So, just how large was the Vogelstruis?

The Dutch East Indiaman Vogelstruis was captured by the English at the Battle of Portland on 28 February 1653. I have not seen Dutch dimensions in Amsterdam feet but we do have the dimensions measured by the English in their style. The English length is that of the keel. The beam is the beam measured outside the hull planking. The depth is the height between the keel and the underside of the main deck, measured on the centerline, approximately at the middle of the ship. Here are my "back of the envelope calculations":

          English      Calc. Dutch   My est. of the Dutch
Length    116ft        151ft         155ft
Beam       36ft-3in     40ft          38ft
Hold       17ft         19ft          18ft

My usual system does not work well for this ship. My factor for length is 1.33. The factor for the depth of hold and beam is 1.13. It totally breaks down in this case.

My approximate "lasts" formula

I have a spreadsheet that I use for generating proportions for drawing Dutch ships from the period of 1628 to 1678. One of the figures that I calculate is just for information: the size of the ship in lasts. There is a VOC-related page that gives the formula: length x beam x depth / 200. My Excel formula is somewhat different: =ROUND(BN6*BN8*BN9/210,-1). I am using 218 for the divisor and round the result. For the approximate dimensions, in Amsterdam feet, for the Dutch flagship Brederode, the size is calculated to be 350 lasten (lasts).

The Dutch navy and ships in the First Anglo-Dutch War

I find the fact that there is so much information available about the Dutch ships in the First Anglo-Dutch War, with dimensions and lists of guns, to be quite amazing. I would venture a guess that the amount of ship data does not exist for the second and third wars. The third war is a special case, with the combination of the French invasion and the coup d'etat that put Willem III into power. Both greatly disrupted the sort of record keeping that had happened previously. I am less sure about the second war, but there seems to be less ship data available than in the first war. I look forward to getting what exists, eventually, but I am currently focused on the first war, because there is so much data available. There is also a considerable amount of information about the composition of the main fleet. Sadly, almost all of what I have seen does not show the organization into squadrons. I hope that eventually, I might see the fleet organizations for all of the battles in the first war. They do exist for the second war and have been published by Frank Fox. Less complete information has been published about the Dutch fleet in the third war. All this research takes time and is costly when you have to pay to have it done, rather than be able to do it yourself.

An answer to a question that no one but me wants to ask

The question is: "so, how many round shot and how much gunpowder did the Amsterdam Directors' ship Moor have on board after the Battle of the Gabbard?" The Moor carried 6-18pdr, 14-10pdr, 12-6pdr, and 2-3pdr guns. The answer is that the ship had 150 18pdr shot, 350 10pdr shot, 240 6pdr shot, and 4 3pdr shot. The ship also had on board 4500 lbs of gunpowder. There may be numbers of expanding bar shot, but I can't be sure that is correct, because I can't find the word in a dictionary. It looks like "kemepels". By the way, the captain signed his name as "Adrijaen Cornelissen". I otherwise know him as Adriaen Cornelisz van Ackersloot.

The ships that sailed to Danzig in 1656

I have the listing published in the Hollandsche Mercurius for 1656 and I have a page from Witte de With's journal from July 1656 (Riksarkivet E8812). I had also seen this list published in Dr. Ballhausen's book. I was comforted to see that the lists matched, despite the fact that the ships commanded by captains often did not match the ships that they commanded when they were not part of this operation in the Baltic.

I looked at my copy of the recent book by Doeke Roos about the Evertsen family: Twee eeuwen varen en vechten 1550-1750. Het admiralengeslacht Evertsen. I had hoped that he might have had information about Johan Evertsen and Cornelis Evertsen de Jonge in the Battle of Scheveningen, but he did not. I also think that he may have several mistakes in the book, as well. The book indicates that Cornelis Evertsen de Jonge was captain of the hired ship Vlissingen in May 1652, but all indications are that he was captain of the Vlissingen Directors' ship Haes (30 guns) from May to July 1652. He also calls Cornelis Evertsen de Oude's ship, that was lost at the Battle of Scheveningen, the Wapen van Zeeland. All the original documentary evidence that I have indicates that the ship was commonly called the Zeeuwsche Leeuw (28 guns). In Vol.V of Schetsen uit de Geschiedenis van ons Zeewezen, Dr. Elias calls the ship the Zeeusche Leeuw, which is the name that I would expect to see.

Another good Google Book Search full view book

This is very hard to find in Google Book Search. To my mind, it is too hard. With a considerable effort, I was able to confirm that the booklet by Julian S. Corbett can be downloaded as a PDF file. This is the small work about the drawings in the possession of the Earl of Dartmouth: NOTE ON THE DRAWINGS IN THE POSSESSION OF THE EARL OF DARTMOUTH ILLUSTRATING Battle of Solebay MAY 28, 1672 AND Battle of the Texel AUGUST 11, 1673 BY JULIAN S. CORBETT. This was publshed by the Navy Records Society in 1908.

The hired ship Hoop

I have a page that I saw today that dates from early August 1653. The page lists a few ships and gives their gun lists. One is for the Amsterdam hired ship Hoop, commanded by Captain Dirck Pater. I have not seen the gun list for this ship before, so it was a good find. The Hoop had four 10pdr guns as the largest guns. The rest were a few 8pdr, many 6pdr, and a number of 3pdr guns, with a pair of 2pdr guns bringing the total to 28 guns. This does seem to be the same ship that was commanded by Joris Collerij in the summer of 1652, based on the gun list.

Ron van Maanen's translation of Cornelis Adriaensz Cruijck's statement

Ron van Maanen kindly provided me his translation of the statement made by the captain of the captured ship Vogelstruis that he made in 1655. This clearly shows that he was not killed in the the Battle of Portland, as was reported by some sources. I have attempted to do a bit of editing on Ron's text. Ron has also provided a correction to my editing:

Statement for notary Dirck van der Mast at Schiedam dated 13 november 1655 by captain Cornelis Aedriaensz Cruijck former captain of the Vogelstruis of the E.I.C. in naval service. Stated for his lieutenant Frerijck Frerijck, born in Amsterdam, what happened when Frerijck was on board of the ship when Cruijck commanded it. Frerijck served as a brave, pious or true, wise sailor and a good soldier in the battle against the British. He especially showed that he was a good officer and soldier in the last battle when the ship fought under the flag of the dead admiral Maerten Harpertsz Tromp on 28 February 1653. Cruijck stated that he had been fighting until his ship was shot powerless, and until a lot of his crew were killed, and they had to surrender. The rumors that Frerijck had torn a white table-cloth in two pieces and during the fight had put out it at the stern where not true. On the contrary Cruijck stated that his lieutenant fought as a true, vigilant man.