WINTER OPERATIONS
31
men were also present, taking advantage of the protection offered by the warships.
By 16 February they were reckoned at 31 sail, including merchantmen. Repeating
their over-confidence of the previous year, some British painted the long Dutch use
of the Ostend position as mere 'bravado'.132 It was soon to prove far from an empty
gesture.
Some of Evertsen's squadron were certainly off the British coast on 29 January; at
least seven of his force chased the large warship Plymouth (58) which escaped under
cover of the guns of Landguard Fort at Harwich. This may have been a short
sortie by detached ships; the detachment perhaps returned by 4 February, when a
storm drove the squadron away from Ostend for a while. Evertsen left his Ostend
position for the English coast on 6-7 February, with 13 major warships. In the
meantime, a British force had returned: 10 warships that had taken a convoy to
Hamburg. Four of these had been separated from the rest by storms and arrived at
the forward fleet anchorage of Solebay on 6 February. On 9 February, after two or
three days of bad weather, Evertsen was with his whole squadron off Solebay, where
he saw Plymouth again and gave chase - but she again escaped. The heavily
censored official British newsletter claimed that the Dutch (again reported 16-
strong, with two flag officers) had given up the chase when Plymouth joined with
the four warships from Solebay Monck (58), Breda (48), Amity (38), and Gift
(34) because the Dutch did not dare to attack; they then 'sneak'd away in the
night'. Evertsen was not named, so no personal insult was intended against him,
but this propaganda claim is manifestly ridiculous and of course contradicts every
thing we know about the Dutch flag officers at this time. Besides which, had this
been true, any admiral would have been immediately sacked (and probably worse)
on his return. Evertsen was far superior in gunpower to the five British ships and
would have surely have destroyed them, given enough sea-room and adequate
conditions of weather and light; it is more likely that it was the British who were
able to escape under cover of darkness.
The British soon had to admit, however, that Evertsen had sailed further south
west and entered the Gunfleet anchorage (due south of Harwich) by 12 February
penetrating deep into the usual wartime haunts of the British fleet. Evertsen
seems to have narrowly missed a large number of southbound laden colliers with
only a single escort: whilst he was in the Gunfleet they were off Yarmouth, some
60 miles to the north-north-east, reaching Harwich the following day. He was
unlucky to miss them as he turned back towards them and took the squadron
northwards again, arriving off Solebay on 14 February. Here, the estimated gun-
power of his 16 ships was also reported: three 50-gun ships and the rest of 40 guns,
except one small ship.133 The first group were clearly the three capital ships we
know of, two of rest seem to have been misidentified, but there is the possibility of
reinforcements having arrived.
From Solebay the Dutch seem to have sailed back to Ostend. By doing so Evertsen
was again unlucky to miss a very large fleet of (empty) colliers going out of
Harwich northwards on 20 February. The escort was of five ships: Ruby (46),
Speedwell (26), Pearl (26), Little Victory (24), and Young Lion (10) - they would
have been no match.13,1 What is certain, however, is that as a direct result of
Evertsen's presence, this inferior British force of five warships at Solebay was
