nded Cape Gris Nez
under cover of darkness and found anchorage in Calais roads. That
night, favored by the tide and thick weather, Tromp succeeded in
carrying off the greater part of his convoy unobserved. Nevertheless
he had left in Blake's hand some fifty merchantmen and a number
of men of war variously estimated from five to eighteen. At the
same time the English had suffered heavily in men and ships. On
Blake's flagship alone it is said that 100 men had been killed
and Blake and his second in command, Deane, were both wounded, the
former seriously.

The result of this three days' action was to encourage the English
to press the war with energy and take the offensive to the enemy's
own coast. English crews had shown that they could fight with a
spirit fully equal to that of the Dutch, and English ships and
weight of broadside, as de Ruyter frankly declared to his government,
were decidedly superior. The fact that the shallow waters of the
Dutch coast made necessary a lighter draft man of war than that
of the English proved a serious handicap to the Dutch in all their
conflicts with the British. Both fleets were so badly shot up by
this prolonged battle that there was a lull in operations until
May.

In that month Tromp suddenly arrived off Dover and bombarded the
defenses. The English quickly took the sea to hunt him down. As
Blake was still incapacitated by his wound, the command was given
to Monk. The latter, with a fleet of over a hundred ships, brought
Tromp to action on June 2 (1653) in what is known as the "Battle
of the Gabbard" after a shoal near the mouth of the Thames, where
the action began. Tromp was this time not burdened with a convoy
but his fleet was smaller in numbers than Monk's and, as he well
knew, inferior in other elements of force. Accordingly, he adapted
defensive tactics of a sort that was copied afterwards by the French
as a fixed policy. He accepted battle to leeward, drawing off in a
slanting line from his enemy with the idea of catching the English
van as it advanced to the attack unsupported by the rest of the
fleet, and crippling it so severely that the attack would not be
pressed. As it turned out, a shift of the wind gave him the chance
to fall heavily upon the English van, but a second shift gave back
the weather gage to the English and the two fleets became fiercely
engaged at close quarters. Blake, hearing the guns, left his sick
bed and with his own available force of 18 ships