arance of De Ruyter's fleet. He had repaired damages more quickly
than his opponents, and put to sea to blockade the Thames. It was on 29
June that the fishermen of Margate and Broadstairs saw a great crowd of
strange sail off the North Foreland. It was the Dutch fleet of over a
hundred ships, great and small, and commanded by De Ruyter, Van Tromp, and
Jan Evertszoon. Some of the ships stood in close to Margate. The militia of
the county was called out, and the alarm spread along the southern coast,
for the rumour ran that the Dutch had come to cover a French invasion. But
no Frenchmen came, and the Hollanders themselves did not send even a boat's
crew ashore. They were quite satisfied with stopping all the trade of
London by their mere presence off the Thames, and they had the chance too
of picking up homecoming ships that had not been duly warned. So, favoured
by fine summer weather, the Dutch admirals cruised backwards and forwards
in leisurely fashion between the North Foreland and the outer end of the
Gunfleet Sand. They watched with their light craft all the channels that
traverse the tangle of sandbanks and shallows in the estuary of the river;
but their main fleet was generally somewhere off the Essex coast, for on
that side of the estuary lay the channels then best known and most used,
the Swin and the Black Deep.

The fleet which thus for some three weeks held possession of the very
gateway to the Thames numbered seventy-three line-of-battle ships,
twenty-six frigates, and some twenty light craft fitted to be used as
fireships. By great exertions Monk and Rupert had got together in the lower
Thames eighty-seven fighting-ships and a squadron of fireships. Some
fifteen more frigates might have been added to the fleet, but it was
thought better to leave them unmanned, and use their crews for
strengthening those of the larger ships. The fleet assembled at the Nore
had full complements this time. The men were eager to meet the enemy, and
numbers of young gallants from the Court had volunteered for service as
supernumeraries. The "Loyal London," fresh from the builders' hands at
Chatham yard, with her crew of eight hundred men, was said to be "the best
ship in the world, large or small." Pepys noted that it was the talk of
competent men that this was "much the best fleet, for force of guns,
greatness and number of ships, that ever England did see." England had
certainly need of a good fleet, for she never met on the s