The hired ship Postpaert

You will see the hired ship Postpaert mentioned in The First Dutch War book. The Postpaert was hired by the Admiralty of Friesland in 1652 and served through at least late 1653. The Postpaert was armed with 30 guns: 10-12pdr, 8-8pdr, 8-6pdr, and 4-4pdr guns. The Postpaert had dimensions of 118ft x 28ft x 13ft x 7ft. For most of the First Anglo-Dutch War, Isaac Codde was the Postpaert's captain.

Witte de With and the Battle of the Kentish Knock

I continue to be interested in Witte de With and the Battle of the Kentish Knock. I have letters and journals for Witte de With, but I do not have the good journals from 1652 that have been partially included in The First Dutch War, Vol. II. I am particularly interested in the report of the status of ships that was prepared on 10 October 1652 (as I understand it). I have assumed that it is comparable to the report prepared on 23 June 1653, following the Battle of the Gabbard. That latter report is very useful, even though the information is incomplete. For example, there are dimensions and a gun list for Cornelis Pietersz Taenman's ship Prins Maurits that was later sunk off the mouth of the Meuse at the end of the Battle of Scheveningen. Nico Brinck had told me that he had helped raise guns from this ship, although they had a different guess as to the name of the ship.

Pieter de Bitter and the Mercurius

On page 2 of J.C.M. Warnsinck's book De Retourvloot van Pieter de Bitter 1664-1665, he states that Pieter de Bitter's ship, the Mercurius, sunk at the Battle of Scheveningen, had 40 guns and a crew of 200 men. Sadly, both figures are wrong. The Mercurius was a fairly small ship, of 122-1/2ft x 30ft x 12ft x 6-1/4 or 6-1/2ft. This was a vessel of about 220 lasts. The Mercurius carried 36 guns: 6-18pdr, 4-12pdr, 10-8pdr, 6-6pdr, 6-4pdr, 2-3pdr, and 2-2pdr guns. The crew varied in size, but often was somewhere between 100 and 120 men. At Scheveningen, the crew may have been 110 men. This is based on documents from April 1653 to August 1653 from several archives.