The Battle of the Texel
KNOWN TO THE DUTCH as the Battle of Kijkduin, the engagement off the North Holland coast on 11 August 1673 proved to be the last battle of the Anglo-Dutch wars. Arguably, it also marked a beginning: the bitter recriminations over the conduct of the combined Anglo-French fleet undoubtedly contributed to an upsurge in popular francophobia, and accelerated the transition from perceiving the Dutch as the main national enemy to casting the French in that role. The battle also clearly demonstrated the strengths and weaknesses of line tactics, as they had evolved in the twenty years since their first adoption.1
THE INVASION PROJECT AND THE PRELIMINARIES TO BATTLE
The third Anglo-Dutch war broke out in 1672, and despite their initial success at sea in the battle of Solebay, it seemed as though the Dutch were bound to suffer a crushing defeat at the hands of the French armies that overran most of their lands in what became known as the rampjaar, the year of disasters. Only the flooding of their ‘waterline’ saved them, but the very survival of the Dutch state remained in doubt. During 1672 Charles II and his ministers developed a plan for an invasion of Zeeland as part of a longer-term strategy aimed at obtaining some or all of that province in any peace settlement. An army of 8,000–10,000 men was assembled at Blackheath in the spring and early summer of 1673, and an amphibious flotilla was assembled in the Thames.2 Meanwhile, the combined Anglo-French fleet sought in vain to achieve the triumph over de Ruyter’s numerically inferior force that had eluded it in the previous year. Two battles off the main Dutch anchorage, the Schooneveld, in May and June failed to give the allies anything like the advantage that they craved, primarily because the coastal shoals allowed de Ruyter to fight a brilliant defensive campaign against his numerically superior opponents. The combined fleet retired to the Thames to determine its next move. It was eventually decided that, after an appearance off the Schooneveld to alert the Dutch to his presence, Rupert should cruise off the Texel in the hope that de Ruyter would be drawn out to defend against a possible landing there, and to escort home the valuable incoming fleet of the Dutch East Indies Company, the VOC. The invasion army was landed in East Anglia to await the outcome of the anticipated victory at sea.3 The combined fleet that eventually sailed for the Dutch coast consisted of approximately ninety major warships, the French under the Comte d’Estrées forming the White squadron and Prince Rupert and Sir Edward Spragge commanding the Red and Blue squadrons respectively.
The opening stage of the battle of the Texel; the Anglo-French fleet forms its line of battle, with Sir Edward Spragge’s Blue squadron in the foreground and the Dutch fleet in the distance.
(NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM, GREENWICH)
By the beginning of August de Ruyter was under growing pressure from the Amsterdam merchants and the VOC to safeguard their returning merchant fleets. The Dutch fleet moved north; by 8 August the two forces’ scouts were in sight of each other, but high seas kept the fleets at anchor for two days. On the 10th the combined fleet steered south-east with the advantage of the wind, closing steadily on de Ruyter. At four that afternoon de Ruyter tacked to avoid engaging, put on sail and rapidly shot ahead, with the combined fleet in pursuit.4 Given the hour, Rupert decided not to engage on that day. By the following morning, though, the combined fleet had completely lost the considerable tactical advantage which it had possessed the day before: as dawn broke, the allies found that the Dutch had gained the wind during the night and were bearing down on them. The combined fleet was on a course roughly to the south-west, formed up into its line of battle but with the Dutch closing from the south-east, having got themselves between the combined fleet and the Dutch coast. To confront the three allied squadrons the Dutch had divided their fleet in a similar manner, with the Zeeland ships under Banckert in the van opposite the French, a largely Rotterdam-based squadron under de Ruyter in the centre opposing Rupert’s Red squadron, and the Amsterdam contingent under Cornelis Tromp in the rear opposite Spragge’s Blue squadron. Between seven and nine in the morning the long lines of battle gradually converged and the battle began.
11 AUGUST 1673: THE BLUE SQUADRON
Shortly before eight, Sir Edward Spragge, the admiral of the Blue, ordered his squadron, in the rear, to back their sails, ostensibly to close his three divisions to each other but in reality to ensure that he could continue his personal duel with Tromp, a legacy of the second Anglo-Dutch war.5 Spragge’s Royal Prince was soon engaged by Tromp’s Gouden Leeuw and a general engagement followed until about noon, with both the English and Dutch squadrons sailing slowly southwards before turning west and then north-west in the afternoon. Both the Prince and several of the ships near her suffered severe damage; the Prince lost the effective use of two of her masts and almost all her rigging, and she had to drop out of the line. Spragge transferred his flag to the Saint George, which he immediately tried to interpose between Tromp and the crippled Prince. After about an hour, Spragge decided to shift his flag again to the Royal Charles, but while he was in transit his boat came under fire and he was drowned. The loss of Spragge, or rather of the blue flag that had perished with him, was an unmitigated disaster for his division, which now lacked any effective leadership. Tromp sought to take advantage of this by finishing off the Prince and made at least three concerted attacks on her in the first part of the afternoon, almost managing to secure his fireships to her; the boatswain only just managed to cut away the hooks of one of them from the ship’s foreshrouds, and the entire saga of the Prince’s defensive fight under her captain, Thomas Fowler, came to be regarded as a classic of its type.
The disabled Prince (at left), with poles extending from her hull to repel fireship attacks.
(NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM, GREENWICH)
Despite the heroics of her own crew, the saving of the Prince was attributable chiefly to the intervention of the two other divisions of the Blue squadron – the rear-admiral’s division under the Earl of Ossory, in the Saint Michael and the vice-admiral’s division under Sir John Kempthorne. Between eight in the morning and midday, Ossory’s division traded broadsides with the ships of the Amsterdam rear-admiral Jan de Haan. Despite considerable damage to her rigging, the Saint Michael and her division came up to the Royal Prince at about noon, at which time the wind veered to the south-west and gave the English ships the weather gage. Ossory kept close to the Prince, with some of his fireships in position to deter Tromp. Meanwhile, Kempthorne’s division had been engaged with Vice-Admiral Isaac Sweers and his division since the beginning of the battle, although both divisions had fallen well to leeward of the rest of their squadrons. Kempthorne’s Saint Andrew lost her main- and foremasts early on and had to anchor. The damage which he had sustained made it difficult for him to manoeuvre to the assistance of the Royal Prince in the early afternoon, or so Kempthorne claimed. Nevertheless, he tacked with the intention of attacking Tromp, and tried to send in his fireships, but too many other ships were in the way.
11 AUGUST 1673: THE RED SQUADRON
For the Red squadron, the morning had begun with the disconcerting spectacle of the White and Blue squadrons disappearing ahead and astern, leaving them isolated. From eight until noon the Red and its opponents followed a course roughly to the north-west, fighting all the time. By midday Rupert’s division and that of his vice-admiral, Harman, had been weathered by a large Dutch force, with Rear-Admiral Sir John Chicheley some way to leeward. As a result, most of the Red lay between two Dutch squadrons, one to windward and one to leeward of them, with de Ruyter’s flagship De Zeven Provincien almost in the Sovereign’s wake. Several attempted fireship attacks by both sides were abortive (indeed, during this battle the British expended more fireships than in any other engagement of the sailing ship era6). Shortly afterwards, Rupert veered away to join forces with Chicheley, and then sailed northwards to assist the Blue, which was about four leagues away. de Ruyter, similarly, hoped to assist Tromp, so that the early afternoon witnessed the peculiar spectacle of the two fleets’ centre squadrons sailing north almost parallel to each other, but not firing a shot.
Between four and five, the Red and Blue joined forces. de Ruyter and Tromp launched another attempt to administer the coup degrâce to the Royal Prince, but Rupert hastily improvised a new line of battle with the ships around him, interposing himself between the Dutch and Spragge’s old flagship and sending two fireships to thwart de Ruyter’s attack, so that a new general engagement began at about five. ‘The fight was very strong and close’, Rupert claimed7, and it continued until about eight that evening, when the English squadrons withdrew to the west-north-west to take care of their disabled ships, and the Dutch bore off to the east, towards their own coast. Despite the severe damage to the Prince and the lesser damage to several other vessels, and the loss of Spragge, five other captains and perhaps 500 seamen, Rupert claimed that he had gained the better of the engagement. Although the Dutch had lost more senior officers, including two vice-admirals, their claims of victory were rather more justified, for, as they immediately realised, they had achieved their objective of forcing the combined fleet away from their coast, ensuring that there could be no immediate landing.
11 AUGUST 1673: THE WHITE SQUADRON
As far as many of the Englishmen who had actually been present at the battle were concerned, let alone the vociferous francophobes ashore, the fact that the Texel quite plainly had not been the great victory they had wanted was due (at least in part) to the behaviour of the one remaining allied squadron in the battle, the French in the van. In their official account, the French claimed that their rear-admiral, the Marquis de Martel, attempted unsuccessfully to gain the wind of Banckert’s Zeeland squadron, and that d’Estrées had then broken through Banckert’s line between eleven and twelve in the morning, despite a narrow escape from Dutch fireships and the deaths of thirty men on his flagship, La Reine. Even the official account then passed over the actions of the French throughout the afternoon and evening with remarkable speed. Unfortunately for d’Estrées and for the Anglo-French alliance, this version of events was seriously undermined by the actions of Martel. His journal formed the basis of an account which he sent to Rupert, becoming an essential part of the prince’s criticisms of French conduct, and was subsequently published, with a devastating impact on English public opinion (which became even more devastating when it was discovered that Martel’s actions had earned him a spell in the Bastille).
According to Martel, the Dutch employed only eight major ships and two fireships ‘pour amuser toute l’escadre de France’,8 and it is certainly the case that only this number of Zeeland ships, under Vice-Admiral Evertsen, were engaged with Martel’s van division in order to hinder any attempt by the French to tack; the rest of Banckert’s squadron soon dropped back to engage Rupert. Martel claimed that he had attempted to engage more vigorously, but was thwarted by d’Estrées’s failure to support him. Indeed, he claimed that d’Estrées had secretly ordered the other captains in his division not to engage properly, and that by midday, when they had gained the wind of the entire Dutch fleet and Martel was keen to engage, d’Estrées insisted they should stay clear of the main battle, at which Martel ‘shrugged up his shoulders’ and went along with his admiral’s orders. To this damning indictment of d’Estrées Rupert was able to add the charge that he had ignored the signal of a blue flag at the mizzen peak, which he had hoisted at about five in the afternoon as a signal (so he claimed) for the rest of the fleet to fall into his wake, in accordance with the fighting instructions. Indeed, both English and French accounts indicate that d’Estrées saw this signal but (according to the more charitable reports) did not know what it meant and sent a messenger to Rupert to find out, thereby losing so much time that the opportunity to engage was lost. When d’Estrées presented his detailed response to Rupert’s charges in November 1673, he claimed that Charles II agreed with his claim that the signal was confusing, and it was subsequently felt that the instructions had to be clarified to cover such eventualities. However, d’Estrées also admitted that the meaning of the signal was effectively irrelevant, as he had no intention of obeying it in any case. He claimed that it was vital for him to keep the wind ahead of an anticipated engagement on the next day, rather than becoming entangled (as Rupert had done) among the disabled ships of the Blue squadron.
The tack made by Kempthorne’s division to relieve the pressure on the Prince.
(NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM, GREENWICH)
The final stages of the battle, with the French squadron in the far distance.
(NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM, GREENWICH)
AFTERMATH
The intensity of the criticism from both Rupert and Martel forced the French to attempt a damage limitation exercise and to undertake an extensive enquiry into the conduct of d’Estrées’s squadron. This did nothing to mollify British public opinion, which became ever more hostile to the French. Criticism of the French was rampant in the parliamentary session which began in October 1673, and contributed to both the downfall of Charles II’s ‘cabal’ ministers and the unilateral withdrawal from the war in February 1674. It was widely believed that Louis XIV had issued secret orders to d’Estrées not to support his allies, the purpose being to prevent a British landing which would go against French interests. Certainly, by their own admission the French squadron did not take as great a part in the engagement on 11 August as they could have done. In a way, and regardless of the matter of‘secret orders’, this is hardly surprising. Compared with both the English and the Dutch, the French were very inexperienced, both individually and as a unit; the battle of the Texel was the first major line battle which the French navy had ever fought in the open sea – the previous battles of the third Dutch war, at Solebay and the Schooneveld, had all been curious affairs fought in coastal waters. The French performance in all the previous battles had been called into question, not always fairly, but this fact in itself explains why Rupert’s and the francophobes’ version of the battle of the Texel gained such widespread popular acceptance in the autumn of 1673. There was a general expectation that the French would perform badly, so in that sense their behaviour at the Texel was a self-fulfilling prophecy. The English lack of confidence in the French seems to have been shared by the Dutch. de Ruyter’s strategy of virtually ignoring the French and concentrating the bulk of his forces on the centre and rear squadrons of the combined fleet was to be held up in later years as the classic tactic for an admiral in command of a smaller fleet, but whether de Ruyter hit upon it by accident or by design remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, the bitter factional jealousies in the two British squadrons had also come to the surface. Rupert’s conduct was attacked by captains associated with the Duke of York, while Spragge (a great favourite of the duke) was a conveniently dead counter-target for Rupert’s associates. A war of words erupted in pamphlets and coffeehouses. Cutting through all the claims and counter-claims, though, it is clear that there were certain problems inherent in the conduct of the battle of the Texel over which neither Rupert nor his subordinates had much, or any, control. In the first place, the quality of the English gunnery seems to have been markedly inferior to that of the Dutch.9 The sheer length of the allied line of battle was commented on by several in the fleet, and this may well have caused some of the problems with seeing and obeying signals. Indeed, an anonymous commentator on the fighting instructions in use at the time was able to use the experience of this battle to suggest a whole series of improvements, including the introduction of repeating ships.10 The fighting instructions themselves proved to be inadequate in several instances. Apart from the dispute over the blue flag signal, another proof of the failings of the existing system was provided by the fleet’s tack to form into its line of battle at 6am; as no signal existed to order the whole fleet to tack together, Rupert improvised one by flying simultaneously the signals for the van and rear squadrons to tack. The need for one particularly critical new instruction was revealed by Spragge’s death: the fact that he had taken the blue flag with him, and that it was lost with him, was not an eventuality covered by the instructions, whereas his opposite number, Tromp, also made a series of changes of flagship but ensured that his flag was flying at all times, thereby giving no advantage to the English and giving a clear focus for captains seeking new orders which the Blue entirely lacked after Spragge’s death.