The naval
Battle of Dungeness took place on 10 December 1652 (30 November in the Julian calendar then used by England) during the
First Anglo-Dutch WarThe First Anglo–Dutch War was the first of the four Anglo–Dutch Wars. It was fought entirely at sea between the navies of the Commonwealth of England and the United Provinces of the Netherlands...
near the cape of Dungeness in
KentKent , originally Cantia, is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the River Thames estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent...
.
In October 1652 the
EnglishThe Commonwealth of England, from 1653-1659 the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, was the republican government which ruled first England and Wales, and then Ireland and Scotland from 1649 to 1660. Some would call this government a "crowned" republican government...
government, mistakenly believing that the
United ProvincesThe Republic of the Seven United Netherlands was a European republic between 1581 and 1795, in about the same location as the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands,...
after their defeat at the
Battle of the Kentish KnockThe Battle of the Kentish Knock was a naval battle between the fleets of the Dutch Republic and England, fought on 8 October 1652 during the First Anglo-Dutch War near the shoal called the Kentish Knock in the North Sea about thirty kilometres east of the mouth of the river Thames...
would desist from bringing out a fleet so late in the season, sent away ships to the Mediterranean.
The naval
Battle of Dungeness took place on 10 December 1652 (30 November in the Julian calendar then used by England) during the
First Anglo-Dutch WarThe First Anglo–Dutch War was the first of the four Anglo–Dutch Wars. It was fought entirely at sea between the navies of the Commonwealth of England and the United Provinces of the Netherlands...
near the cape of Dungeness in
KentKent , originally Cantia, is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the River Thames estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent...
.
Background
In October 1652 the
EnglishThe Commonwealth of England, from 1653-1659 the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, was the republican government which ruled first England and Wales, and then Ireland and Scotland from 1649 to 1660. Some would call this government a "crowned" republican government...
government, mistakenly believing that the
United ProvincesThe Republic of the Seven United Netherlands was a European republic between 1581 and 1795, in about the same location as the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands,...
after their defeat at the
Battle of the Kentish KnockThe Battle of the Kentish Knock was a naval battle between the fleets of the Dutch Republic and England, fought on 8 October 1652 during the First Anglo-Dutch War near the shoal called the Kentish Knock in the North Sea about thirty kilometres east of the mouth of the river Thames...
would desist from bringing out a fleet so late in the season, sent away ships to the Mediterranean. This left the English badly outnumbered in home waters. Meanwhile the Dutch were making every effort to reinforce their fleet.
Battle
On 1 December 1652 Lieutenant-Admiral
Maarten TrompMaarten Harpertszoon Tromp was an officer and later admiral in the Dutch navy. His first name is also spelled as Maerten.-Early life:...
, again (unofficial) supreme commander after his successor Vice-Admiral Witte de With had suffered a breakdown because of his defeat at the Battle of the Kentish Knock, set sail from
HellevoetsluisHellevoetsluis is a town and municipality on Voorne-Putten Island in the western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland...
with 88
men of warThe man-of-war was the most powerful type of armed ship from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The term often refers to a ship armed with cannon and propelled primarily by sails, as opposed to a galley which is propelled primarily by oars...
and 5 fireships, escorting a vast convoy bound for the Indies. With the convoy safely delivered through the Straits of Dover, Tromp turned in search of the English, and on 9 December 1652 he encountered the English fleet of 42 ships commanded by General-at-Sea
Robert BlakeRobert Blake was one of the most important military commanders of the Commonwealth of England, and one of the most famous English admirals of the 17th century....
. Bad weather prevented an action that day, but the next day Blake came out to fight and the two fleets met at about 15:00 near the cape of Dungeness in a "bounteous rhetoric of powder and bullet" (according to a contemporary account).
A strong North-East wind prevented a large part of the Dutch fleet from engaging Blake, whose fleet by nightfall had lost five ships of which the Dutch captured two, and damaged many more. The Dutch lost one ship through fire. Blake retreated under cover of darkness to his anchorage in the Downs. Tromp could not be satisfied with the result however as the Dutch had missed an opportunity to annihilate the English.
The battle resulted in several reforms in the English Fleet. Part of Blake's force consisted of
impressedImpressment was the act of compelling men to serve in a navy by force and without notice. It was used by the Royal Navy, beginning in 1664 and during the 18th and early 19th centuries, in wartime, as a means of crewing warships, although legal sanction for the practice goes back to the time of...
merchant vessels that retained their civilian captains. Many of them refused to participate in the battle. Some naval captains insisted on their traditional right to enter and leave the battle at times of their choosing, and to leave formation in order to secure a
prizePrize is a term used in admiralty law to refer to equipment, vehicles, and vessels captured during armed conflict. The most common use of prize in this sense is the capture of an enemy ship and its cargo as a prize of war. In the past, it was common that the capturing force would be allotted a...
. Blake threatened to resign if something was not done. The Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty responded by:
- requiring all impressed vessels to be under the command of captains appointed by the navy;
- dividing the fleet into squadrons under junior flag officers for better command and control
Command and control, or C2, can be defined as the exercise of authority and direction by a properly designated commanding officer over assigned and attached forces in the accomplishment of the mission....
;
- issuing Sailing and Fighting Instructions which significantly enhanced an admiral's authority over his fleet.
The victory gave the Dutch temporary control of the English Channel and so control of merchant shipping. A legend says that Tromp attached a broom to his mast as a sign that he had swept the sea clean of his enemies, but in his book
The Command of the Ocean, N.A.M. Roger doubts the legend as such a boasting action would have been out of character for Tromp. Additionally,
at the time, a broom attached to a mast was the way of showing that a ship was for sale.
Also Dutch contemporaneous sources make no mention of it. The battle not only showed the folly of dividing forces while the Dutch still possessed a large fleet in home waters, but exposed "much baseness of spirit, not among the merchantmen only, but many of the state's ships". It seemed that the captains of hired merchant ships were reluctant to risk their vessels in combat, while the state's ships lacked the men to sail and fight them.
Ships involved:
England (Blake)
Triumph 60 (flag)
Victory 60 (Lionel Lane)
Vanguard 58 (John Mildmay)
Fairfax* 56 (John Lawson)
Speaker* 54 (John Gilson)
Laurel 50 (John Taylor)
Worcester 44 (Anthony Young)
44 (Robert Batten) - Captured
Entrance 43 (Edmund Chapman)
Lion 42 (Charles Saltonsall)
Convertine 42
Foresight 42
Dragon 40
Fortune 36
Hound 35
Sapphire 34
Princess Maria 33
Mary flyboat 32
Waterhound 30
Dolphin* 30 (William Badiley)
Advantage 26 (William Beck)
Swan* 22
Greyhound* 20
Hannibal* 44 (Francis Barham)
Anthony Bonaventure 36 (Walter Hoxon) - Captured
Lisbon Merchant 34
Loyalty* 34
Culpepper 30
Cullen 28
Prudent Mary 26
Samuel 26
Martha 25
Katherine* 24
Exchange 24
Acorn 22
Ships marked * are probables.