THE DUTCH WAR 



Leaving his convoy inshore Tromp took his whole fleet round the Good- 

 wins, causing Blake to weigh hastily and make off to the southward to 

 avoid being caught in a trap. Unfortunately the batteries that had 

 saved Ayscue had been dismantled and it is to this fact more than to 

 any other that the ensuing disaster was due. The two fleets sailed along 

 side by side until Dungeness forced Blake to stand out to sea and they 

 came in contact. There could only be one result of an action between 

 such ill-matched forces and to make matters worse a number of English 

 captains avoided the fight, it being suggested that they were in the pay 

 of the Royalists. At the end of the action we had lost the Garland and 

 Bonaventure, taken after gallant defences, and three ships sunk, while 

 one Dutchman had been accidentally blown up. Blake was very lucky 

 to be able to get back to the Downs and felt the defeat bitterly, but the 

 Commonwealth authorities were big enough to realise where the blame 

 lay and refused to accept his resignation. 



The Broom and the Whip. 



There is a popular legend to the effect that after this action Tromp 

 hoisted a broom at his masthead in order to indicate that he had swept 

 the sea of the British and that after the Three Days' Fight in the follow- 

 ing year Blake hoisted a whip — later to become the pendant universally 

 worn by men-of-war — to show that he had whipped the Dutch off the 

 seas. There is little doubt that Tromp did fly a broom at the masthead 

 when he returned to port, but the popular explanation is wrong. He 

 had captured a number of prizes during his cruise and was naturally 

 anxious to sell them. The age-old sign of a ship for sale is a broom at 

 the masthead and he hoisted it. As for the pendant being Blake's 

 whip, it was worn by men-of-war many years before his time. 

 The Three Days' Fight. 



Blake had his revenge in 1653 when he was at sea with a large 

 fleet supported by Monck, Deane and Penn. Tromp was with De 

 Ruyter and Evertsen and was anxious to get his usual annual convoy 

 into safety, but he was always a fighter and as the forces were roughly 

 equal he decided to engage. The British force was very scattered so 

 that Blake's and Deane's divisions took the brunt of the fighting to 

 begin with against the whole Dutch fleet. The action started off Port- 

 land on February 18th, 1653, and a tremendous battle lasted all day. 

 Blake was badly wounded in the thigh and some of his ships were so 

 shattered that they had to be detached. No fewer than three British 

 ships were captured by the Dutch and afterwards retaken, while the 

 Sampson was sunk. The exact Dutch losses are not known but it is 

 certain that one ship was captured, three sunk and one blown up, while 

 it is believed that there were other casualties. During the night Tromp 

 managed to slip past the British and to run up Channel with his convoy, 

 being overtaken off the Isle of Wight in the afternoon. At the end of 

 the day two men-of-war and ten or twelve merchantmen had been taken 

 from the enemy and the convoy was getting scattered. The pursuit 

 lasted all through the night and the action recommenced at nine in the 



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