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I
Tuesday
11th June 1667.
Further
adjustments were made to the chain on Tuesday 11 June.At1 a.m. Pett
had ordered a floating stage to be towed down to Gillingham, and later
the chain was heaved up to be able to place the stage underneath. The
position of the two guardships, lying just above the chain, (the “Charles V” and the “Matthias”
) were adjusted to be able to bring their broadsides to bear
upon it, and additional soldiers were put aboard them. The “Monmouth” was also
moored above the chain , in such a position that she could bring her
guns to bear on the gap between the “Charles
V” and the “Matthias”
And the “Unity” Which had come up from Sheerness too late to be brought
above the chain, was moored just below it as a extra defence.
The Duke of Albemarle, who was at the centre of all this
activity, had found a state of crisis at Chatham when he arrived there
in the early hours of Tuesday morning 11 June. In his report to the
House of Commons he described the situation at Chatham thus:
I found scarce twelve of eight hundred men which were then in
the king’s pay In his
Majesty’s yards; and these so distracted with fear, that that I
could have little or no service from them. I had heard of thirty boats,
which were provided by the direction of His Royal Highness.[ e.g.the
Duke of York.)
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but
they were all, except five or six taken away by those of the yards,
who went themselves with them, and sent and took them away by the
example of Commissioner Pett, who had the chief command there, and
sent away his own goods in some of them. I found no ammunition there,
but what was in the “Monmouth” so that I presently sent to Gravesend for the Train
[of Artillery] to be sent to me, which got thither [i.e. Chatham]
about two of the clock the next day [i.e. Wednesday 12 June]
After
I had despatched this order I went to visit the chain, which was the
next thing to be fortified for the security of the river, where I
found no works for the defence of it. I then immediately set soldiers
to work for the raising two batteries, for there was no other men to
be got; and when I had employed them in it, I found it very difficult
to get tools, for Commissioner Pett would not furnish us with above
thirty till, by breaking open the stores, we found more. I then
directed timber and thick planks [there was such a scarcity of planks
in the dockyard that the floor of the ropeyard was ripped up is a
desperate attempt to get material for the batteries] to be sent to the
batteries, and guns also, that they might be ready to be planted as
soos as the batteries were made; and I in the next place sent Captain
Vintour with his company to Upnor Castle, which I took to be a place
very fit to hinder the enemy from coming forward if they should force
the chain. And, upon further consideration, altho’ I had horse near
the fort, lest the enemy should land there, I commanded Sir Edward
Scot and his company for a further strength of the place, and gave him
the charge of it, with orders to let me know what he wanted for the
security thereof
Having
thus provided for Upnor, I considered where to sink ships without the
chain [i.e. below the chain] next to the enemy, as a further security
to it….
advising
with Commissioner Pett and the Masters of Attendance, and the pilot
how to do it Pett told me that it was their opinion that if three
ships were sunk at the narrow passage near the Mussel Bank, the Dutch
fleet could not be able to
come up. And I, relying on their experience, who best knew the river,
gave orders accordingly for the doing of it. But when this was done
they said they wanted two ships more, which I directed them to take
and sink. After this I ordered Sir Edward Spragge to take a boat and
sound whether the sinking of those ships would sufficiently secure the
passage. Which he did, and found another passage, which the pilot and
Masters of Attendance had not before observed to be deep enough for
great ships; but it was deep enough for great ships to come in. I
thereupon resolved to sink some ships within [i.e. above] the chain……..
Late
in the evening of Tuesday 11 June, a conference was held in
Commissioners Pett’s house, attended by Albemarle, Brouncker, and
leading dockyard officials, including Edward Gregory, to discuss the
advisability of sinking ships near the chain. Gregory had discovered
the day before, from soundings which he had taken, that the chain was
lying nearly nine feet under the surface of the water between the
stages, because of its weight. It was presumably because of this
discovery that Pett, early in the morning of Tuesday, had ordered a
fresh stage to be brought down from the dockyard to enable the chain
to be raised higher.
Nevertheless, Gregory was not satisfied and remained convinced
that the Dutch might have fireships of shallow draught which would be
able to ride over the chain. At the conference in Pett’s house he
proposed therefore that three or four small ships should be sunk in
Upnor Reach near the Castle, to present a further obstacle to the
Dutch, should they successfully break through the chain at Gillingham.
After some discussion the Masters of Attendance stated that in
their opinion Gregory’s proposal was not feasible, but in order
further to reinforce the chain it was resolved with Albemarle’s
agreement that three vessels. the “Marmaduke” “Sancta Maria” {a fine vessel of 70 guns,
previously captured from the Dutch by whom she was known as the “Slot van Honingen”}, and
the “Norway
Merchant” flyboat should be towed down from the dockyard and
sink as near the chain as possible. Albemarle concluded the conference
by ordering Pett and the Masters of Attendance to see to it, “at peril of their lives” that the ships were brought to the chain
and sunk there by Wednesday morning. Since iot was 11 p.m. on Tuesday,
and high tide was at 1 a.m. on Wednesday, Pett and the two Masters of
Attendance were left with only two hours in which to act.
Desperately they told Sir Gregory to go and search for men who
would be used to take the three vessels down the river; but in the
prevailing conditions such a mission seemed doomed to fail.
Nevertheless Gregory, undaunted, mounted a horse and scoured the
neighbourhood of Chatham for men. By some miracle he managed to
collect some 150, whom he brought to the dockyard. They were at once
sent aboard the three ships, which were then taken down the river
towards the chain at Gillingham. In cockham Wood Reach, however,
between Upnor and Gillingham, the “Sancta Maria” ran aground, and Phineas Pett alleged later that
this was due to the negligence of Captain John Brooke, one of the
Masters of Attendance, who was in charge of her. According to Phineas,
Brooke wasted time to bring the ship down river so that the tide ebbed
and the “Sancta
Maria”, because of her deep draught, grounded. After
unsuccessful attempts to get her afloat again the men aboard her were
transferred, some being sent to the “Royal Charles” others to the batteries at the end of the chain.
Meanwhile, the “Marmaduke” and the “Norway
Merchant”, which
had been taken down to the chain without mishap, were sunk
there about 8 a.m. on Wednesday.A cable was afterwards brought from
the “Royal
Charles” and fastened between the two ships as an additional
hindrance to the Dutch. This was but one of a number of desperate
last-minute measures taken under Albemarle’s direction. They were
prompted by forebodings that the Dutch would not remain content with
their easy victory at Sheerness, but would be encouraged by the lack
of resistance they had there encountered to venture further up the
Medway and attack the ships and dockyard at Chatham. These fears were
to prove fully justified.
After the Dutch had captured Sheerness Fort, in the late
afternoon of Monday 10 June, thjey decided that because they lacked a
sufficient number of troops, they could not place a garrison in the
fort to hold it. For the same reason they decided also not to venture
further inland. Gerard Brandt, the biographer of de Ruyter, placed
another construction on the motives which caused the Dutch to make the
latter decision. He affirmed that after taking Sheerness Fort they
were well placed to revenge the burning of fishermen’s houses on the
island of Terschelling by the English in 1666, by ravaging the Isle of
Sheppey. But Brandt continued: “They [i.e. the Dutch] wished
to act with greater generosity, leaving to barbarous nations this
cruel way of waging war and visiting the sins of the guilty upon
innocent people”
According
to the “Hollandsche Mercurius” (1668) which published extracts from the
logbooks from Captain van Brakel for June 1667, some of the crew of
the “Vrede”
ventured into the interior of the Isle of Sheppey, found that
the inhabitants had fled, so plundered their houses and returned with
much booty. Another Dutch source, a broadsheet published by N.
Visscher in Amsterdam in 1667, which described the Dutch operations
during June, stated that a detachment of troops marched to
Queenborough after Sheerness had been captured. The inhabitants of the
town were said to have begged the Dutch to spare it and to have
offered them a considerable sum of money, whereupon Queenborough was
left unmolested.
There
is however, no confirmation of this in the Queenborough borough
archives, so it may be an exaggeration of some small foray in which
the crew of the “Vrede”
were concerned. One English account related that the Dutch had
marched inland and
plundered Queenborough, but gave no detail of the operation.
A.
Daly, the historian of the Isle of Sheppey, stated that the Dutch
captured Queenborough after the Mayor had flown the white flag from
the town hall, but he did not quote his authority for the statement.
Whatever the Dutch may have done at Queenborough, there is no
doubt that some of the unfortunsate inhabitants suffered from the
hands of the English and Scots troops sent to defend the town.
These looted and destroyed goods which they found in houses
which their terrified owners had abandoned in fear of the Dutch. Among
the townsmen who suffered in this way was Captain Abraham Ansley, a
Master of Attendance at Sheerness dockyard.
Meanwhiule on Tuesday 11 June, a small Dutch force comprising
two armed yacht (One of them the ”Jonge Prins” commanded
by the redoubtable Cornelis Gerrits Vos) accompanied by sloops snd
longboats had been sent on reconnaissance up the Medway. to take
soundings, and also to find out what opposition, if any, the English
were preparing to meet the Dutch attack. The little force ventured as
far as the Mussel Bank, where they spied the English busy at work
sinking the “ Constant
John” “Unicorn” and “John
and Sarah” in the South Channel there.
This news, when it was brought back to Cornelis de Witt and van
Ghent at Sheerness, did not deter them for one instant for resolving
on an immediate attack on Chatham dockyard and the ships lying in the
river near it. These were
indeed a tempting prey, in a sketch made by John Evelyn on the hill
aboven Gillingham, near the church, and which he sent to Pepys at the
latter’s request, the names and positions of the ships were recorded
in detail. The sketch was entitled: “A
Scheme of the Posture of the Dutch Fleete and action at Sherenesse and
Chatham 10th, 11th, and 12th of June
1667, taken upon the place by J.E. It showed the chain, with the
“Unity”
moored on the Gillingham side, just below it and with the “Charles
V” and “Matthias” just
above it. The “Monmoth”
lay beyond them in Gillingham Reach, and then aboven her,
streching as far as Rochester Bridge, the “Royal
Charles” “Mary” [“Sancta Maria”] “Royal Oak” “Loyal
London” “Royal James” “Catherine” “Princess” “Old
James” “Guiden Ryter [“Gel;derse Ruyter”] “Triumph”
“Rainbow” “Unicorn” “Henry” “Helverson”
[“Hilversum”] and “Vanguard”.
Cornelis
de Witt and van Ghent decided that a small detachment comprising three
frigates, four armed yachts, and two fireships, should sail up the
Medway forthwith as an advance force, under Captain Thomas Tobiasz.,
and that the rest of the squadron should follow soon after, under the
two leaders. Strict orders were issued that no sailors were to be
allowed ashore during the
operation, no doubt to prevent repetitions of the plundering foray of
the crew of the “Vrede”
which might have endangered the enterprise.
Tobiasz and his advance force left Sheerness on Tuesday 11 June,
and when they arrived at the Mussel Bank they spent some time moving
the ketch “Edward and Eve” which the English had sunk there earlier in
the day. This took a considerable time, and meanwhile the tide had
ebbed, so the Dutch ships anchored and made no progress that day.
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Monday 10 June.
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