by Julia Jones
“Possibly a good reason to be somewhere else,” suggested Mike.
“Yeah, Luke,” said Angel. “Helen’s our friend, not our prisoner.”
“S’pose so.” Luke had been thinking about Helen; what precisely she’d said and when.
“As it happens,” said Mike. “The figurehead’s been here before. Helen’s mother’s notes document the Stavoren being present at the Battle of Lowestoft in 1665 – although that was a Dutch defeat. Fascinating stuff in those boxes. Primary source material.”
“So while Luke and your daughter were battling the high seas, you were checking source material?” said Xanthe, trying to keep the amazement out of her voice. “I mean I do think history’s totally awesome but …”
Mike pulled his straggly beard and looked awkward. “I hoped that I was doing something that might be useful to Mejuffrow de Witt. I was only occasionally distracted. I’m sorry, Luke, that I didn’t hear you when you called.”
“Am I getting this or not?” Xanthe wasn’t easily put off. “This Helen – who I haven’t met – is about fourteen years old. She’s lost her mother and her mother’s friend in a single night. She’ll probably be charged with involvement in criminal activity and she has no known family to help her. I’m sure she’ll be well-chuffed to know the away match score from the Battle of Lowestoft, 1665 – particularly when her side lost!”
“I wasn’t searching for those reasons.” Mike’s professional pride was hurt. “Her mother claimed to have traced their direct descent from Johan de Witt (d.1672), who was the Grand Pensionary of the United Provinces from 1652. It’s an axiom of family research that you must start with the known facts – the evidence of the generations closest to you – before working backwards to the unknown. Hendrike de Witt was a good researcher. I was looking for her starting points.”
“I’m sorry,” said Xanthe. “I was out of order.”
“So come on, Dad, what did you find?”
“I found names, birth dates and contact details for Hendrike’s birth family. I also found letters which her parents had continued to write to her during all the years since she left home to study art history in Amsterdam and fell pregnant with Helen.”
“Do they know then, her parents – about Helen?”
“Hendrike had kept her daughter’s existence secret until this year. It seems her parents are conventional farming folk of strict views and she was too ashamed to confess. Finally, when she was about to leave for England to pull off this nationalistic…stunt, she found the courage to tell them.”
“And?”
“It seems their views are not so rigid after all. They are longing to meet their granddaughter. They live near the town of Stavoren which is on the IJsselmeer. It seems Hendrike had planned the reconciliation as part of her triumphal return.”
“But she never said anything to Helen?”
“No. Her infatuation with Elsevier had a most unfortunate effect. The notes over the most recent period became quite markedly disordered.”
“Elsevier!” said Xanthe, “You don’t mean the bully on TV who always wears that unbelievable hat and cloak? I knew I’d seen her somewhere! She’s the one who wants to be the new Dutch dictator – Wreken de Dame?”
“A disgrace to her name and tradition,” said Mike. “The world was a better place when she went over the side.”
“We’ll never know whether she was trying to rescue the lion or Helen’s mother,” said Angel.
“No,” thought Luke, “We won’t.”
He remembered precisely what Helen had said in her suddenly shaky English. “My mother and the lion. They haf flown into the sea. The Kapitein went after.”
The Kapitein went ‘after’. Did Elsie follow after Hendrike and the carving – sacrificing herself for them, as Angel so sweetly assumed? It didn’t exactly seem in character.
Or did she go ‘after’ as in afterwards, later on in time, in a separate incident?
The MOB button had only been pressed once, by Helen. Helen would know exactly what had happened – and when – but somehow Luke didn’t think he was going to ask her.
The death of Elsevier had been the practical answer to all their problems.
And Helen was outstandingly practical.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Remembrance Day
Sunday 9 November, third of the waxing crescent
Luke
“Mike,” Luke asked a few days later, when Drie Vrouwen and the lion had been left in Lowestoft and he’d sailed home to the River Deben with Donny. “How did you know so much? I mean, you work at Suffolk Archives, which isn’t exactly the Maritime Museum, and you’ve never been to sea in your life.”
“No,” Mike agreed. “Not in this life I haven’t. And probably not in any other but I’ve always been obsessed with the Van der Veldes. They were seventeenth-century Dutch artists – a father and two sons. The father was there at the Battle of Sole Bay, sketching. He was the official Dutch war artist. Earlier in the 1650s he’d sailed in the Stavoren when she was quite a new ship – all the way to the Baltic and the Battle of the Sound..”
“Was he captured at Sole Bay? Was he one of those prisoners in Harwich?”
“No. He wasn’t on board the Stavoren then. He was in a little boat, a galjoot, dodging about between the great ships as the bombarded each other. But the Battle of Sole Bay did, indirectly, change his life. I suppose I should have mentioned it. It makes me feel awkward.”
“Why?”
“After the battle you must remember – the French had invaded, the land was flooded and there was chaos in the United Provinces. It was the beginning of the end of their greatness. Willem III was shrewd and successful but he had to drain the country of money to help him fight the French. The Golden Age was gone.”
“Ye-es?”
“Well, the Van der Veldes left the United Provinces later in 1672, after the Battle of Sole Bay and moved to England. King Charles II gave them a really generous salary and good living and working conditions. They had rooms in Greenwich Palace even. Next time there was a battle (in 1673) and old VV went out to sea, he was in a ketch not a galjoot – and he was drawing for the English side.”
“You feel bad about that? That’s why Elsie shouted at you?”
Mike adjusted his specs and pulled his beard and hid his twisting hands.
“It wasn’t only us. In June 1672 King Charles offered an invitation to any Dutch citizen to live and work in England. Lots of artists and craftsmen accepted. They couldn’t function in Holland anymore. It had been flooded. It was a war zone. You English gained from us. We brought you so much expertise. For instance, I’m currently researching the whole history of Dutch prisoners. Large numbers of them moved up into Cambridgeshire and helped to drain the Fens. We’re good at that sort of thing.”
Luke noticed that Mike hadn’t answered his question. “You called Helen a collaborator when you were really angry with her. Maybe she should have called you one?”
Mike looked shocked. “Oh no! That would mean I helped the invader. And that would have been the French. I’d never do that. I mean my ancestor wouldn’t. Not that he was really my ancestor.”
“Have you done family research as well – like Hendrike?”
“And I can’t trace any direct connection. None at all. Except I’ve always felt I understood old Van der Velde. All he did, all his life, was draw boats. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of boats – all sizes. He must have been an obsessive. So when he couldn’t draw boats at home anymore, he moved to a country where he could. He drew boats for King Charles, boats for King James and when Dutch Willem came over to England and was crowned King William III, he drew boats for him as well.”
“Dad,” said Luke, later still on that same Sunday, when it was visiting time again and he was back in the plastic hospital chair beside Bill’s bed. “I might be getting
interested in family history. I know a bit about the Whitings because they were fishermen and Mr Vandervelde says there were loads of Whitings in Suffolk in the 1670s. There were even some of them living in Southwold when there was the Battle of Sole Bay. Also there’s the Whiting Bank and all that. But that’s only half of me. I don’t know anything about my mum.”
Bill looked a bit knocked back. Maybe Luke should have waited a bit until his dad was stronger. Bill kept saying he was all right but the doctors had told Lottie that it would take a long time. Lottie and Anna were already planning how to install special equipment in Bawdsey Manor to make it accessible for Bill.
His dad was shifting himself, trying to get comfortable.
“Not surprising that you want to know. Not that you really need t’ ask. You an’ your mum! Course I could always see where you got your thinking skills from but it’s more than that, since you’ve grown up a bit. Seems to me, when I look at you sometimes – or I listen to the things you say – that she ain’t really dead at all.”
Bill’s last words came out in a rush and he turned his head away from Luke and into the thin white hospital pillow. There was a bit of a gap before he sorted himself out to carry on.
“She weren’t overly practical, your mum, but she did love an adventure and she had such a way with words. Always got some little story for you when you was a baby. Liam too of course, but you was her first.”
Luke was getting a bit choked up now. All those words of his mum’s must still be inside him somewhere but he couldn’t seem to lay a hand on them. Sunk into his memory like water into sand. Maybe he needed a few more facts to fix her with. Things a researcher would ask.
“Where’d she come from Dad and what about her family? Did they live in Suffolk like the Whitings?”
“Hers was an old Dutch family from the Fens. Refugees or prisoners or something but she’d moved down to Suffolk when I met her.”
“Where Dad? Where did you two meet?”
“I first met your mum in the Red Lion pub. She was standing outside. Looking up at that sign… ”
“Anna, what do you think? Should that Lion of Sole Bay be given back to Holland or go in some museum somewhere?”
“Only if the pub-owner wants it to.”
“I just wondered. What would be right? It is really historical.”
“Okay, since you’re asking – that figurehead was made to show off and look powerful and bully people into fighting each other but, from what you’ve said, it wasn’t all that good at it. The Stavoren got damaged, got captured, got damaged again, got broken up. So what the lion’s actually spent its lifetime doing – since it stopped being part of a warship – is mark out a place where people come and have a drink together. In the early days, when the Red Lion was a coaching inn, people on long journeys would have been pleased to see that sign because it meant they’d arrived so they and their horses could have a rest. People would have met at the Red Lion to do business: parish business, private business. They probably still do. Or they go and have a beer, eat a meal, meet their friends. Fall in love. Sing shanties. I mean, I’m no fan of shanties, but if it’s a choice between them and cannonballs …”
Luke heaved a sigh of relief.
“That’s okay then. So now can you give me my Nintendo back?”
The Sole Bay Lectures
By MW Vandervelde
Number One: One Fine Summer’s Day
28 May 1672, Sole Bay, Suffolk
An east wind was a Dutch wind. A light breeze in the early morning haze of a fine summer’s day. A wind that would die fitfully throughout the morning leaving the sea ‘smooth as a bowl of milk…the fairest day we have seen all this summer before’. This east wind brought Admiral Michiel de Ruyter and seventy-five ships of the United Provinces reaching across the North Sea to Suffolk.
Our Suffolk coast is a lee shore with an east wind blowing. The ninety-three ships of the combined English and French fleets had last seen Admiral de Ruyter more than a week ago dodging in and out of the channels around Oostende and Nieuwpoort, off the coast of Flanders where they couldn’t follow him. He’d done his best to use false lights to lure them in but they were wary of the wrecking shoals. And rightly so: their ships were deeper than his and they didn’t have the local knowledge.
Now they were lying at anchor in Sole Bay taking on fresh water and provisions. This was a job that took time when you’d 34,000 men to feed.
The French were anchored furthest south – off Dunwich and Aldeburgh – the two English squadrons were off the town of Southwold. Many of the men had spent the night in the alehouses or were busy ferrying supplies. The Prince, flagship of the Red squadron, with the King’s brother, the Lord High Admiral, James, Duke of York on board, was heeled over onto her side being cleaned. The Lord High Admiral and his entourage had enjoyed a good dinner and a comfortable night ashore.
A fresh breath of east wind in the early hours of the morning brought a scout ship running in, her top-gallant sails flying and her guns firing to sound the alarm. Behind her the horizon was a-prickle with the masts and sails of the Dutch fleet, smugly to windward in the morning light.
The French set off south-east, with the tide but against the wind, struggling to comply with a plan that they would lead the fleet. Meanwhile the Lord High Admiral decided to reverse the order of battle. Both squadrons of English ships set sail northwards, clawing away from the coast with the wind on their starboard side. Somehow the French didn’t get the message. The English were quick to accuse them of treachery and cowardice: the French admiral wrote afterwards that James’s orders were unclear because he’d been partying in Southwold. It was the day before his brother, King Charles’s, birthday.
The Blue squadron was already the furthest north. It should have brought up the rear but now it was in the vanguard. Admiral of the Blue, the Earl of Sandwich, on board the 100-gun Royal James, was old and tired and ready to die. His captain, Richard Haddock, set the headsails, ordered the anchors weighed and set off as briskly as the breeze would allow. The Royal James had been anchored in the deeper water furthest from the coast. She was therefore the first to be surrounded by the Dutch.
It was 7 a.m. and the Royal James was under heavy attack. She was fighting off two of the three Dutch admirals, their seconds and two fireships. The Groot Hollandia was rammed under her bows, struggling to board. The sea around the Royal James began to boil with musket shot. More than 250 of the 800 men on board were killed or wounded in the first hour and a half.
The sound of gunfire reverberated across the smooth water and the morning air was dirty with smoke. There was so little wind to blow it away that each ship became its own shrouded island of death and killing. It was hard to tell friend from enemy. Sir John Kempthorne, second in command of the Blue squadron, saw the Groot Hollandia grappled against the Royal James but thought she was an English ship. ‘By reason of the great smoke we could not discern the contrary.’ He sailed past.
The Earl of Sandwich sent a message to his next in command, Sir Joseph Jordan, ordering him to come and help. Sometime after ten o’clock that morning the desperate men of the Royal James saw Sir Joseph and several smaller ships passing by to windward ‘very unkindly’. (Sir Joseph said later that he was under fierce attack himself and that he couldn’t properly see what was happening.) They realised that there would be no rescue. They were on their own.
At last, at about twelve o’clock, the tide turned. Captain Haddock had been shot in the foot. His shoe was full of blood and he was going below for treatment when he spotted an opportunity to use the tide to separate the Royal James from the Groot Hollandia. He ordered a stern anchor to be dropped and told his men to begin cutting the tangle of boarding lines and rigging that bound them to their enemy. The Royal James stayed anchored where she was and the Groot Hollandia drifted away on the ebb, her decks heaped with dead men.
Captain Haddock carried on giving
orders as the surgeons hacked away at his shattered flesh and tendons. The crew were to hoist the mainsail, pull the anchor up again, get the ship sailing.
There was, however, no final escape for the Royal James. A Dutch fireship grappled from the stern and she was set ablaze. Most of the rest of the crew were burned or drowned. No-one who saw the last hours of the Royal James ever forgot the sight.
In the centre of the battle the Dutch were attacking the Prince, flagship of the Red squadron, with the Lord High Admiral, James Duke of York, on board. Seven ships surrounded her, led by Admiral de Ruyter in his flagship De Zeven Provinciën. No help came to the Prince as she kept them at bay hour after hour with her heavy guns. Her captain was killed, the main topmast crashed down, the deck was a chaos of rigging and broken spars.
It was impossible to manoeuvre such a badly damaged vessel. The Duke of York shifted himself and his admiral’s flag to the St Michael and the Dutch attack soon shifted with him. The new captain of the Prince ordered rowing boats to begin towing her closer to the rest of the squadron.
Once the tide had turned, around midday, all the combatants were being carried northwards with the ebb. The Duke of York’s pilot, who had moved with him to the St Michael, warned that they were in danger of running aground on the sands off Lowestoft, ‘which were the last words that he spoke for he was immediately slain’. The wind was backing north-east, so both fleets, laboriously, put about and continued to batter each other throughout the afternoon as they sailed slowly south again.
The sound of their guns could be heard for miles; doors and windows shook in their frames but the watchers along the coast could see nothing except smoke and dim shapes. Only the veteran Dutch war artist, Willem van der Velde, had any wider perspective on the action as he shifted through the fleets in his small galjoot.
By now the St Michael had six feet of water in her hold and looked likely to sink. James Duke of York moved once again to the 96-gun HMS London.