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By Root 869 0

sweep the English from the Channel. Failing that happy result, he burned English ships and towed away the Royal Charles, one of the principal ships of the Royal Navy, an ill event that brought anguish to Samuel Pepys, a secretary of the Admiralty. “My mind is so sad,” he recorded in his diary for June 12, 1667, “and head full of this ill news … for the Dutch have broke the chain and burned our ships, particularly the Royal Charles, and the truth is I fear so much that the whole kingdom is undone.” The blaze of the ships burning in the river was seen in London. The Anglo-Dutch wars, however, merely continued indecisively through the 17th century until both countries concluded that contest for supremacy was costing more than any profit supremacy could bring, and since both were strained in their resistance to the aggressions of Louis XIV, King of France, they found a joint interest in combining against him instead of fighting each other. In 1678, England and Holland* had entered into defensive alliance pinned to several treaties requiring each to assist the other with the loan of troops or other aid in the event of aggression by a third power. After nearly a hundred years of this relationship, England took it very ill that Holland, instead of lending her 6,000 troops upon request under the terms of the old treaty, was instead saving the American enemy from empty arsenals and enabling the Revolution to continue.

Conscious of naval weakness relative to Britain, which now in the 1770s had 100 ships of the line (warships of over 60 guns), compared to eleven of the same size for the Netherlands, the government of the Netherlands felt compelled to comply with Britain’s demand to cease supply of war material to the Colonies. In March, 1775, Dutch rulers announced to their subjects a six months’ embargo of export to the Colonies of contraband (arms and ammunition) and naval stores (lumber for repairs, ropes for rigging and all materials needed to keep a ship afloat), even clothing, under penalty of confiscation of cargoes and heavy fines, and confiscation of ships in case of non-payment. In August the prohibition was extended from six months to a year, and again prolonged for each of the next two years. As an unbearable restraint on a lucrative trade, the order aroused wrathful resentment in the merchant class and was routinely disobeyed. The natural result was a great increase in smuggling, to such an extent that Sir Joseph Yorke was instructed to inform the States General, governing body of the Netherlands, that English warships were ordered henceforth to show “more vigilance and less reserve” in their attentions to St. Eustatius. Their guard became so close as to make it difficult for mariners to bring in provisions. Indignation at this treatment provoked in Holland a proposal to blockade the ambassadorial residence of Sir Joseph Yorke in retaliation, though the records show no evidence that this undiplomatic enterprise was carried out. In January of 1776, King George III ordered the Admiralty to put more warships on duty because “every intelligence confirms that principally St. Eustatius, but also all the other islands are to furnish the Americans with gunpowder this winter.” If Eustatian shippers had not been indefatigable in defying the embargo and evading their pursuers, continuance of the American rebellion at this stage might have been a close call. Militarily it was a hardpressed time. A crushing defeat in the Battle of Long Island in August, 1776, had left the British in control of access to New York and the New York coast. Washington had, at least, safely brought his forces out of Manhattan, where he could maintain the connection of New England to the South which it was the principal British strategic aim to disrupt. Soon the British had penetrated Pennsylvania and were threatening Philadelphia, the congressional capital. At Christmas time of 1776 the Continental Congress fled to Baltimore. In September, 1777, Sir William Howe with a large army and naval force sailed imposingly up Chesapeake Bay to the Delaware to enter