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Analyzing the Anglo-Dutch Wars - Part 1
Analyzing the Anglo-Dutch Wars - Part 2

Opinion / Analysis

Analyzing the Anglo-Dutch Wars - Part 2
James C. Bender
August 3, 2003

In his book, A Distant Storm, Frank Fox has a chapter about the St. James Day Battle. He has a sentence: "The opponents were almost identical in numbers, but (unknown to the Dutch) size and firepower tipped the scales in favor of the English." (A Distant Storm, p.332).

Frank Fox's evaluation of why the Dutch lost so badly at Lowestoft was mostly because of not following strict line tactics. He listed three main reasons:

There was a problem with captains. That had been a problem throughout the First Dutch War. After the Battles of the Gabbard and Scheveningen, the offending captains were tried by court martial and were either dismissed or executed. There may have been some of that, in the past, but Witte de With had complained since the fall of 1652 about the problem. Part of the problem was that in some cases, there were merchant owners who commanded their own ships.

Point two was what the participants said, so we need to take that seriously. My thesis agrees with point three. Inferior ships had been a problem since 1652. The two 30-ship programs from 1653 had been executed to remedy the problem, although the politicians largely sabotaged the effort, by reducing the ship sizes. The Second Dutch War building program was still gathering momentum, so that the Dutch fleet at Lowestoft was mostly composed of ships from 1653 and years immediately following. There were a few exceptions, as building was adding significant ships from early 1660's. By the Four Days Battle, the fleet had been reinforced by the first fruits of the latest building program.

Simply by reason of the shallows, especially off Zeeland, and the need to operate there, the ship issue could never be totally resolved. There was also the need to be able to transit the bar to Amsterdam. By the time the Dutch were more willing to build large ships, they had lost the financial ability and the resolve to do so on a large scale.

Two big factors at Lowestoft were leadership and political instability. As Prof. J. R. Bruijn pointed out in his book, Varend Verleden, even Johan de Witt didn't trust the admiral, Jacob Wassenaer, and had appointed Egbert Kortenaer as his flag captain. Prof. Bruijn said that Wassenaer was chosen was for political reasons, only. He had also fought the Battle of the Sound, and nothing very bad had happened. He had even won, although at the cost of Witte de With and the Brederode. As you pointed out, the seven squadrons, at Lowestoft, were implemented for political reasons, as well.

I have seen indications that the political instability was, even in 1665, very close to the surface. There had been a series of violent incidents, starting with the riot where Willem II was killed, in 1650.

I need to expand my thesis to include political instability along with inferior ships (smaller size and broadside weight) as the primary reasons for Dutch inferiority. During the First and Second Dutch Wars, the lack of resolve and discipline among too many captains were major factors for the Dutch (and for the English, especially up to Dungeness).

I am not willing to concede that tactics was as an important an issue. Short of using Armada-style tactics, tactics were less important than the political instability, bad leadership, and inferior ships. The Dutch focus on tactics, after Lowestoft, I see as more as being in denial about their inferiority in ships and broadside weight. The St. James Day Battle demonstrates that tactics were not the main issue. There, the Dutch stood toe-to-toe with the English, both sides arrayed in single lines, and got shot to pieces.

The Dutch had largely the same ships in the Third Dutch War, and fewer of them, but the Dutch seem to have up-gunned their ships, in the intervening period. The only firm evidence that can be shown is that the fleet flagship, the Zeven Provincien, now had a complete 36-pounder lower tier, instead of a mixed 24-pounder and 36-pounder lower tier. We can imagine that the rest of the fleet was similarly treated (at least the large ships). The frigates probably were unchanged, except that probably had more uniform batteries.

One major obstacle to testing my thesis for the First Dutch War is the lack information about armaments for the English ships. That would have been true for the Dutch ships, as well, except that we now have the 1654 list and the Directors' ship information. There is some information in a Brian Lavery book and in Oppenheim's book, but that is mostly from post-war (or pre-war).

For now, we will end up having to make estimates, based on those sources and based on the 1664 list published by Brian Lavery. We have an expansive listing of English ships, with estimated dimensions, based on published tonnages. We could concentrate on calculating displacements for them, as well. We will also need to estimate armaments. Frank Fox advocates using displacements for comparing ships, and Jan Glete certainly agrees with that measure.

We can suspect that the combination of larger ships, upgraded armaments, and solving the political problem had made the Dutch more competitive, by the Third Dutch War. By then, the English were the ones who had started to see increased political instability. Not that any time after the Restoration, would I call the situation to be stable. The lack of suitable leadership, along with the French alliance, caused the English to fail. It was too bad that De Ruyter was not able to go home and rest on his laurels, after the Battle of the Texel. He had knocked the English out of the war.

Instead, in De Ruyter's old age, he had to take a small squadron to the Mediterranean, to spar with the great Abraham Duquesne. He died as a direct result, as he was wounded in battle, for the first time in his life, and succumbed.

The French had some good commanders, but the wrong-minded political control by Louis XIV stymied their efforts. D'Estrees was particularly bad, in the same sort of way as Wassenaer. They seem to been similar characters, since they had military, not naval backgrounds.

By the War of the English Succession, the same sort of rot had set in, in England. William III didn't know or care anything about the navy. The only good thing was that Louis XIV prevented his navy from achieving what they could have done. William III really only cared about land warfare. After his death, things only got worse, with Prince George as Lord High Admiral. When the Germans came in, after Queen Anne died, they were sunk. The only good thing was that the Spanish were almost non-existent and the French were reduced to a small force, for some time. Jan Glete says that what French navy survived was very professional, and good. The 1830's were when Blaise Ollivier was building warships.

As our analysis for the First Dutch War depends on knowing what captain commanded each ship, we need to be able to account for captains for ships for which I have specifications. For this list of Directors' ships, we thank Jan Glete:

We can guess the captains for some of these ships, but some are a total blank. For those that we can guess the captains, there has been no archival information to supply those names, yet.

Jan Glete's impression of the First Dutch War is that the Dutch had a cruiser navy, when they found they needed a battle fleet navy. There was that, and that they had relied on hired merchantmen, which was an obsolete concept, by 1652. That was the motivation behind the building programs started in 1653.

We are going to need to get access to the English documents for the First Dutch War, as well. We would be thrilled to find dimensions for hired or purchased ships, but would be happy just for gun lists.

One possible source of information might have been found from Dutch sources for captured English ships. We expected the captured Garland to retain its English armament, but she was re-armed, instead, with Dutch guns (18pdrs on the lower tier and 12pdrs on the upper tier).

Brian Lavery had published lists of guns and stores for the Royal James, Swiftsure, Fairfax, Mary, and Montague for 1661-1662. That gives us a few examples closer to the First Dutch War time. The only definite information we saw was for the St. George, also from Brian Lavery:

Oppenheim has some rather non-specific information for 1655 that is not so helpful, as ships are grouped together that pretty clearly had differing armaments:

Oppenheim also gives the armament for the 2nd Rate London, for 1656:

That at least gives us as few data points. It well may be the case that the Jacobean and Carolean Great Ships and Middling Ships may still have had mixed armaments in 1652, although with more guns. After seeing the St. George, in 1652, the more likely situation seems to have been that they were re-armed with more uniform armaments.

The formalist stagnation that had set in by 1688 was harmful. That was a mindset that remained among some British admirals up through the Battle of Jutland. After that experience, everything changed. This was an attitude that believed you won by not losing, and that killed initiative in the British navy until men like Anson and Hawke came along in the mid-Eighteenth Century. The naval administration was just as bad. Administrative tidiness was more important than improvement.

In that vein, we can better understand Robert Blake, at the Battle of Dungeness, being ready to fight with 42 English ships against as many as 86 Dutch warships, with approximately 5 fireships and some accompanying small craft. Blake's experiences at Dover and the Kentish Knock would have led him to believe that his superiority in large ships, given the level of aggressiveness he expected from captains, would be sufficient. Instead, many of his captains held back, in the light winds, and his flagship, the Triumph, was heavily damaged.