A LETTER FROM General Blakes Fleet WITH The Particulars of the Great and bloody Fight with the Dutch, neer Goodwin Sands, on Tueſday night last.
AND The purſuit of the Hollanders by the ENGLISH then and ſince.
ALSO The Particulars of the Loſſe on both ſides.
LONDON, Printed for Robert Ibbitſon dwelling in Smithfield neer Hoſier Lane. 1652.
ON the 25 of Septemb. 1652. There was a great meeting of the Officers of the Fleet with General Blake, about engaging with the Hollanders then about Goodwin Sands, and it was reſolved after ſeverall meetings, that on Tueſday laſt we ſhould endevour to ingage with them.
And accordingly, on Tueſday laſt we ſailed towards them, and the Hollanders ſtood to us; being well manned, and every ways very well fitted, and about our number, each party being between 50 and 60 ſail, and the Hollanders had two Admirals.
2Firſt Major Bourne with the Andrew led on, and charged the Hollanders ſtoutly, and got off again without much harme.
Captaine Bodily with his ſhip alſo (for we have one of the Bodelies a Captain with us, beſides Capt. Bodely in the Straits,) hee charged exceeding gallantly; but was in very great danger to have loſt his ſhip, for the Hollanders were ſo cloſe on both ſides of him. charging againſt him, that one might have flung biskets out of his Frigot into the Dutch ſhips.
All his ſailes were ſo torne and ſhattered, that he could not ſail either too or fro, or any more but as the Tide drove him, and there were about 60 men killed in that Frigot, and ſhe had near 100 ſhot in her Hul, and was in danger of ſinking or taking.
But bleſſed be God they got her ſafe to Harbour, the fight being not above 6 leagues from the ſhoar.
The w•ter being ſhallow upon the ſands, we were in ſome danger of ſuſtaining great loſſe, In ſo much that the Sovereign, and the3 ſhip in which Gen. Blake was, with the Admiral began to ſtick, but bleſſed be God were got off again without any great harm thereby.
The Sovereign that great Ship, a delicate Frigot (I think the whole World hath not the like) did her part, ſhe ſailed through and through the Holland Fleet, and played hard upon them.
And at one time there were about 20 Holland Frigots upon her, but bleſſed be the Lord ſhe hath ſuſtained no very great loſſe, but in ſome of her Tacklings, and ſome ſhot in her which her great bigneſſe is not much prejudiced with.
We had ſome other loſſes in ſeveral other ſhips, ſome 2 or 3 in ſome ſhips ſlaine, and in others twice or thrice that number: and ſome of the ſhips had loſſe more, and ſome leſſe, in their Sailes and Tacklings.
We fought them ſtifly as long that night as from foure a clock untill we could not ſee to fight longer.
I am perſwaded that if we had had day to4 have proſecuted the fight, we had utterly ſpoyled them, and yet I am perſwaded that their loſſe is very great.
The Hollanders Vice-Admirall was ſunk in our ſight, a very great and ſtout ſhip.
Alſo another very good Frigot, and of a good bulke, we ſaw ſink in our view.
Two of their ſhips we have taken, one of 30 guns, and the other of 36 guns, neither of which did much oppoſe us, after we attempted to board them. By which we perceive that their hearts are much broken, and they are much diſcouraged.
VVe hear of two ſhips more of theirs ſince ſunk, ſome ſay three, but of that I cannot yet aſſure you the certainty, but bleſſed be God we loſt not one ſhip.
5VVe purſued them the next day, and made ſome diſcovery of them, and ſent out ſome veſſels towards them, but they fled, and ſailed away, we purſued them neer Holland, but could not get them to ingage.
I beleeve it will be ſad news to the States; and although they thought to have foundered our ſhips in the ſands, yet bleſſed be God, we have gotten the Victory, and they are fled home by the weeping croſſe.
VVe are come back now to the Downes where we are to take in ſupplies, and then ſhall indeavour to act further ſervice, as God ſhall give us occaſion.
I am perſwaded that the Hollanders were drunk generally the moſt part of them when they fought, for at firſt6 they fought exceeding deſperately, as ever I ſaw; but after ſome hours, were nothing ſo valiant.
But let God have all the glory, we went forth in his ſtrength, and I hope ſhall ſtill wait on him, who hath thus far manifeſted his preſence with us, and bleſſing upon us.
All our Captains generally played their parts, and ſo did the Sea men and the Souldiers, who plyed their work, in diſcharging upon the Enemy, though ſome of the men were up to the middle in water in ſome of the ſhips.
Dated in the Downesthe third of October 1652.
(EEBO-TCP ; phase 2, no. A87949)
Transcribed from: (Early English Books Online ; image set 166317)
Images scanned from microfilm: (Thomason Tracts ; 104:E676[4])
Created by converting TCP files to TEI P5 using tcp2tei.xsl, TEI @ Oxford.
EEBO-TCP is a partnership between the Universities of Michigan and Oxford and the publisher ProQuest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by ProQuest via their Early English Books Online (EEBO) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). The general aim of EEBO-TCP is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic English-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in EEBO.
EEBO-TCP aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the Text Encoding Initiative (http://www.tei-c.org).
The EEBO-TCP project was divided into two phases. The 25,363 texts created during Phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 January 2015. Anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source.
Users should be aware of the process of creating the TCP texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data.
Text selection was based on the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (NCBEL). If an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in NCBEL, then their works are eligible for inclusion. Selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. In general, first editions of a works in English were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably Latin and Welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so.
Image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. Quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in Oxford and Michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet QA standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. After proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. Any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. Understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of TCP data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. Users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a TCP editor.
The texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the TEI in Libraries guidelines.
Copies of the texts have been issued variously as SGML (TCP schema; ASCII text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable XML (TCP schema; characters represented either as UTF-8 Unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless XML (TEI P5, characters represented either as UTF-8 Unicode or TEI g elements).
Keying and markup guidelines are available at the Text Creation Partnership web site.
This keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership. Searching, reading, printing, or downloading EEBO-TCP texts is reserved for the authorized users of these project partner institutions. Permission must be granted for subsequent distribution, in print or electronically, of this EEBO-TCP Phase II text, in whole or in part.