stranded on the beach at Petten, and the Prins Willem, of the Noorderkwartier, under captain Boermans, who was found with 12 dead men) there were six of the different Directors lost, on this unfortunate day. Of them, on the head of Petten, the Koning David, of Amsterdam, and the Sint Vincent, of Friesland, and at the Oog, the Moorin, of Amsterdam, and the Graaf Hendrick, of Friesland, were thrown on the shore. Only a small part of those on board survived; the captains, Vogelsanck, of the Koning David, and Wagenaar, of the Graaf Hendrick, were drowned. The Zeeland Directors’ ship, the Luipaard, under captain Tiebij, sank with man and mouse and also the Koning Radbout, of the Directors of Medemblick, became victims of the waves, as well as the East-Indian Company’s cruiser Gerechtigheid (under captain Swart, who perished with the majority of his crew) along with the two Zeeland provision fluits.

More about Anthonis van Salingen

I have written about Anthonis van Salingen at KentishKnock.com. I have usually spelled his last name as "van Zalingen", but the old, handwritten documents generally say "van Salingen". He was born about 1600 and died on 10 December 1652 (the new style date). He served the Admiralty of Amsterdam. He was appointed an Extra-Ordinary Kapitein as far back as 1624. He was a full Kapitein-ter-Zee in 1638. He was promoted to Commandeur in 1645, the year that he took part in Witte de With's successful operation to push a large merchant fleet into the Sound without paying the toll to the Danes. back in 1626, he had retaken a Dutch prize from the Dunkirkers and fought in the sloop-flotilla before Dunkirk. He was a convoy commander in 1639. In 1645, he commanded the Zon or Gouden Zon (34 guns), the same ship he commanded in the Mediterranean Sea in 1651-1652, under the command of Joris Cats. In 1652, he blockaded the English under Appleton in Livorno while Van Galen fought Badiley near Elba. This is based, in part, on the account in Mollema's "Honour Roll".

The Sneuper-Dokkum blog

Now, there is more than just the website, for De Sneuper, there is also a blog: http://sneuperdokkum.blogspot.com/. The blog is actually titled: "Historische Vereniging Noordoost Friesland".

The Warships blog

Carl Stapel pointed out Alexandervan Maanen's blog, Warships, where he and Ron van Maanen's both have material posted. One thing that might be of wide interest is Ron's list of Dutch ships at the Battle of Lowestoft, with dimensions and gun lists.

Nicholas de With

In 1652, Nicholas de With commanded the Amsterdam Directors' ship Prins Maurits (or Mauritius), up until it was wrecked due to bad piloting in November 1652. I presume that he was the same Nicholas de With who served with the English Royalists in 1645. R. C. Anderson lists him as a Royalist captain in 1645.

"Sleutels van de Sont"

The book Sleutels van de Sont is available in the United States in Google Book Search. This book has the list of ships and captains in Witte de With's fleet in the operation to push a large convoy of merchantmen into the Baltic in 1645 without paying the toll to Denmark.

Dutch ship armaments in 1665

By the Battle of Lowestoft, Dutch ships seemed to have carried a large number of guns for their size. The little Rotterdam ship Vrede carried 40 guns. In the case of the Vrede, the ship carried many 12pdr and 6pdr guns. My opinion was that the ship was greatly over-armed for a small frigate. This was the ship that Jan van Brakel commanded at the raid on the Medway when he is often said to have broken the chain on the Medway. The truth seems to be that the fireship Pro Patria, commanded by Jan Daniëlsz van Rijn, was the ship that broke the chain.

Abel Roelantsz

I have been searching on the Gemeentearchief Rotterdam website. I saw what I had known about: "capiteyn Abel Roelantsz Verboom". I believe that he had been flag captain for Tromp on the Brederode in 1652. In 1653, he commanded Witte de With's old flagship, the Prinses Louise (36 guns). He also may have functioned as a division commander.

The Gewapende Ruyter

I had never seen the ship Gewapende Ruyter mentioned in any document from the Nationaal Archief in The Hague before yesterday. That is no longer the case. Yesterday, I received photographs of a letter from Admiralty of Amsterdam secretary David de Wildt, from 18 November 1653, with what Jane's Fighting Ships used to call "War Losses". These were the ships lost by the Admiralty of Amsterdam in the First Anglo-Dutch War. The second ship mentioned was the Gewapende Ruyter (kapitein Boëtius Schaeff), 36 guns. David de Wildt categorized the Gewapende Ruyter as being taken and brought to The Downs.

My possible Dutch connection

I found out today that my ancestor's name was not Matilda Lemon, but Matilda Lehman. Lehman is apparently a Mennonite name, and this page makes it seem plausible that Matilda Lehman could have a Netherlands connection. Lehmans moved to Ohio, at one point, and the Beardsleys lived in Ohio at the right period. It was in an 1870 census where Solomon Beardsley said that his mother was born in "Holland". Matilda Lehman is said to have been born in 1812 and died in 1860.

Bronze 15pdr guns

I had thought that I did not know the weight of any 15pdr guns, but from a page dated 27 March 1653, I have the weights of two bronze 15pdr guns carried by the Zeeland ship Hollandia, commanded by kapitein Adriaen Banckert. The two guns were 2750 and 2733 pounds.

Copper 6pdr guns for the Gorcum

I was surprised to see that the Rotterdam ship Gorcum (or Gorinchem) carried two copper 6pdr guns in 1652. The Friesland ship Breda had copper 4pdr guns at the same time. The Admiralty of Friesland had acquired the Breda from Amsterdam, as I recall. Nico Brinck had told me that the "copper" guns were actually made from a composite of iron, lead, and beaten copper. The copper was not cast, but beaten to shape with hammers. As far as I can tell, the Gorcum had the copper 6pdrs replaced by Jun3 1653.

Amsterdam ships completed in the summer of 1653

I was working on my annotated list of ships that fought in the Battle of Lowestoft in 1665, when I noticed that the Oosterwijk was 140ft long. The Amsterdam and the Oosterwijk were built under the First Anglo-Dutch War building program and came into service late in the summer, after the Battle of Scheveningen. They were both 140ft long ships. They were a non-standard size, as supposedly, they were going to build 150ft, 136ft, and 130ft ships under the two thirty ship programs. In fact there were many deviations.

My estimate of the 1628 bronze 24pdr drake gun weight

My first attempt at an estimate where I have an idea of dimensions for a gun is a 24pdr bronze drake from 1628. I have a lower resolution scan of Nico Brinck's drawing, so I had some trouble reading the numbers. The gun is about 2273mm long (8ft long in Amsterdam feet). My weight estimate, based on metal volume is 2739 pounds (Amsterdam pounds of 494.09 grams). I do all the important calculations in metric measurements.

I have more from Nico Brinck

Thanks to what Nico Brinck has given me, including in May, I have enough to make more progress on a Dutch gun model. There seems to be value in switching to metric lengths and estimating the actual bore length and diameter. Unlike the English, gun lengths are not on even 6in intervals. I am also using metric weight measures, the motivation for metric is to be able to deal with things like Rijnland feet and Amsterdam feet interchangeably as well as Swedish feet and pounds.

I need to calibrate my formula for Dutch guns

I am finally dealing with the difference in the Dutch pound and the English pound and the Amsterdam foot and the English foot in my gun calculations. I need to find one of Nico Brinck's gun drawings that I have a both a weight in Dutch pounds (one pound is 494.09 grams) and the measurement in centimeters (I think that is what is used for dimensions). That will allow me to calibrate the formula. My original formula was based on English feet and inches and English pounds. The Amsterdam foot is aboutg 283mm and is divided into 11 inches.

Dutch gun speculation

The two bronze 24pdr guns carried by the Zeeland ship Goes in 1652 and 1653 are interesting, because they only weighted 2384 pounds. To me, that means that they were short and had thin metal, certainly being chambered guns. They seem to have been the sort of mid-Seventeenth Century equivalent to a 24pdr carronade. The problem is that I have no way of knowing just how thin the metal was. My wild speculation puts the length at 5-1/2 Amsterdam feet.

Dutch guns

My project for yesterday was to compile a spreadsheet of Dutch ship gun inventories. I don't have complete coverage, but there is enough to be useful. There is limited information on 36pdr guns. All that I have is from the gun inventory for the Zeven Provincien that was published. There was a larger type of bronze 36pdr that averaged 6635 pounds. There was a somewhat smaller 36pdr that averaged 6282 pounds. The heavier 24pdr averaged 4923 pounds. The Zeven Provincien only had two of these. I knew about the other four that were carried by the Zeeland ship Vlissingen in 1653. Most bronze 24pdr guns carried by the Zeven Provincien averaged 4420 pounds. I can see that I have some reorganizing to do on the list, so that there may be some small adjustments in the averages, but those are about right, as is.

Hosting for two sites is down

Two of my web sites, Graphic-Artist-2.com and AngloDutchWarsBlog.com are both down due to a fire at the hosting service, Avahost. They really do not know how long it will take to get back up. I could tell there was a problem with traffic from those two sites disappeared from my tracking.

My current short project

Frank Fox called me to today to ask about guns carried by Dutch ships at the Battle of Lowestoft that he needed to know about. That got me started on making a list of ships with dimensions and gun lists that I know about, giving credit to the source for the dimensions and gun lists. I was actually able to put a good number of hours in on this, so that I made significant progress this afternoon. Of course, very little of this information has been published. I will at least supply this to Frank Fox, as he has shared a lot of information with me. Naturally, before I did anything with this, I would get photographs of the original source documents. I have a pretty good idea where to look. It is just that my focus has been on 1648-1654.