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Historic Military Blunders that Will Make You Feel Better About Your Own Mistakes

Khalid Elhassan December 14, 2022 33 min

When the English Navy Got Caught Asleep at Home

On June 9^th, 1667, the Dutch launched a surprise raid that caught England’s Royal Navy off guard. A fleet of Dutch ships brazenly sailed up the Medway River in Kent to attack English warships anchored in dockyards at Gillingham and Chatham. The raid took place in the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665-1667), and resulted in one of the most impressive victories in Dutch history. From the start of the Second Anglo-Dutch War in 1665, things had gone bad for the English. First, they suffered the Great Plague of 1665 – 1666, then the Great Fire of London in 1666. By 1667, King Charles II of England realized that he had made a huge blunder when he got his kingdom into a war it was unprepared for.

Charles was broke, unable to pay his sailors, and desperately wanted peace. However, the Dutch were sore about an earlier loss in the First Anglo-Dutch War, and wanted to even the score. They sought to inflict a massive defeat on the English, not only as payback, but also to enable them negotiate from a strong position that would allow them to impose punitive peace terms. So a Dutch fleet, commanded by Admiral Michiel de Ruyter, entered the Thames estuary, captured Sheerness at the mouth of the Medway, then sailed up that river. That was bad for the English. As seen below, things got worse for them soon enough.

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.