Dutch ships

“ Dutch ships and those of other nations were seen daily in her stately harbor; two great Dutch trading companies, the Dutch East India and the Dutch West India, had been lately chartered. Both were desirous to enlist young men in their ranks to settle in the new colonial domains. ”

“ The Dutch not only built ships for themselves, but orders were sent to their ship-yards from all parts of the world, inasmuch as in these yards all sorts of vessels, whether for war, commerce, or pleasure, could be built better and cheaper than in any other place. ”

“ The Dutch government do not compel the owners of merchant vessels to take any fixed number of seamen, as was required in British ships under the Navigation Act, but the Dutch Commercial Society, a very large trading company, appears to have made a regulation in the year 1843, that every Dutch ship which went out to Batavia should take on board one ass for every hundred tons! ”

“ Statistics, while not very trustworthy and not enlightening unless compared with those for other nations, may give some idea of the preponderance of Dutch shipping. At the time of the truce she is said to have had 16,300 ships, about 10,000 of which were small vessels in the coasting trade. Of the larger, 3000 were in the Baltic trade, 2000 in the Spanish, 600 sailed to Italy, and the remainder to the Mediterranean, South America, the Far East, and Archangel. ”

“ According to some accounts the Dutch navy had been allowed to fall to so low a number as fifty men-of-war, and, although merchantmen were taken into the service, their crews, hurriedly got together and new to their surroundings, were no match, so far as skill went, for their opponents. Throughout the war the Dutch, although they possessed many more ships, never succeeded in sending to sea any materially larger fleets than ours. Fifteen hundred prizes are said to have been taken from them during the war, a number at least double the whole ocean-going merchant marine of England. ”

“ We must remember that about this time the Dutch were more advanced in maritime matters than any other nation. With them shipbuilding and naval architecture were much nearer to being an art and a science than elsewhere. The vast number of miles open to inland navigation, the shallowness of their channels and coasts naturally encouraged and stimulated them to study the problem of smaller ships. What the Tigris and Euphrates and Nile had been to the ancients the inland waterways were to the Dutch. ”

“ However, those items that are considered most certain are, that the Dutch have a great number of ships, and although not more than enough men, they still have sufficient for them; and the number of men cannot be small if they can man the ships after leaving the necessary men in their forts and factories. ”

“ When, in 1795, the conquest of Holland and flight of the Orange government turned the Dutch from enemies into allies of France, their colonies and ports became accessories of great importance to the cruisers, owing to their nearness to the scene of action and especially to the great trade route between China and Europe. On the other hand the British, long debarred from rewards for their efforts, other than recaptures of their own merchant ships, now found the whole of the Dutch trade thrown open to them, and the returns bear witness both to its numbers and to their activity. ”

“ This gave me a little shock; a Dutch ship was now our terror, and we had much rather have met the devil, at least if he had not come in too frightful a figure; we depended upon it that a Dutch ship would be our destruction, for we were in no condition to fight them; all the ships they trade with in those parts being of great burden, and of much greater force than we were. ”

“ The Dutch being a nautical race by tradition as well as by the daily work of a large portion of them, there is nothing uncongenial in a naval career. No difficulty is experienced in obtaining the services of the seven thousand seamen and two thousand five hundred marine infantry who form the permanent staff of the Dutch navy, and if the country's finances enabled it to build more ships, there would be no serious difficulty in providing the required number of men to furnish their crews. ”

“ The chief difference between the British and foreign builds of warship of the latter half of the seventeenth century was that the English vessels were always constructed with the rounded117 tuck before mentioned, as introduced by Pett, while the Continental ships all had the old-fashioned square tuck, which is well illustrated in Fig. 51. The Dutch ships in one respect excelled all others, in that they were the first in which the absurd practice of an exaggerated "tumble home," or contraction of the upper deck, was abandoned. ”

“ It is the custom for the Dutch ships, as soon as their lading is nearly completed, to leave Batavia, on account of its extreme unwholesomeness, and proceed to some of the more healthy islands in the Straits, where they wait for the remainder of their cargo, and their dispatches. ”

“ The Dutch even interfere with our own commodities; for our wool and woollen cloth, which goes out rough, undressed, and undyed, they manufacture and serve themselves and other nations with it. We send into the east countries yearly but 100 ships, and our trade chiefly depends upon three towns, Elbing, Koningsberg, and Dantzic; but the Low Countries send thither about 3,000 ships: they send into France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, about 2,000 ships yearly with those east country commodities, and we, none in that course. ”

“ The Dutch had only one flag left flying,—Van Tromp killed,—all going against them! Again they sought refuge behind the sandbanks on the coasts of their country, whither the victors followed, as closely as their knowledge of the navigation would permit. In the pursuit of the flying foe, the lightest of the English ships took the most prominent part. The Dutch admiral, perceiving that they were only frigates that pursued him, turned upon them, but heavier ships coming up, he was not permitted to sink his tenacious tormentors, but had his own ship captured before he reached the Texel. ”

“ And so it was but natural that the zealous French went to Holland, lived there for some time in order to learn shipbuilding, translated the best Dutch authorities on this subject into French, and returned home to build on even more scientific lines. Therefore in the eighteenth century the French could build vessels as no one else in the world. It was from the latter, in turn, that the English at last acquired so much skill that the old rule-of-thumb methods of ship construction were for ever banished and the era of scientific shipbuilding entered upon. ”

“ The English refused to cancel or modify the Navigation Act, to release the captured ships before the cases 393 had been tried in the Admiralty Court, or to make reparation. They suspended the letters of direct reprisal against the Dutch, but not those against the French, which were by far the more important.
It was felt in Holland that such interference with their trade could not be endured. There were loud complaints about the seizure of the ships, and the opinion was growing in the Netherlands that it was the intention of the Commonwealth to force a war upon them. ”

“ The predominance of the commercial element in Holland prevented the development of a high military spirit among its seamen. The Dutch were skilful mariners, and valiant in a stolid, enduring way, but their officers in many cases showed a very unofficerlike reluctance to face risks. In our fleet something of the same kind was found among the merchant captains left in command of the hired or pressed ships, and no doubt the war, which tried men as by fire, revealed the weakness of individuals. Yet the evil with us was less, and the power to remedy it was far greater. ”

“ During the Commonwealth and Restoration there were continuous improvements in ship design, due, no doubt, in some measure, to the constant fighting with the Dutch. Our naval constructors naturally wanted to build better ships; they had the Dutch prizes to study, and our sea officers saw a good deal of the French men-of-war, which during the latter part of the war assisted them against the Dutch. The Royal Charles of 1673 may be taken as the link between the Sovereign and the eighteenth-century ships of our navy. ”

“ Under his timid government our nation sank to a low place among the Powers of Europe, whilst Holland stepped forward and took our place as the rival of Spain, and in the course of a few years made herself the first maritime state in the world. The Dutch became great ship-builders, and in their ships carried on the trade of a large part of Europe. They became in fact the great ocean carriers of the day, holding the position which is now held by ourselves; or to quote the writer of Fights for the Flag—"They swept the Spanish flag from the seas. The carrying trade of the world was in their hands. ”

“ We had a Dutch Squadron with us, who expected Convoy Rates, and all manner of Civilities from us, though there was now Peace, and we wanted nothing from 'em; but 'tis always the way with this Grasping and Avaricious People. Soon too we observed that the Dutch ships began to scrape and clean their sides, painting and polishing and beeswaxing 'em inside and out, bending new sails, and the very Mariners putting on half a dozen pair of new breeches apiece. This it is their cus [109] tom to do as they draw near home; so that they look as if newly come out of Holland. ”

“ Blake, Penn and Ayscue, had already acquired much valuable experience in their encounters with the royalist squadron under Prince Rupert, and in long cruises to the West Indies for the purpose of forcing the English colonies to acknowledge parliamentary rule. The crews therefore were well trained, and the ships were larger, stronger and better armed than those of the Dutch. The position of England, lying as it did athwart the routes by which the Dutch merchant-fleets must sail, was a great advantage. ”

“ The Dutch navy at this time, though amounting nominally to 119 vessels, from a 74-gun ship to the smallest armed cutter, was of little use to England, a large number of the ships lying rotting in the different harbours, and those able to put to sea being of comparatively small size, and carrying but light guns. ”

“ Almost all the ships that passed through the Sound were Dutch; and they frequented all the Baltic ports, whether Russian, Scandinavian or German, bringing the commodities of the South and returning laden with hemp, tallow, wood, copper, iron, corn, wax, hides and other raw products for distribution in other lands. The English had a small number of vessels in the Mediterranean and the Levant, and frequented the Spanish and Portuguese harbours, but as yet they hardly interfered with the Dutch carrying-trade in those waters. ”

“ Among the ships before-mentioned, one was a vice-admiral and two were rear-admirals. The Dutch historians, indeed, confess the loss of but eight men-of-war. On our side, Admiral Deane and one captain were all the persons of note killed; of private men there were but few, and not a ship was missing; so that a more signal victory could scarcely have been obtained, or, indeed, desired. After this victory the Dutch sent ambassadors to England to negotiate a peace almost on any terms. ”

“ More than a thousand ships were built every year in Holland where the Pilgrims were sojourning, and everybody lived in a seafaring atmosphere. Though a distinct people, the Pilgrims necessarily absorbed, as one may say, something of the Dutch aptitude for trade and sea life. Thus, when ready to migrate to America, they were able to secure the capital they needed for the venture from merchants who were acquainted with the success that had attended the fishing voyages to the coast. ”

“ In this vessel, together with Admiral Opdam, perished five hundred men, only five of the whole crew escaping; many of those lost being volunteers, of the best families of Holland, and not a few Frenchmen, who had taken this opportunity of being present in a sea-fight.
A little after this unlucky blow, the Dutch received a greater. Four fine ships, the largest of sixty, the least of forty guns, ran foul of each other, and were burnt by one fire-ship, and soon after, three larger vessels, by the same accident, shared the same fate. ”

“ If the Portuguese power was in the descendant: if her precious secrets of this East51 Indian trade had been ruthlessly revealed: if her ships and her rich cargoes had been repeatedly taken with the same determination that the Armada had been defeated; yet she was still active in India, and the only European nation there established. However, not merely England, but Holland, too, had been growing strong in maritime ability. The Dutch people had always been by nature seamen for centuries, and were able to rival any English ability in the maritime arts. ”

“ Now, it happened that at that time a number of merchants in Amsterdam were working for the same purpose. They, too, wanted to sail to the Moluccas by way of the Strait of Magellan. For the sake of greater safety the two companies decided to travel together. In June of the year 1597 their fleet, composed of four ships, was ready for the voyage. Van Noort was to command the biggest vessel, the Mauritius, while the commander of the Amsterdam company was to be vice-admiral of the fleet on board the Henrick Frederick. ”

“ Referring to existing treaties, the Committee remarked that, though the Government of the Netherlands placed the ships of England, ostensibly, on the same footing as Dutch vessels, English vessels, however, in consequence of the regulations of the Dutch East India Company, were practically prevented from trading with the valuable settlements of the Dutch in the Eastern seas. ”