from her officers, and carried her out of action. This movement was
followed by twelve or thirteen other ships, leaving a great gap in the
Dutch line. The occurrence shows, what has before been pointed out,
that the discipline of the Dutch fleet and the tone of the officers
were not high, despite the fine fighting qualities of the nation, and
although it is probably true that there were more good seamen among
the Dutch than among the English captains. The natural steadfastness
and heroism of the Hollanders could not wholly supply that
professional pride and sense of military honor which it is the object
of sound military institutions to encourage. Popular feeling in the
United States is pretty much at sea in this matter; there is with it
no intermediate step between personal courage with a gun in its hand
and entire military efficiency.

Opdam, seeing the battle going against him, seems to have yielded to a
feeling approaching despair. He sought to grapple the English
commander-in-chief, who on this day was the Duke of York, the king's
brother. He failed in this, and in the desperate struggle which
followed, his ship blew up. Shortly after, three, or as one account
says four, Dutch ships ran foul of one another, and this group was
burned by one fire-ship; three or four others singly met the same fate
a little later. The Dutch fleet was now in disorder, and retreated
under cover of the squadron of Van Tromp, son of the famous old
admiral who in the days of the Commonwealth sailed through the Channel
with a broom at his masthead.

Fire-ships are seen here to have played a very conspicuous part, more
so certainly than in the war of 1653, though at both periods they
formed an appendage to the fleet. There is on the surface an evident
resemblance between the role of the fire-ship and the part assigned in