by Julia Jones
The battle continued through the long afternoon and into the summer’s evening until at last, the sun set and the wind and waves began to rise and Admiral de Ruyter took his fleet back across the North Sea. The English and French followed him, hoping to fight again on the next day or the day after that.
But first there was fog and then the wind blew so strongly that the big ships couldn’t use their topsails or roll out their lower tier of guns. They spent a third day at sea, anchored off the Galloper Sand ‘in the gusty, cloudy, blowing weather’ until their scouts reported that the Dutch were tucked away behind the Oosterbank, one of de Ruyter’s favourite ‘lurking holes’.
There was nothing more they could do. The wind was blowing north north-east ‘a stout gale’. Finally the Duke of York admitted defeat and gave the order to sail back to Sole Bay and the coast of Suffolk.
The Sole Bay Lectures
By MW Vandervelde
Number Two: The Butcher’s Bill
The most likely estimate of dead and wounded from both sides at the Battle of Sole Bay is about 5,000 men. They would have been all ages and from every social class – from ships’ boys to admirals. There’ would have been several different nationalities as well. Although the English used the press gang system to man their ships from their own coastal areas, the Dutch recruited seamen from the German ports or from Scandinavia and way up into the Baltic.
Most of the battle had taken place within sight of land. There were bodies washed up on the beaches or found drifting at sea with the tide. The people of Southwold were forbidden to leave the town in case the Dutch were victorious and decided to invade. Clearing the beaches and caring for the wounded was a major problem for weeks afterwards. Suffolk people claimed that even the foam was tinged with blood.
The wreck of the Royal James had carried on burning for hours. After the other ships had changed tack and were sailing south, most of them had to sail round her. Admiral de Ruyter picked up a few survivors and when James Duke of York passed by, he saw that the water was full of men swimming around clinging to whatever pieces of timber they could find. He ordered one of the smaller ships in his division to stop and try to rescue them. He couldn’t do it himself as whichever ship he was in – the Prince, the St Michael, the London – attracted attackers like iron filings to a magnet.
Captain Haddock of the Royal James survived but Admiral the Earl of Sandwich, didn’t. He and his son-in-law had climbed into one of the smaller boats which was then capsized by the weight of desperate sailors jumping after them. The admiral’s body was discovered ten days later, floating miles out to sea close to the Long Sand Head. It was surrounded by nibbling fish and would have been unrecognisable except for the medals he’d been wearing.
The total casualties after a battle used to be called the Butcher’s Bill. The bill for the Battle of Sole Bay was high in terms of money as well as in human life. These ‘great ships’ were ruinously expensive.
The Dutch hadn’t built any new warships for several years and the French were only beginning to develop their fleet. But the English Kings had an addiction to ship-building. The Royal James had been the newest in a series of grand and deadly warships. Ironically it had been because King Charles II had spent so much money on his fleet that he’d been forced to go to war.
These ‘great ships’ were designed to impress – though I can’t help thinking how wasteful it was to build such beautifully decorated wooden objects then send them out to sea to smash or burn or sink each other.
The most extravagant ship of all (in my opinion) wasn’t at the battle of Sole Bay though she was back in action the following year. She was called the Sovereign of the Seas and she’d been built by King Charles I of England – the father of King Charles II. Charles I believed he was appointed by God to rule over land and sea and had demanded a flagship to express this. Every exterior surface of the Sovereign of the Seas was smothered in decoration. Charles had employed his court painter, his theatre designer and dozens of artists and craftsmen to make her magnificent.
The Sovereign of the Seas wasn’t just a floating showcase: she was deadly. She had one hundred and six guns, more than twice as many as the next biggest ship of her time. The previously most expensive ship had cost £10,000. Normal ships cost £6,000 – £7,000. The Sovereign of the Seas cost £65,000. When Charles demanded a special tax called Ship Money to help pay for her, people were outraged. Finally Parliament was so angry that it declared war against the King. This was the English Civil War. Charles lost his throne and then his life. It was a high price to pay for a ship.
When Charles II became King in 1660 he appeared to have learned little from his father’s mistakes. He too wanted enormous floating gun platforms with splendid ornamental carvings and big cabins so that he and his brother and their courtiers and servants could stay on board in comfort. He rebuilt his father’s Sovereign of the Seas and about six others weighing over one thousand tons. Then he built the Prince and the Royal James which were even bigger. The Royal James was less than a year old when she burned to death at Sole Bay.
Charles II spent so much money on his navy that he couldn’t ask Parliament to give him any more. By 1670 he was a million pounds in debt and became so desperate that he entered into an alliance with his official enemy King Louis XIV of France. Louis offered Charles more money to spend on ships if he would use them to attack the Dutch. (He offered even more money if Charles would change his religion from Protestant to Catholic but this had to be kept a secret.)
In the spring of 1672 Charles II made an excuse to declare war on the United Provinces and sent his fleet and his brother out to sea to join up with the French and attack Admiral de Ruyter while the weather was good.
If you think of these maritime battles as deadly strategy games, you’ll realise that de Ruyter was a master. His ships were not as large as the English ships and less money had been spent decorating them. It was his seamanship and his knowledge of the North Sea that won him so many victories. That – and his ability to take the English by surprise.
Before the Battle of Sole Bay the United Provinces was a republic. De Ruyter’s ships were provided by separate admiralties for each of the seven provinces and they weren’t particularly co-operative. There were no kings demanding great ships as status symbols but most of Admiral de Ruyter’s vessels were sponsored by a particular town and they naturally wanted to look good. The provincial guilds paid extra for carved figureheads and elaborately decorated sterns on which they could show off their coats of arms and locally significant symbols – rather like personalised number plates on cars and the rear window stickers which boast ‘If you can see this then I’m in front of you!’
Captured ships were financially valuable. During the Battle of Sole Bay the Dutch came close to taking two of the big, 1000-ton English ships (the Royal Katherine and the Henry) but both of them escaped. The English gained the Stavoren, a 48-gun ship which was sailing with the Amsterdam admiralty. She took her name from the town of Stavoren in the province of Friesland. It had once been a rich and important trading port but had declined as its harbour silted up. Some people said there had been witchcraft involved. They blamed a greedy woman – the Lady of Stavoren.
The ship Stavoren had been built in Edam. In the past she’d carried one of the Dutch admirals. She’d sailed as far as Scandinavia and fought at the Battle of the Sound against Sweden in 1658. Now she was one of the oldest and smallest of the Dutch great ships. She had a painting of her home town on her stern. Her other main item of decoration was her figurehead, a carved red lion.
The Sole Bay Lectures
By MW Vandervelde
Number Three: ‘The Prize’
The Stavoren was captured between four and five o’clock in the afternoon of May 28th 1672. Ever since the tide had turned and the fleets had put about, the English and the Dutch had been sailing roughly south-east in two long lines, firing at each other. There was still
very little wind and the tide was against them. It must have been immensely slow.
The Dutch ships were to windward where the English would like to have been. If you were to windward, you had ‘the weather gage’ and if you hammered your opposing ship so hard that she had to stop firing or could no longer sail properly you could use the wind to bear down on her, then come alongside and capture her. The captain and crew who took a ship earned a generous financial reward.
It looked as if the Dutch were going to be lucky. When the tide had turned at noon Dutch admiral Van Nes had captured the Royal Katherine, an 82-gun second-rate English ‘great ship’. He’d taken her captain and officers on board his own vessel and put some of his men onto the Royal Katherine to sail her back to Holland. The English crew were imprisoned below decks.
Unfortunately for Admiral Van Nes he’d done the first part of his job too well. The Royal Katherine was an awkward ship at the best of times and she was now so badly damaged that she wouldn’t go to windward at all. She couldn’t point in the right direction for Holland.
And she was leaking. So, when the English crew locked down below began yelling, ‘The ship sinks! The ship sinks!’ the Dutch allowed them back on deck to help save her. Instead the English prisoners attacked the Dutch, locked them below, and headed the Royal Katherine for Harwich with those few precious breaths of wind comfortably on her quarter.
This line-of-battle fighting was toughest on the smaller ships. They couldn’t use their qualities of nimbleness to get out of the way and might be trapped into a long duel with an enemy who might have twice as many guns. Once they were too badly damaged to keep their place in the line, they would have to fall back, easy prey for enemies. It makes me think of those TV documentaries where some weaker animal is separated from the main herd and the predators close in.
That’s what happened to the Dutch 54-gun ship, the Josua. She’d been battered by the 96 guns of Sir John Kempthorne’s St Andrew until she could sail no more. She was so badly damaged that the last survivors of her crew took to their boats and abandoned her. She wasn’t even worth taking as a prize so the English ship, the Edgar, carried on firing at her until she sank.
The 48-gun Stavoren had suffered badly during that long slogging match that lasted the full length of the ebb tide. Eventually she could no longer keep up with the rest of her countrymen. She drifted helplessly to leeward until she found herself in the midst of the English line-of battle – easy prey for the Greenwich, a slightly larger ship of 60 guns. ‘Between four and five o’clock I saw the Greenwich board a disabled Dutch ship which had fallen among our ships. The Greenwich took her and carried her away.’
But where was she taken? Harwich was the nearest port with ship-building and repair facilities and that was where most of the damaged English ships headed when they could no longer continue fighting. The wind was fair for Harwich but fair for the Thames as well.
In July 1672 there were 180 Dutch prisoners close to starvation in Harwich. They’d been given 2d each to last four days. Some of these men could have come from the crew who’d attempted to take the Royal Katherine and had then been overpowered – but I’m guessing that most of them were sailors from the Stavoren. She had a crew of 200 and there must have been many casualties before she was sufficiently weakened to be captured. It’s likely that her captain, Daniel Elsevier, and his officers were removed separately, perhaps in hope of a ransom. They could even have been exchanged later for the captain and officers of the Royal Katherine. So my best guess is that the 180 Dutch prisoners struggling to survive in Harwich were from both of the two ships, the Stavoren and Dutch prize crew who had been put aboard the Royal Katherine.
What happened to them? No-one knows. There doesn’t seem to have been any system in place for ordinary prisoners. I have some suggestions but my research is at an early stage.
What’s certain is that the Stavoren herself was repaired and sent out again the next year as part of the English fleet, fighting against her own countrymen at the battles of Schoonvelde and the Texel. The English scarcely bothered to change her name. They wanted the Netherlanders to see their own vessel turned against them, their own figurehead sailing to attack, their own guns rolled out against them. She was now His Majesty’s Ship Stavoreen.
The Stavoreen had to be sent home again for repairs after the Battle of the Texel in August 1673 and then the war against the Dutch was over. She was used for a while in the Channel to protect merchant men or the fishing fleet but the years from 1674 until 1689 (when England went to war with the French) were years of great reduction in the size of the English navy. In 1682, ten years after she’d been captured at Sole Bay, HMS Stavoreen was officially declared useless and sent to be broken up.
The Sole Bay Lectures
By MW Vandervelde
Number Four: ‘The Water Line’
June 1672, the United Provinces
Admiral de Ruyter’s battered fleet, anchored safely behind the Oosterbank, must have been pleased with their surprise attack at Sole Bay. The Royal James, a first-rate ship had been destroyed, the Prince, the St Michael, the Royal Katherine, the Henry, the Resolution, the Cambridge – all first- and second-rate ships – had been so badly damaged that they’d been forced to withdraw. It was a pity that they had not gained any prizes themselves and they had lost the Josua and the Stavoren but their strategy had been successful. They’d made sure that King Charles II of England would earn nothing from his treacherous French alliance.
On land however it was a different story. While de Ruyter and the navy had been away, the French army had invaded the United Provinces. The warm, dry weather made it all too easy for King Louis XIV and his troops to cross the shrunken rivers on the landward side. There were only the local militiamen and peasants to resist them. Most were too shocked even to try.
Within weeks the French had crossed the River IJssel and Louis XIV had installed himself in the heart of the seven provinces. Johan de Witt’s republican government was in chaos. His rival, twenty-two year old Willem III of Orange, was ready to take command.
The French had thought young Willem might play their power games with them but they were wrong. He was Protestant: they were Catholic. He’d been Stadtholder-in-waiting all his life. He knew that his moment had finally arrived.
Willem III had just 12,000 men to help him defend Holland and Zeeland, the last two provinces: Louis XIV had 100,000 trained professionals.
Guns and sailors were taken from de Ruyter’s ships and hurried to the final line of defence – the Water Line. One in every two able-bodied men was required to join up and all the strong-points along the dykes were fortified. Then Willem convinced his countrymen to use their ultimate weapon: they opened the sluices and flooded their own country.
It was a slow process in a dry year – but it worked. Homes and villages, years of patient farming were ruined. South Holland became a vast network of water and marsh from the River Maas to the Zuider Zee. Better to lose everything than give it to the Catholic French. Holland was now an island and Louis XIV could advance no further. He left an army to occupy the other captured provinces and returned to Paris.
The Hollanders were angry though, dangerously angry. They needed scapegoats. First there was an attempt to assassinate their former leader, the shrewd, peace-loving Johan de Witt. Then, in August, his brother Cornelis was arrested and tortured on a faked-up charge.
Only five years earlier Cornelis had been a national hero for masterminding a daring raid on the English ships lying un-defended in the river Medway. Johan had organised the survey work – discovering how the Dutch could navigate safely through the English shallows – and Cornelis, with Admiral Van Ghent, had captured the English flagship, the Royal Charles. Together they had sunk or burned another half dozen of the English ‘great ships’.
Cornelis had been present at the Battle of Sole Bay. He had remained on the deck of Admiral de Ruyter’s De Zeven Provincië
n throughout the fighting, refusing to take shelter even as those around him were killed and wounded. His loyalty to the United Provinces was absolute. He had nothing to confess so confessed nothing.
Cornelis de Witt was sentenced to banishment. He was weak from torture with both his legs broken. Johan arrived in a carriage to collect him from prison and the crowd went berserk. The brothers had led their country into its Golden Age. Now they were savaged. Then the militia, who should have protected them, joined in to finish them off. Their bodies were bound together and hoisted on a gibbet, then dragged down again and torn to pieces: parts of them were eaten or sold – a finger joint for six stivers, an ear for twenty.
Willem III didn’t grieve for the dead de Witts and made no attempt to punish their murderers. He put some of the cannon and the sailors back in the ships and ordered de Ruyter to stand guard against an English invasion from the sea. Then he set his mind to getting rid of the French.
The Sole Bay Lectures
By MW Vandervelde
Number Five: Loose Ends
The question that I’m surprised that you haven’t asked is what difference the Battle of Sole Bay made – the money spent, the lives lost. So what? Where’s the bigger picture?
Obviously the battle must have made about 55,234 differences. That’s the number of men and boys in the English, French and Dutch fleets who were directly involved during that long summer day in 1672. And you might want to multiply that by their families, the people emotionally close to them, or financially dependent.
For some of those people the battle made the ultimate difference – between life and death – or between health and disability; freedom and captivity. Sole Bay was the battle, remember, that Admiral de Ruyter recalled as the longest and hardest fought of his entire career. You were in as much danger at the Battle of Sole Bay if you were a cabin boy or an admiral.