Quick Facts
Date:
February 28, 1653 - March 2, 1653
Participants:
Dutch Republic
England
Context:
Anglo-Dutch War

In the First Anglo-Dutch War, Maarten Tromp was reinstalled as commander of the Dutch fleet after the Battle of Kentish Knock. Tromp’s heroic demonstration of fighting skill at the three-day Battle of Portland—which was fought from February 28 to March 2, 1653—could not disguise the inferiority of his ships or the rise of English naval power.

Tromp’s essential task was to maintain the foreign trade on which the wealth of the Dutch United Provinces depended. He used his fleet to escort merchant convoys between Dutch ports and the Atlantic, through waters dangerously close to England.

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A History of War

At the end of February 1653 he was shepherding 150 merchant vessels eastward along the Channel when he sighted Robert Blake’s fleet off Portland. Blake’s ships were scattered and downwind of the Dutch. Tromp attacked while he held a brief advantage. Blake found himself with 12 ships surrounded by 30 Dutch vessels. Tromp’s flagship Brederode closed with Blake’s Triumph and swept her decks with broadsides at point-blank range. Commodore Michiel de Ruyter, leading one of Tromp’s squadrons, captured another English warship by boarding after a fierce fight. But as more English ships sailed in to join the melee, the Dutch were driven onto the defensive.

For the next two days a running battle was fought along the Channel as Tromp maneuvered to keep his warships between the English and the merchant convoy. By the end of the third day’s fighting the Dutch were almost out of powder and shot, but valiantly held position. Wounded during the battle, Blake withdrew, leaving the fleet in the hands of a subordinate who pulled the British ships back to the coast.

On the morning of March 3, when they sailed out to resume the battle, the English found themselves in an empty sea; the surviving Dutch vessels had slipped away for home. Tromp received a rousing reception on arrival in port, but the Dutch had suffered heavy losses, including a third of the merchant convoy.

Losses: Dutch, 12 ships of 70, 50 merchant ships captured; English, 2 warships of 80.

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R.G. Grant
Quick Facts
Also called:
Dutch Wars
Dutch:
Engelse Oorlogen
Date:
March 1665 - July 1667
1672 - 1674
July 8, 1652 - April 1654 (Anniversary in 3 days)
December 20, 1780 - May 1784
Participants:
Dutch Republic
France
England
Context:
Dutch War

Anglo-Dutch Wars, four 17th- and 18th-century naval conflicts between England and the Dutch Republic. The first three wars, stemming from commercial rivalry, established England’s naval might, and the last, arising from Dutch interference in the American Revolution, spelled the end of the republic’s position as a world power.

The First Anglo-Dutch War (1652–54) began during a tense period following England’s institution of the 1651 Navigation Act, which was aimed at barring the Dutch from involvement in English sea trade. An incident in May 1652 resulting in the defeat of a Dutch force under Adm. Maarten Tromp led England to declare war on July 8 (June 28, old style). The Dutch under Tromp won a clear victory off Dungeness in December, but most of the major engagements of the following year were won by the larger and better armed men-of-war of England. In the summer of 1653 off Texel (Terheide), in the last battle of the war, the Dutch were defeated and Tromp killed, with both sides suffering heavy losses. The war was ended by the Treaty of Westminster (April 1654).

The commercial rivalry of the two nations again led to war in 1665 (the Second Anglo-Dutch War of 1665–67), after hostilities had begun the previous year and the English had already captured New Amsterdam (New York). England declared war in March 1665 and won a decisive victory over the Dutch off Lowestoft in June. After the destruction of the Dutch flagship, only hasty action by Vice Adm. Cornelis Tromp, Maarten Tromp’s son, prevented the defeat at Lowestoft from descending into a total rout. The English failed to capitalize on their initial success, however, and most subsequent battles (which occurred in the following year) were won by the Dutch. England’s ally, the principality of Münster, sent troops into Dutch territory in 1665 but was forced out of the war in the following year by France, which took the Dutch side in January 1666. A plague epidemic in 1665 and the Great Fire of London in 1666 contributed to England’s difficulties, which culminated in the destruction of its docked fleet by the Dutch at Chatham in June 1667. The war was ended the following month by the Treaty of Breda.

The Third Anglo-Dutch War (1672–74) formed a part of the general European war of 1672–78 (see Dutch War).

England and the Dutch Republic had been allied for a century when they again went to war (the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War of 1780–84) over secret Dutch trade and negotiations with the American colonies, then in revolt against England. The English declared war on December 20, 1780, and in the following year quickly took key Dutch possessions in the West and East Indies while imposing a powerful blockade of the Dutch coast. In the only significant engagement of the war, a small Dutch force attacked a British convoy in an indecisive clash off Dogger Bank in August 1781. The republic was never able to assemble a proper fleet for combat, however. When the war ended in May 1784, the Dutch were at the nadir of their power and prestige.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.