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Wednesday, September 15, 2004

So, how did the Dutch stay competitive in the Anglo-Dutch Wars?

My long-standing theory is that if you summed the displacements of ships and the broadside weights, that the English were superior in those criteria through the Anglo-Dutch Wars. In two large-scale battles where the Dutch won, Dungeness and the Four Days Battle, the Dutch outnumbered the English. At the Kentish Knock and Portland, during the First Anglo-Dutch War, the English, commanded by Robert Blake, made mistakes. Witte de With managed to survive the Kentish Knock with minimal losses, due to Blake's tactical ignorance, while Tromp still lost at Portland, but escaped where they could well have been annihilated, again due to Blake's strange behavior. The other part of my theory is that the Dutch utilized tactics where they concentrated ships against strong enemy ships and gave each other mutual support. I really need complete OOB's and calculations for all ships in the three Anglo-Dutch wars to be able to do this analysis, but I am gradually making progress on this, especially for the Dutch.

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