Battle of Dungeness, 1652: Tromp sweeps the Channel

In the autumn of 1652 the English Council of State believed it had won the naval war with the Dutch. It sent its ships away to the Baltic, the coal trade and the Mediterranean. Then a Dutch fleet twice the size of what was left came down the Channel, and on 30 November, off the headland of Dungeness, it handed Robert Blake the only defeat of his career at sea that HistoryNet's profile of him records. HistoryOfWar.org calls it the most significant Dutch victory of the First Anglo-Dutch War.²

A fleet dispersed

The English victory at Kentish Knock in September had been overestimated, the BCW Project notes, and the Council of State, assuming Blake now commanded the Channel, scattered the fleet. One squadron went to the Baltic, another under Vice Admiral Penn to guard the colliers from Newcastle, a third west, and a detachment toward the Mediterranean. Around forty ships were left with Blake in the Downs anchorage off Kent, HistoryOfWar.org says thirty-seven, and money to pay the crews and repair storm damage was short.³

The Dutch were not beaten. Tromp was restored to joint command of the fleet with Jan Evertsen, with Michiel de Ruyter as vice admiral. In late November he put to sea to escort a convoy of merchantmen down the Channel: over 250 ships by the BCW Project's count, 300 by HistoryOfWar.org's. The BCW Project gives him 85 warships, HistoryOfWar.org 73 and a few fireships.⁴

Out of the Downs

Bad weather held the Dutch fleet back for several days. Leaving the convoy off Flanders, Tromp's warships came up to the Downs on 29 November. After a council of war aboard his flagship, the Triumph, Blake sailed out to meet them, although they outnumbered him two to one. Why he did so is unclear. He may have misjudged the size of the Dutch fleet in poor visibility, or he may have remembered the Battle of the Downs in 1639, when Tromp had trapped and destroyed a Spanish fleet in that same anchorage.⁵

By the time Blake saw what he faced, the wind had swung northwest, so he could neither return to the Downs nor fight that day. At nightfall he anchored off Dover, with Tromp two miles downwind.⁶

The fight off Dungeness

On the morning of 30 November both fleets sailed southwest along the Kent coast, the English closer inshore and separated from the Dutch by shoals. As the coastline curved toward the point of Dungeness, Blake's leading ships were pushed toward the Dutch, too close to the shore to maneuver freely, and shortly after noon a partial battle began between the leading ships of the two fleets.⁷

Tromp's flagship, the Brederode, bore down on the Triumph but was blocked by Captain Robert Batten in the Garland. Captain Hoxton brought the armed merchantman Anthony Bonaventure up on the Brederode's other side, only to be attacked in turn by Evertsen in the Hollandia; Hoxton and many of his crew were killed and the Bonaventure was taken. Tromp and Evertsen then captured the Garland, whose captain and sixty of her 150 men had been killed. Blake turned the Triumph back to help them and came under heavy fire; her foremast was shot away. The Victory and the Vanguard came to his support, but many English ships seem to have stayed out of the fight.⁸

Darkness ended it, and Blake drew his ships off toward Dover. The only Dutch loss was the Gelderland, which caught fire by accident in the night and blew up. On English losses the sources differ: the BCW Project counts the two captured ships, while HistoryOfWar.org adds three more sunk in the fighting. Three English ships on their way to join Blake were also intercepted, and one of them, the Hercules, was run aground and later seized.⁹

The broom and the reforms

Legend says Tromp tied a broom to his masthead to show he had swept the sea clean of his enemies; the BCW Project thinks the story probably apocryphal. The victory let Dutch convoys sail freely through the Channel, and for weeks Dutch cruisers took English merchant ships. Blake offered his resignation, which was refused, and an inquiry dismissed six of his captains. The defeat prompted reforms: a new Admiralty Commission, better pay, Articles of War to regulate discipline, an end to merchant captains commanding their own ships in battle, and thirty new frigates. Dutch control of the Channel was short-lived: early in 1653 a stronger English fleet caught Tromp bringing the next convoy home and fought him for three days.¹⁰ › Battle of Lowestoft, 1665