y for
sea. The pressgangs brought in poor creatures whom the captains described
as a useless rabble. There were hundreds of desertions. Happily the Dutch
preparations were also backward, and England had thus some breathing time.

In June the two fleets, under the Duke of York and the Dutch Admiral Opdam,
each numbering nearly a hundred sail, were in the North Sea, and on the 3rd
they met in battle, some thirty-five miles south-east of Lowestoft. Opdam
was driven back to the Texel with the loss of several ships. The Duke of
York had behaved with courage and spirit during the fight, and was covered
with splashes of the blood of officers killed beside him on the
quarter-deck, where he himself was slightly wounded. But he showed
slackness and irresolution in the pursuit, and failed to reap the full
results of his victory.

During the rest of the summer there were more or less successful
enterprises against Dutch trade; but the plague in London, in the ports
and dockyards, and even in the fleet itself, seriously interfered with the
prosecution of the war. As usual at that time, the winter months were
practically a time of truce. In the spring of 1666 both parties were ready
for another North Sea campaign.

The Dutch had fitted out more than eighty ships under Admiral De Ruyter,
and the English fleet was put under the command of Monk, Duke of Albemarle,
with Prince Rupert, the fiery cavalry leader of the Civil War, as his
right-hand man. Both were soldiers who had had some sea experience. It was
still the time when it was an ordinary event for a courtier to command a
battleship, with a sailor to translate his orders into sea language and
look after the navigation for him. Pepys tells how he heard Monk's wife,
the Duchess of Albemarle (perhaps echoing what her husband had said in
private), "cry mightily out against the having of gentlemen captains, with
feathers and ribbons, and wish the King would send her husband to sea with
the old plain sea-captains that he served with formerly."

Monk and Rupert went to join the fleet that was assembling at the Nore on
23 April. It was not ready for sea till near the end of May. On 1 June,
when part of the fleet was detached under Rupert to watch the Straits of
Dover, Monk met De Ruyter (who was in superior force) off the Essex coast
and began a battle that lasted for four days. The news of the first day's
fighting set London rejoicing, but soon there came disappointing reports of
fail