Pieter de Bitter and the Mercurius

On page 2 of J.C.M. Warnsinck's book De Retourvloot van Pieter de Bitter 1664-1665, he states that Pieter de Bitter's ship, the Mercurius, sunk at the Battle of Scheveningen, had 40 guns and a crew of 200 men. Sadly, both figures are wrong. The Mercurius was a fairly small ship, of 122-1/2ft x 30ft x 12ft x 6-1/4 or 6-1/2ft. This was a vessel of about 220 lasts. The Mercurius carried 36 guns: 6-18pdr, 4-12pdr, 10-8pdr, 6-6pdr, 6-4pdr, 2-3pdr, and 2-2pdr guns. The crew varied in size, but often was somewhere between 100 and 120 men. At Scheveningen, the crew may have been 110 men. This is based on documents from April 1653 to August 1653 from several archives.

Some ships hired by Amsterdam in 1653 in the Mediterranean Sea

There is a document dating from 1652 that lists ships either hired, or considered for hiring by the Admiralty of Amsterdam in the Mediterranean Sea. There are no guns listed but there are partial dimensions:

Port     Ship            Schipper                    Dimensions
Livorno  Sint Pieter     Pieter van Breen            130ft x 30ft x ? x 6-1/4ft
Venice   Sint Philippo   Foppe Gerritsen             136ft x 30ft x ? x 6-1/2ft
Naples   Suzanne         Daniel Jansz de Vries       133ft x 29ft x ? x 6-1/4ft
Venice   Morgensterre    Hendrick Govertssen         125ft x 28ft x ? x 6-1/2ft
Venice   Venetia         Cornelis Schellinger        130ft x 28ft x ? x 6-1/2ft
Venice   Swarten Arent   (Pieter Jansz Bonttebotter) 130ft x 28ft x (13ft) x 6-1/2ft
Venice   Sint Marc       ?                           130ft x 30ft x ? x 6-1/2ft
Livorno  Witte Oliphant  Seijbrant Jansz Mol         134ft x 29ft x ? x 6-1/2ft
Zemia ?  Salomons Ordeel Meijndert Teunisz OostWout  141ft x 31ft x ? x 7ft
Venice   Jupiter         Cornelis Jansz              130ft x 30ft x ? x 7ft
Naples   Sint Andries    Anthonij Claesz van Woglom  136ft x 29-1/2ft x ? x 6-1/4ft
Venice   Arent           Claes Cornelisz Roos        132ft x 29ft x ? X 6-1/2ft
Naples   Pellicaen       Cornelis Danielsz           136ft x 29-1/4ft x ? x 6-1/4ft

The Sint Matheeus

For a while in the 2007 timeframe, we believed that there must be two ships named Sint Matheeus. The reason for that is that there seemed to be two sets of dimensions for a ship named Sint Matheeus. One is the ship with length and beam quoted in Vreudenhil's list (144ft x 36ft x 15ft x 7ft) and the other was the ship with dimensions listed in lists of Amsterdam Directors' ships (140ft x 34ft x 15ft x 7-1/3ft). I think that we assumed that the 50 gun ship was the larger of the two. We knew that the 140ft ship initially carried 34 guns. By May 1653, that ship carried 42 guns. In fact, there was only one ship and that was the one captured by the English in the Battle of the Gabbard on 12-13 June 1653. This was the ship that Tromp fretted about in January 1653, when the ship was missing after a storm. Tromp feared that the Sint Matheeus had been captured by the English. He was concerned, because he expected that the Sint Matheeus was large enough that the English would arm the ship with 60 guns. In fact, in the Four Days' Battle in June 1666, the Mathias (as the Sint Matheeus was called by the English) was armed with 54 guns.

The Vrijheid in early June 1653

The Amsterdam ship Vrijheid was one of the best Dutch ships serving with the main fleet in early June 1653. Like some other ships, the Vrijheid had been up-gunned after the Battle of Portland (the Driedaagse Zeeslag). The Vrijheid carried 50 guns in the Battle of the Gabbard and for the rest of the First Anglo-Dutch War. They consisted of: 4-24pdr, 22-12pdr, 20-8pdr, 2-6pdr, and 2-3pdr guns. The Vrijheid had carried 46 guns in late 1652: 4-24pdr, 24-12pdr, 16-8pdr, and 2-6pdr guns. This was a very substantial ship for the time: 134ft x 34ft x 13-1/4ft x 7ft and had a crew of 210 men by the fall of 1653. Captain Augustijn Balck had commanded the Vrijheid up until the Battle of Portland, when he was killed. Abraham van der Hulst commanded the Vrijheid for the rest of the war, starting with the Battle of the Gabbard in June 1653.

De Jonge's list for the Dutch navy in March 1653

Sadly, we don't know if De Jonge's notes for the list of March 1653 exist. They are not amount his papers preserved at the Nationaal Archief in The Hague. We do have his notes for 1654 and later, at least some of them. If they existed, the notes would be priceless. I can name most of tbe ships in the list, but I can't account for one 40 gun ship of the Admiralty of Amsterdam. The list is peculiar, in that it seems like some ships lost in the Three Days Battle are shown as losses and other ships which were lost in March are still listed (seemingly). One suggestion is that the last Amsterdam 40 gun ship is the Vogelstruis, captured by the English in the Three Days Battle (the Battle of Portland).

Got into 17th Century naval history because of wargaming

In late 1989, I was looking for a new topic to research to support wargaming. I had spent much of the last 20 years studying the War in North Africa, as well as the broader war in Europe. I focused on mechanized warfare, tanks, and artillery. I had expected that there would be sufficient information about the Spanish Armada campaign and ships to pursue that, but that proved to be not the case. Instead, I stumbled onto Archibald's book: THE WOODEN FIGHTING SHIP IN THE ROYAL NAVY AD 897 - 1860. What particularly caught my interest was the period from 1642 to 1660. I started looking for more sources and first found David Howarth's book Man of War. A year or two later, I found The First Dutch War and then The Royal Navy: a History from the Earliest Times to the Present (the 1890's). By then, I was hooked. After meeting Frank Fox, I took his advice and looked for a way to access data from the Dutch archives. "The rest is history" so to speak.

Small Dutch 38-gun ships in the First Anglo-Dutch War

The Dutch had a number of small 38-gun ships in the First Anglo-Dutch War. Almost predictably, most were lost. These were the ships that come immediately to mind:

Adm    Ship                 Captain
Z      Hollandia            Philips Joosten & Adriaan Bankert - Lost at Scheveningen
Ve-Dir Wapen van der Veere  Jan Olivierszoon                  - Survived the war
F      Stad Groningen en Ommelanden Joost Bulter              - Lost at the Gabbard
F      Zevenwolden          Frederik Stellingwerff            - Lost at Scheveningen

The armaments of these ships varied from 34 to 38 guns at different dates. Their lengths varied from 120ft to 123ft, so they were quite small. The smaller Dutch 40-gun ships were 125ft and most were 128ft. Of course, the small Rotterdam ship Vrede carried 40 guns at the Battle of Lowestoft, and she was approximately 112ft long in Amsterdam feet (the actual size different from that, since the ship was designed in Maas feet). These lengths are all in Amsterdam feet.