I trying my hand, again, at wargame pieces

I decided that I should make another attempt at digitally drawn ships for use as war game pieces. I started with one of my hybrid sheets that was based on hand-drawn ships and then was digitally edited. I will post some of the results if and when I have something suitable.

Cornelis Tiebij's ship in July 1653

I just read a page that said that Cornelis Tiebij's English ship lay at Ter Veere. The date of the list that contains this entry is 23 July 1653. Most people are probably not so deep into this that they would see the interesting point. Another page says that the Bonaventura was lying at Veere. This was the captured English ship Anthony Bonaventure, which was taken at the Battle of Dungeness. A different page says that the ship of Cornelis Tiebij carried 37 guns and had a crew of 130 men. Of course, this page is dated 19 September 1653, more than a month after the Battle of Scheveningen. A list compiled on 11 August 1653, just one day after the battle includes the name of Cornelis Tiebij under the category of the Directors of Zeeland. A list dated 14/16 August 1653 gives his ship as having 37 guns and a crew of 134 men. A list from a few days before the battle omits Cornelis Tiebij's ship name and details, but his name is still under the category of ships of the Directors of Zeeland. One list from Witte de With's journal from the October timeframe calls the ship the "Luijpert". His ship is elsewhere called the "Luijpaert". Was this the same ship as the English ship? It would have been a ship hired by the Directors of Middelburg and was not the English 3rd Rate Leopard.

Dutch ships at the Battle of Portland

I have my working list of Dutch ships at the Battle of Portland (the Three Days Battle), but I already see a potential problem. On page 69, a Captain "Willem Aryens" is mentioned in the battle, and I think that this would be a reference to Willem Ariensz Warmont, who was captain of the Rotterdam ship Gorcum (30 guns). I do not have that ship in my list.

The hired ship Hollandsche Tuin

Any doubt that the hired 24-gun ship that was commanded by Joris Block in 1653 was the same ship as that which had served in 1652 were removed with I looked at the gun list. The list from September 1652 and the list from 23 June 1653 are indentical. The dimensions are similar, which is good, as the list from 23 June 1653 has dimensions that often vary from what we believe to be accurate.

The Dutch after the Battle of Portland

While the Battle of Portland, or as the Dutch called, the Three Days Battle, was hard fought, it was not as intense as the Four Days' Battle in June 1666. In the Battle of Portland, the hard fighting took place on the first day. Already, after the first day, the Dutch were running short of gun powder and shot. The Dutch acquired a new interest in the status of ships and how much gun powder, in particular, that they carried. They always had been interested in the status of victuals and water carried.

One consequence of the Battle of Portland was that the Dutch largely rearmed their ships. The fleet flagship Brederode had, by the time of the Battle of the Gabbard, a complete lower tier of 24pdr and 36pdr guns. Prior to that, there were still some 18pdr guns on the lower tier. The overall effect was to increase the broadside weight of many ships. After the Battle of the Gabbard, they often included inventories of shot carried for the guns, as they gathered more status information after the battle.

The Dutch did their best to learn from "the last battle", at least what they saw the problems to be. One consequence of the Battle of the Kentish Knock on 8 October 1652 was to start building new and larger ships for the fleet. The first had joined the fleet for the Battle of Scheveningen, but they did not join the fleet in larger numbers until after that battle. At this time, the Dutch had difficulty in providing guns for the new ships.

The Amsterdam ship Overijssel in 1655

By May of 1655, the 112ft Amsterdam ship Overijssel carried a much lighter armament than it had previously. Initially, the Overijssel carried a lower tier of 10pdr guns. By 1655, the armament was now mixed, with six 12pdr and the rest 8pdr guns. The 6pdr guns seem to have been retained and there were two "drakes", which could have been the original 3pdr drakes. The new broadside was about 111 pounds while the original broadside weight was 147 pounds. We could imagine that the 10pdr gun was now non-standard and there could have been a desire to move to the standard shot weights. The ship would probably have carried a lighter armament, although we would have to know the weights of the guns to be sure. Of course, we don't have those figures.

A bothersome fact about 17th Century Dutch ship data

I just received the photographs for pages showing Amsterdam ship specifications, dating from 1655. The bothersome feature is that while they are consistent with what was published by Vreugdenhil in 1938, they differ considerably from lists dating from 1652 and 1653. I knew that this was the case, but the dimensions for many Amsterdam ships are what is different. In one case, the length is shown as five feet shorter (for the Maeght van Enkhuizen).

A Friesland ship in 1655 named Omlandia

I am now receiving photographs of documents from 1655. There is one page that shows a ship of the Admiralty of Friesland that is named Omlandia. This is a ship of approximately the dimensions of the Zevenwolden that was sunk at the Battle of Scheveningen. The Omlandia was also 122ft long. The Omlandia only carried 30 guns, unlike the Zevenwolden, which carried between 34 and 38 guns at different dates. The ship in this document doesn't match other listing that I have seen for a Friesland Omlandia in service in 1655.

La armada invencible by Cesáreo Fernández Duro

I suddenly thought of looking to see if La armada invencible By Cesáreo Fernández Duro might be available through Google Books, and it was. I just downloaded the PDF file. I had despaired of ever finding the book and now I (sort of) have it. This is an important source book, from the Spanish perspective, about the Spanish Armada. The book is reportedly based on a cache of documents discovered in an old Spanish castle, back in the latter 19th Century.

Fort Rammekens in Google Earth

In Google Earth, I can see Fort Rammekens and the sandy beaches nearby where ships could be beached and careened. The picture is copyrighted by the Aerodata International Surveys, so you probably just need to get Google Earth and go the area east of Vlissingen.

"Aitzema" in Google Books

It is amazing, but Google Books has Lieuwe van Aitzema's work Historie of Verhael van Saken van Staet en Oorlogh In / ende omtrent de VEREENIGHDE NEDERLANDEN. I am not sure if they have the entire work or just part, but they may have the entire thing. It is heavy going, but if you have references that point into the work, you can find interesting passages.

More Vlissingen

I would like to show the Google Maps satellite view of Vlissingen, but I probably should let you go and look, yourself, due to "rights" issues. One nice thing is that Wikipedia has a picture of Fort Rammekens, near Vlissingen. There was a sandy area near there where ships could be beached, repaired, and have their bottoms cleaned. That was how the Rammekens was used after the Battle of the Gabbard, when about two-thirds of the Dutch fleet anchored off of Vlissingen. The Wikipedia page is in Dutch.

My concept of a compact Dutch ship of the line

In a picture book of ships that I had, there was a picture of a Dutch warship from the early 1600's. The ship had fewer than 20 guns, but the lower tier might have been 18pdr guns. When I later saw that Michiel De Ruyter's flagship during the summer of 1652 had only 28 guns, I imagined that the Neptunus was armed in a similar fashion. I was wrong, of course. His ship was just very weak. The only ship that I have seen described has having an armament like what I had seen was the Rotterdam ship named Rotterdam, which was said to have a lower tier of 18pdr guns, with a gun total of 30 guns. In June 1653, the Rotterdam had a more conventional armament, but the Staet van Oorlog te Water for the year 1654 had the 18pdr lower tier, as did lists from 1652.

Deployment of Amsterdam ships in June 1652 (Revised)

While reading documents that I received a year ago, I found some answers to how to fill in the outline of how Amsterdam ships were deployed in June 1652, but the letter with the list dates from December 1652. The list only has the names of captains, but I think that I can fill in ship names:

In the Mediterranean Sea

Commandeur Joris van Cats        Jaarsveld              44 guns
kapitein Anthonis van Salingen   Zon                    40 guns
kapitein David Jansz Bont        Maan                   40 guns
kapitein Hendrick Claesz Swart   Vereenigde Provincien  40 guns
kapitein Dirck Quirijnen Verveen Haarlem                40 guns
kapitein Jan Uijttenhout         Zutphen                34 guns
kapitein Cornelis Tromp          Maeght van Enkhuizen   34 guns

Cruising off Cape St. Vincent

Commandeur Gideon de Wildt          Vrede               42 guns
kapitein Cornelis van Velsen        Gelderland          28 guns
kapitein Jan Jansz Boermans         Prins Willem        28 guns
kapitein Govert Reael               Leeuwarden          34 guns
luitenant-commandeur Jan van Campen Windhond            18 guns

I had thought that there was a problem with the Overijssel and Jan van Campen and Abraham van der Hulst, but I saw the notes derived from Isaac Sweers' journal, and that explained these five ships. I revised this as soon as I saw it in my book draft this morning.

Adrian Caruana said: "One casualty of the First Dutch War was the brass drake"

In his book about English naval guns from 1523 to 1715, Adrian Caruana made the statement that "One casualty of the First Dutch War was the brass drake". Since the 1st Rate Sovereign was armed with Brass drakes, he says that the guns were largely "shot out". Iron drakes apparently fared better and continued in use. What the English called "brass" (which Nico Brinck says is bronze) was too soft and the gun walls were too thin for the heavy use given in the first war with the Dutch. The English captured many Dutch guns in the war and there was widespread confusion caused by the lack of specificity of Dutch versus English weight. Adrian Caruana says that in 1586, the Dutch pound weighed 1.14 times the English pound.

My "expanded" Dutch ship list

I am slightly more than half way through reformatting my "expanded" Dutch ship list. The majority of the information is from archival sources, although there is a modest amount from published sources. I have hopes of actually getting the sources from after 1655 so that I will have archival sources for that 1660-1678 period, as well. Frank Fox thinks that there is a need for even something that is little more than a Dutch ship list. The prime published source, right now, Vreugdenhil's list from 1938, needs to be superceded. Perhaps there will be something in Dutch much sooner than I can be ready with a work in English.

A question: Joris van Cats' five ships off the coast of Spain

The plan had been to send Maarten Tromp to command a fleet of 15 Dutch warships in the Mediterranean Sea to protect Dutch commerce. When Tromp became ill, Joris van Cats was sent without Tromp. Before entering the Mediterranean Sea, he cruised off the coast of Spain. In his article about the First Anglo-Dutch War in the Mediterranean Sea, R. C. Anderson said that Joris van Cats, with five ships under his command, cruised near Cadiz before entering the Mediterranean Sea. This sounded a lot like what one list says, except the list says that the five ships cruised off Cape St. Vincent, which is on the coast of Portugal, a long ways from Cadiz. Anderson does not say what ships were under Joris van Cats' command. My question is: which five ships were they? I assume that they were all from the Admiralty of Amsterdam.

R. C. Anderson, "English Fleet-Lists in the First Dutch War," The Mariner's Mirror, Vol.XXIV No.4, October 1938.

The Wikipedia "Battle of the Downs", in English

The English version of the Wikipedia entry for the Battle of the Downs (1639) is well done and very interesting. While it is necessarily incomplete, there is a great deal of information there for study. Can anyone say how accurate it is? I don't have enough information to know, but I can recognize some correct details.

Amsterdam ships convoying the fishing busses in July 1652

I have a document showing the employment of Amsterdam ships in home waters on 29 July 1652. The list shows that the following ships were convoying the fishing busses in July 1652 prior to the English attack on 22 July:

the ship Engel          kapitein Maerten Schaeff     28 guns and a crew of 80 men
the ship Marcus Curtius kapitein Hendrick Kroeger    24 guns and a crew of 70 men
the ship Patientia      kapitein Adriaen van Loenen  24 guns and a crew of 70 men
the ship Catharina      kapitein Dirck Bogaert       24 guns and a crew of 70 men

Rotterdam ships in "The Plan" of 9 June 1652

I have photographs of a document from 9 June 1652 that gives the plan for how ships were deployed and funded. One part of the list says that there were two ships of the 36 ships from Rotterdam "in the Mediterranean Sea". I believe that the second ship was the Brederode, which was planned to be sent but did not actually go. The ship that actually was in the Mediterranean Sea was the Gelderland (40 guns), commanded by Michiel Fransz van den Bergh.