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Tuesday, March 07, 2006

The Amsterdam ship Achilles remains a mystery

The old Amsterdam ship Achilles was quite large (131ft x 29ft x 13ft) and had been built prior to 1648. We suspect that the Achilles had been built prior to 1639, even. This Achilles is not to be confused with the smaller ship built in 1644 and commanded by Dirk Schey during the First Anglo-Dutch War. The larger ship started with an armament of 32 guns, but Vreugdenhil wrote that she eventually carried 40 guns. This ship must be the ninth 40-gun ship in service in March 1653. I am working on filling in the missing details of a list of ships in service in March 1653 in an appendix to Vol.I of De Jonge's Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Zeewezen. The only problem is that her service during the First Anglo-Dutch War is a mystery. We know that she survived the war until at least July 1654.

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