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Friday, September 07, 2007

The little frigate Gelderland

From Vreugdenhil's list, you would think that Aert van Nes's ship, the frigate Gelderland, was a 116ft ship. This Gelderland must be the ship at number 23 in the list. That entry gives the dimensions as 106ft x 25ft x 9-1/2ft. The list treats those as if they were in Amsterdam feet, but they are Maas feet. This is the information from the Staet van Oorlog te Water for the year 1654, but that seems to be wrong. As far back as the list of 26 February 1652, the Gelderland is stated to have dimensions of 100ft x 23ft x 8ft and to carry 20 guns. This is the same general sort of ship as the Utrecht and Overissel, entries 60 and 49 in Vreugdenhil's list. From what I have seen from the Nationaal Archief, dating from 1652 and 1653, the 100ft size seems to be correct, as that is always given as the length of Aert van Nes's ship. That corresponds to dimensions in Amsterdam feet of 109ft-1in x 25ft-1in x 8ft-8in. The Gelderland carried 24 guns, consisting of 4-bronze chambered 12pdr, 2-bronze 8pdr, 8-iron 8pdr, 6-iron 6-pdr, and 4-iron 4pdr guns in 1652 and 1653. The Gelderland was actively employed through the First Anglo-Dutch War, and still showed up in a list dated April 1655. The Gelderland had been one of the forty convoyers funded at the peace with Spain in 1648.

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