eat East Indiamen. Next day landing-parties burned and plundered
the ranges of warehouses on the island, and destroyed the town of
Terschelling. The loss to the Dutch traders was estimated at over a million
sterling.

The victorious battle off the Thames in July, 1666, is practically
forgotten, so far as the popular tradition of our naval successes goes. It
has not even a name by which it might live in the memory of our people. But
it practically broke the power of Holland and brought the war to an end.
What men do remember, and what has banished from their minds the living
tradition of the great North Sea battle, is the ugly fact that in the
following year De Ruyter sailed unopposed into the Thames, and captured and
burned in the Medway dismantled ships that had fought victoriously against
him in the North Sea battle--the "Royal Charles" being among his prizes.

The fleets had, as usual at the time, been laid up for the winter. The
money available for fitting them out in the following spring was diverted
to other purposes and squandered by the King and the Court. Charles counted
on having no need to commission a great fleet in the summer. He knew the
Dutch were feeling the strain of the war and the destruction of their
trade, and would soon have to patch up a peace, and he opened preliminary
negotiations. Such negotiations must be prudently backed by an effective
force on the war footing. The King had practically disarmed as soon as
there was a prospect of peace. But the Dutch had fitted out the fleet in
view of possible contingencies, and De Witt and De Ruyter could not resist
the temptation of revenging the defeat of 1666 and the sack of Terschelling
by a raid on the Thames and Medway. It was the dishonesty and incapacity of
the King and his parasite Court that laid England open to the shameful
disaster that dimmed for all time the glory of Monk and Rupert's victory.
But even after De Ruyter's exploits at Chatham the Dutch had no hope of
continuing the war, and within a few weeks of the disaster peace was signed
at Breda. The story of the Dutch raid is a lasting lesson on the necessity
of an island power never for a moment relaxing the armed guard of the sea.

CHAPTER VIII

THE BATTLE OF THE SAINTS' PASSAGE

1782

In the days when fleets in action relied upon the oar, all fighting was at
close quarters, and, as we have seen in our study of typical battles of
this period, naval engagements fou