Battle of Schooneveld
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The Battles of Schooneveld were two naval battles of the Third Anglo-Dutch War, fought off the coast of the Netherlands in June 1673 between an allied Anglo-French fleet commanded by Prince Rupert of the Rhine, and the fleet of the United Provinces, commanded by Michiel de Ruyter. The Dutch victories in the two battles, and at the Battle of Texel that followed in August, saved their country from a Franco-British invasion.
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Background
The Franco-Dutch War of 1672–1678 resulted from the attempts of Louis XIV of France to annex the Spanish Netherlands. In 1672 troops from France, Münster and Cologne invaded the Netherlands by land, while England's navy attacked Dutch shipping and threatened a seaborne invasion. The conflict between England and The Republic is commonly called the Third Anglo-Dutch War.
The years 1672–1673 were particularly desperate for the Dutch, with the French stopped only by the deliberate flooding of large parts of the Dutch countryside, and the withdrawing of guns and men from the fleet to augment the army of William III of Orange, now Admiral-General of the fleet.
When the French invaded, the Orangist party took power, falsely accusing the former leading politician Johan de Witt and his personal friend Lieutenant-Admiral Michiel de Ruyter of plotting to betray the Republic to the French. The Orangists themselves were in fact subsidised by the English. Both England and France hoped to create a Dutch puppet state, using the enormous Dutch mercantile assets to gain world trade dominance, each expecting that any moment the Dutch might surrender to either one of them, but greatly fearing he wouldn't be the main beneficiary. Therefore during the battles mutual suspicion between the French and the British was enormous: the British were wary that De Ruyter might suddenly team up with the French; the French thought the orangist Lieutenant-Admiral Cornelis Tromp might well do the same with the English. In fact De Ruyter didn't feel too sure about Tromp himself, but his fears proved to be unfounded. Tromp cared for battle honours above anything else.
Michiel de Ruyter, since February Lieutenant-Admiral-General of the confederate Dutch fleet, planned to blockade the main English fleet in the River Thames by sinking blockships in its narrowest part, and then to deal with the remaining English squadrons at his leisure. But the English fleet took sea in time to prevent the blocking operation, and de Ruyter retreated on 15 May to the Schooneveld, the coastal waters at the mouth of the Schelde River, near the island of Walcheren, to prevent the allies from establishing the naval superiority needed for the transport and landing of a force of 6,000 soldiers waiting at Yarmouth. The Schooneveld basin, between two shoals, was so narrow the allies couldn't take advantage of their numerical superiority.
First battle
On 7 June 1673 (New Style; 28 May in the Julian calendar then in use in England), the allies, deciding they had waited long enough, approached the Dutch fleet. Prince Rupert had a considerable superiority in ships (eighty-six against sixty-four) - indeed the Dutch admirals nicknamed their fleet the "Little Hope". He arranged his own squadron of the Red in the van, the French squadron of the White commanded by Jean d'Estrées in the centre, and Sir Edward Spragge's squadron of the Blue in the rear. The Dutch van was commanded by Tromp, the centre by De Ruyter and the rear by Lieutenant-Admiral Adriaen Banckert.
Rupert detached a squadron at nine in the morning to tempt out the Dutch; however De Ruyter declined this invitation to attack. When however the squadron at last returned to the main allied line, the Dutch started to move. This forced Rupert to attack immediately to prevent the Dutch from gaining the weather gauge, before he could form a proper keel line.
The battle began at noon and lasted for nine hours. Using his superior knowledge of the shallow waters, De Ruyter was able to manoeuvre his fleet so close to the shoals that the allies found it difficult to engage without grounding.
Rupert first made contact with the squadron of Cornelis Tromp. De Ruyter closely followed Tromp; but becoming aware the French attacked Banckert he suddenly turned, broke through the French lines and combined the Dutch centre and rear, thus separating Tromp from the rest of the Dutch fleet. After an hour the French disengaged. Meanwhile Rupert in the shallow waters could not press the advantage against Tromp, while Spragge, first intending to pursue the Zeelander squadron of Banckert but being blocked by the mass of French ships, tried to join Rupert but found himself to the leeward of De Ruyter, and at a disadvantage, when the latter used the gap in the allied lines to gain the weather gauge and come to the rescue of Tromp with the remainder of the Dutch fleet. Seeing this manoeuvre Tromp yelled to his men: "There's Granddad! (the Dutch sailors used this name of endearment for De Ruyter) He's coming to help us. I in return shall never abandon him, as long as I can breath!" That these things needed to be said at all shows the underlying political divisions within the Dutch fleet.
Rupert now retreated to form a coherent line with the French, but failed as there were simply too few French ships left. The combined Dutch fleet then broke his line repeatedly and he was happy to disengage at nightfall. Two French ships were lost, one Dutch ship was captured and then recaptured, and one, the Deventer (70 cannon), was sunk. Dutch Vice-Admiral Volckhard Schram and Rear-Admiral David Vlugh were killed.
Second battle
The allies cruised off the Dutch coast for a week, each accusing the other of having caused the failure. They hoped to lure the Dutch fleet to open sea; when at first nothing happened they grew so despondent, they were surprised when the Dutch did in fact come out. On 14 June 1673 De Ruyter, reinforced by four ships, took advantage of a favourable northwest wind to attack the allied line. In this battle the allies were in total disarray — partly the result of having been two weeks at sea, including one battle — but mainly because of a curious coincidence: it so happened Spragge, now commanding the van, visited Rupert the moment the Dutch attacked. He immediately left for his squadron, but Rupert, suddenly fearing Spragge could never reach his force in time, decided to form the van with his own rear squadron. He tried to overtake the French in the centre; but they, Rupert never having made his intentions clear to them, did their utmost to remain in formation, i.e. in front of Rupert. Needless to say chaos was complete. Rupert repeatedly raised the bloodflag and then lowered it again upon seeing the confusion among his ships made a coordinated attack impossible. De Ruyter, utterly amazed and exclaiming: "What's wrong with this man? Has he gone mad or what?" exploited this disarray by engaging from some distance and firing at the allied masts and rigging severely damaging Rupert's squadron. The French, when attacked by Banckert, disengaged immediately, very suspicious of the bizarre course of events. Only Tromp clashed with great fury with his eternal enemy Spragge until nightfall.
Edward Spragge wrote in his journal:
- The Prince placing himself in the van, the French in the middle, the line-of-battle being 89 men-of-war and small frigates, fireships and tenders, is so very long that I cannot see any sign the general admiral makes.
The heavy sea made it impossible for the allies, though in a leeward position, to open their lower gunports, and the strong gales had driven all three fleets dangerously close to the British coast. Rupert now desperately attempted to close with the Dutch to save his fleet from destruction, but they retreated to save theirs, and by the morning of 15 June the damaged allied fleets sailed into the Thames and De Ruyter was safely back in the Schooneveld.
The allies had not lost any ships, but they had suffered considerable damage and had to return to port for repairs.
Aftermath
By skilful manoeuvre, De Ruyter had fought two engagements against a superior fleet, inflicted such damage against his opponents that they were forced to lift the blockade and retire, and taken care to avoid the decisive battle that the allies were hoping to fight.
After refitting and establishing with great difficulty somewhat more cordial relationships, the allies decided to cruise off the Texel in the hope of drawing De Ruyter out of the Schooneveld and bringing him to action. But the resulting Battle of Texel was a Dutch victory, and England was forced to withdraw from the costly and unproductive war.
References
- C. T. Atkinson, "The Anglo-Dutch Wars", in The Cambridge Modern History, volume 5, 1908.
- Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783, 1890.
- N. A. M. Rodger, The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649–1815, Penguin, 2004.
