Note 15 — IV. THE PERIOD OF THE DUTCH WARS.

Admiral Colomb (Naval Warfare) traced the Dutch defeat—or perhaps one should write, “lack of advantage”—mainly to the fact that the Dutch had a larger mercantile marine to protect, and merely mentions incidentally the constant complaints of Van Tromp and others to the inferiority of Dutch warships compared to English ones. But since so many of the Dutch merchantmen carried very fair armaments, and as “tactics” played no part in this war, I prefer to accept the explanation of the Dutch Admirals, none of whom assigned failures to the more obvious excuse of being hampered by convoys. Dutch contemporary accounts of this and following wars appear generally to be nearer the actual truth than English ones.