A BLAKE AND THE DUTCHMEN FEBRUARY 1652-53 "The spirit of your fathers Shall start from every wave For the deck it was their field of fame, Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell While the stormy winds do blow; And the stormy winds do blow." -CAMPBELL. SPECTATOR standing on the wind-blown summit of Beachy Head on the afternoon of May 19, 1651-52, would have looked down on a great historic scene. In the famous strait beneath, some sixty great ships were engaged in the fiery wrestle of battle, and the sullen, deep-voiced roar of their guns rolled from the white English cliffs across the strait to the dunes of Calais, faintly visible through the grey haze. But the fleets engaged were in point of numbers strangely illmatched. Running westward past the Downs before a fresh breeze came a great Dutch fleet of fifty ships under the flag of Van Tromp, the most famous of Dutch admirals. Beating up to eastward to meet them was an English fleet of fifteen ships under Blake, who was in no sense a seaman, but who comes next to Nelson A himself in the greatness of his sea exploits. It is easy to picture the scene-the antique-looking ships, shortbodied, high-sterned, snub-nosed, the bowsprit thrust up at a sharp angle, and carrying a tiny mast with a square sail at its extremity. A modern seaman would gaze amazed at the spectacle of a seventeenth-century fleet, luffing clumsily into line, or trying to claw to windward. And yet the fighting quality of these clumsy fleets was of a very high order. These Dutchmen, heavyfooted, solid, grim, were in the seventeenth century, to use the phrase of a French writer, "the Phoenicians of the modern world, the waggoners of all seas." They were the commercial heirs of Venice. The fire of their long struggle for freedom had given to the national character the edge and temper of steel. They had swept the Spanish flag from the seas. The carrying trade of the world was in their hands. They fished in all waters, traded in all ports, gathered the wealth of the world under all skies, and, as far as marine qualities were concerned, might almost have been web-footed. Holland to-day is a land without ambition, comfortable, fat, heavy-bottomed. In the middle of the seventeenth century Holland proudly claimed to be the greatest naval power in the world, and by daring seamanship, great fleets, famous admirals, and a world-encompassing trade, it went far to justify that boast. Great Britain had just finished her civil war, and the imperial genius of Cromwell was beginning to make itself felt in foreign politics. The stern and disciplined valour of his Ironsides, that triumphed at Naseby and Worcester, was being translated into the terms of sea manship. The Commonwealth, served by Cromwell's sword, and Milton's pen, and Blake's seamanship, was not likely to fail in vigour by sea or land. But there is always a flavour of sea-salt in English blood, an instinctive claim to sea supremacy in the English imagination. England in 1652, released from civil strife, was feeling afresh that historic impulse, and was challenging the Dutch naval supremacy. The Commonwealth claimed to inherit that ancient patrimony of English kings—the sovereignty of the narrow seas, and the right in these waters to compel all foreign ships to strike the flag or lower the topsail in the presence of a British ship. Behind that question of sea etiquette lay the whole claim to naval supremacy and the trade of the world. That fight off Dungeness on that May afternoon nearly 250 years ago was really the beginning of the struggle betwixt the two maritime republics for the mistress-ship of the seas. To quote Hannay, "the greatest naval power of the day, and the greatest naval power of the future," were measuring their forces in the tossing lists of the narrow seas. In this his first great naval fight Blake showed an individual daring like that of Collingwood when he bore down, far ahead of his column, on Villeneuve's farstretching line at Trafalgar. In his ship-the James— that is, he outsailed his squadron, and met alone Van Tromp's compact line, with its swift-following jets of flame and blasts of thunder as each ship in turn bore up to rake the British admiral. But Nelson himself never showed swifter decision or cooler daring as a leader than did Blake when he unhesitatingly led his fifteen ships to meet Van Tromp's fifty. It is true that a British squadron of nine ships under Bourne, a gallant sailor, was lying in the Downs; and Blake, no doubt, calculated that the mere thunder of the engagement would quickly call up Bourne's ships to fall on Van Tromp's rear. This is exactly what happened; but this does not make any less splendid the courage with which Blake, with fifteen ships, faced the Dutch fleet of more than twice his own numbers, and led by an admiral of Van Tromp's fame and genius. For four hours the thunder of the battle rolled over the floor of the sea. Dutchman and Englishman fought and died with stubborn courage under the drifting smoke clouds; and the two fleets, a jungle of swaying masts and shot-torn sails, with all the tumult of their battle, drifted slowly westwards. Even in that early day, however, the British gunnery had those qualities of speed and fierceness which, somehow, seem to belong to it by right of nature; and, as night fell, the stubborn Dutch gave up their attempt to force the strait, and, leaving two of their ships as prizes, stood over to the Flemish coast; while the British, their flagship dismasted and with shot-battered sides, slowly bore up to Dover. It is characteristic, however, of the tireless and silent energy of Blake that, as war had now broken out, he instantly commenced to sweep Dutch traders off the seas. From every quarter of the compass Dutch ships, richly laden, were creeping homeward, unconscious that war had broken out; and Blake's frigates, instantly taking possession of all the trade routes, sent them as prizes up the Thames in scores. The British, in a word, showed themselves both nimbler-witted and nimblerfooted than the Dutch. In his famous lyric Campbell links Blake with |