Frederic Spinola, a volunteer belonging to the great and wealthy Genoese family of that name, had been performing a good deal of privateer work with a small force of galleys which he kept under his command at Sluys.  He had succeeded in inflicting so much damage upon the smaller merchantmen of the republic, and in maintaining so perpetual a panic in calm weather among the seafaring multitudes of those regions, that he was disposed to extend the scale of his operations.  On a visit to Spain he had obtained permission from Government to employ in this service eight great galleys, recently built on the Guadalquivir for the Royal Navy.  He was to man and equip them at his own expense, and was to be allowed the whole of the booty that might result from his enterprise.  Early in the autumn he set forth with his eight galleys on the voyage to Flanders, but, off Cezimbra, on the Portuguese coast, unfortunately fell in with Sir Robert Mansell, who; with a compact little squadron of English frigates, was lying in wait for the homeward-bound India fleet on their entrance to Lisbon.  An engagement took place, in which Spinola lost two of his galleys.  His disaster might have been still greater, had not an immense Indian carrack, laden with the richest merchandize, just then hove in sight, to attract his conquerors with a hope of better prize-money than could be expected from the most complete victory over him and his fleet.

With the remainder of his vessels Spinola crept out of sight while the English were ransacking the carrack.  On the 3rd of October he had entered the channel with a force which, according to the ideas of that day, was still formidable.  Each of his galleys was of two hundred and fifty slave power, and carried, beside the chain-gang, four hundred fighting men.  His flag-ship was called the St. Lewis; the names of the other vessels being the St. Philip, the Morning Star, the St. John, the Hyacinth, and the Padilla.  The Trinity and the Opportunity had been destroyed off Cezimbra.  Now there happened to be cruising just then in the channel, Captain Peter Mol, master of the Dutch war-ship Tiger, and Captain Lubbertson, commanding the Pelican.  These two espied the Spanish squadron, paddling at about dusk towards the English coast, and quickly gave notice to Vice-Admiral John Kant, who in the States’ ship Half-moon, with three other war-galleots, was keeping watch in that neighbourhood.  It was dead calm as the night fell, and the galleys of Spinola, which had crept close up to the Dover cliffs, were endeavouring to row their way across in the darkness towards the Flemish coast, in the hope of putting unobserved into the Gut of Sluys.  All went well with Spinola till the moon rose; but, with the moon, sprang up a steady breeze, so that the galleys lost all their advantage.  Nearly off Gravelines another States’ ship, the Mackerel, came in sight, which forthwith attacked the St:  Philip, pouring a broadside into her by which fifty men were killed.  Drawing off from