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Great Daring Moments From History

Khalid Elhassan September 28, 2020 31 min

Josip Broz Tito - World War II — Yugoslav partisans wading across a river. Wikimedia

17. The Daring Raid on the Medway

The Raid on the Medway was a daring surprise Dutch attack on England’s Royal Navy, that took place between June 9 – 14, 1667, during the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665-1665). Dutch warships brazenly sailed up the Medway River in Kent to fall upon English warships anchored in dockyards at Chatham and Gillingham. The result was one of the most impressive victories in Dutch history.

From the start of the war, things had been going badly for England. First, the country suffered the Great Plague that ravaged London in 1665-1666. Then came the Great Fire of London, in 1666. By 1667, England’s King Charles II was broke, unable to pay sailors, and desperately wanted out of the war. The Dutch, however, smarting from having lost the First Anglo-Dutch War a few years earlier, wanted to first inflict a crushing defeat on the English to even the score. That would then place them in a strong position to impose punitive peace terms on England.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.