squadrons to different ports, and was riding in the Downs with thirty-seven sail, when he was surprised by the appearance[a] of a hostile fleet of double that number, under the command of Van Tromp, whose wounded pride had been appeased with a new commission.  A mistaken sense of honour induced the English admiral to engage in the unequal contest.  The battle[b] raged from eleven in the morning till night.  The English, though they burnt a large ship and disabled two others, lost five sail either sunk or taken; and Blake, under cover of the darkness, ran up the river as far as Leigh.  Van Tromp sought his enemy at Harwich and Yarmouth; returning, he insulted the coast as he passed; and continued to cruise backwards and forwards from the North Foreland to the Isle of Wight.[1]

The parliament made every exertion to wipe away this disgrace.  The ships were speedily refitted; two regiments of infantry embarked to serve as marines; a bounty was offered for volunteers; the wages of the seamen were raised; provision was made for their families during their absence on service; a new rate for the division of prize-money was established; and, in aid of Blake, two officers, whose abilities had been already tried, Deane and Monk, received the joint command of the fleet.  On the other hand, the Dutch were intoxicated with their success; they announced it to the world, in prints, poems, and publications; and Van Tromp affixed a broom to the head of his mast as an emblem of his triumph.  He had gone to the Isle of Rhee to take the homeward-bound trade under his charge, with orders to resume his station at the mouth of the Thames, and to prevent the egress of

[Footnote 1:  Heath, 329.  Ludlow, ii. 3.  Neuville, iii. 68.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1652.  Nov. 29.] [Sidenote b:  A.D. 1652.  Nov. 30.]

the English.  But Blake had already stationed himself with more than seventy sail across the Channel, opposite the Isle of Portland, to intercept the return of the enemy.  On the 18th of February the Dutch fleet, equal in number, with three hundred merchantmen under convoy, was discovered[a] near Cape La Hogue, steering along the coast of France.  The action was maintained with the most desperate obstinacy.  The Dutch lost six sail, either sunk or taken, the English one, but several were disabled, and Blake himself was severely wounded.

The following morning[b] the enemy were seen opposite Weymouth, drawn up in the form of a crescent covering the merchantmen.  Many attempts were made to break through the line; and so imminent did the danger appear to the Dutch admiral, that he made signal for the convoy to shift for themselves.  The battle lasted at intervals through the night; it was renewed with greater vigour near Boulogne in the morning;[c] till Van Tromp, availing himself of the shallowness of the coast, pursued his course homeward unmolested by the pursuit of the enemy.  The victory was decidedly with the English; the loss in men might be equal on both sides; but the Dutch themselves acknowledged that nine of their men-of-war and twenty-four of the merchant vessels had been either sunk or captured.[1]