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Thursday, July 27, 2006

More about Isaac Sweers' ship than you wanted to know

I can't leave the topic of Isaac Sweers' ship alone. The issue is that the only Amsterdam ship named Engel Gabriel known to have been hired at a time when he could commanded it was the 28-gun ship on 19 June 1652. Isaac Sweers seems to have taken command in July, if I understand correctly. The problem is that a document, published in The First Dutch War, Vol.II gives the ship as having a crew of 130 men. This is the same as the entry in the list published on pages 308 to 310 in The First Dutch War, Vol.IV, where the Engel Gabriel was said to have carried 36 guns and had a crew of 130 men. Not only that, but I realized that in De Jonge's list of ships in service in March 1653, that the loss of the Engel Gabriel is mentioned in the form of the 36-gun ship sunk in the Three Days Battle. I think it unlikely that the 28-gun ship was upgunned to 36 guns, although it is not totally impossible. More like, there was another ship hired, named Engel Gabriel, which is either not recorded in information that has been seen, or has not been discovered, yet. There is only one example of a ship that has been radically upgunned to this extent, and that was Michiel De Ruyter's flagship, Jan Thyssen's ship, the Witte Lam. The Witte Lam was a Vlissingen Directors' ship that started the war with 32 guns and was eventually upgunned to 40 guns. The Witte Lam must have been a substantial ship, as the Witte Lam repeatedly took heavy damage, survived, and was repaired.

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