Battle of Stromboli, 1676: de Ruyter against Duquesne off Sicily

Stromboli was the first of the three battles off Sicily in 1676 between the most famous admiral of the Dutch Republic and the best of his French rivals. It settled nothing on the day, but it began the campaign in which Michiel de Ruyter would die.²

A Dutch fleet in Spanish waters

By 1674 the Dutch had made peace with England, but their war with Louis XIV went on. France was also backing rebels on Sicily who wanted to free the island from Spanish rule, and supplying its forces at Messina; the weak Spanish navy could do little against the French. The Spanish queen regent, Mariana of Austria, asked the Dutch for a fleet under de Ruyter, citing their treaty of 1673.³

In the summer of 1675 eighteen warships and a few smaller vessels were fitted out. De Ruyter doubted the venture: the fleet was too small, Spanish help would be thin, and the French might prove far stronger than the gentlemen in The Hague expected. When one of the States' deputies asked whether he had grown afraid in his old age, the Stichting De Ruyter records his reply that he was not afraid, but that it grieved him that the States held their flag so cheaply; if ordered to fly it on a single ship, he would put to sea.⁴

He sailed in August 1675 in the Eendracht of 76 guns, with Vice Admiral Jan Jansz de Haen and Rear Admiral Nicolaas Verschoor under him. He found the Spanish fleet still in harbor at Palermo, awaiting repairs and supplies, and in early January learned that a French fleet was heading for Messina.⁵

Duquesne

The French commander, Vice Admiral Abraham Duquesne, then in his sixties, had served under Richelieu, fought the Danes in Swedish service and taken part in the Battle of Solebay in 1672. He had watched de Ruyter at close quarters during the Four Days' Battle and admired him enormously. The Stichting De Ruyter quotes his report that the Dutch fleet under de Ruyter could sail into a gale or a moonless night and come out of it the next day in a perfect line.⁶

His task was to protect the French supply line to Messina. His fleet included some twenty heavy ships of the line, each more heavily armed than its Dutch opposite, and he had trained his crews well.⁷

The battle

The fleets sighted each other on 7 January 1676, and the real fighting came the next day. The French held the weather gauge, the advantage of the wind, which let them choose when and how to attack. They used it with gunfire and with several attacks by fire ships, but with all their numbers they could not break the Dutch.⁸

The losses were modest for a fleet action. The Stichting De Ruyter puts Dutch casualties at 240 killed and wounded; Rear Admiral Verschoor was among the dead, and the badly holed Essen sank the day after the battle. The French lost no ship, and their casualties were estimated at anywhere from 400 to 1,500 men. The Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency's register of wrecks records two Dutch losses, the Essen and the Kleine Eendracht.⁹

Where, and who won?

Even the place is given differently. The battle takes its name from Stromboli, one of the volcanic Aeolian Islands, but the Dutch heritage agency's register of wrecks places the first battle off Sicily near Palermo. Its entry for the wreck of the Essen links the ship to the Battle of Stromboli of 8 January 1676.¹⁰

The verdict divides along national lines. French historians count Stromboli, and the later battle off Mount Etna, as French victories, because de Ruyter failed to destroy or drive off the French fleet. Dutch and Spanish historians count them as a successful draw, because France never managed to occupy Sicily. The Stichting De Ruyter calls Stromboli plainly undecided.¹¹

Etna and the death of de Ruyter

The day after the battle nine Spanish ships finally joined the Dutch in the bay of Palermo, and command passed for a time to Spanish admirals junior to de Ruyter. On 22 April 1676 the two fleets met again, in sight of Etna. Early in that battle de Ruyter was struck by a cannonball; he died of his wounds on 29 April. His second, de Haen, was killed in a third battle off Palermo on 2 June, but the French never carried out their plan to take Sicily. Two guns raised from the site of the Etna battle were given to the Netherlands by Italy in 1907 and stand beside de Ruyter's statue in Vlissingen.¹²