Diary of Samuel Pepys — Volume 37: August 1665 by Samuel Pepys
page 17 of 29 (58%)
page 17 of 29 (58%)
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Teddiman with twenty-two ships
[A news letter of August 19th (Salisbury), gives the following account of this affair:--"The Earl of Sandwich being on the Norway coast, ordered Sir Thomas Teddeman with 20 ships to attack 50 Dutch merchant ships in Bergen harbour; six convoyers had so placed themselves that only four or five of the ships could be reached at once. The Governor of Bergen fired on our ships, and placed 100 pieces of ordnance and two regiments of foot on the rocks to attack them, but they got clear without the loss of a ship, only 500 men killed or wounded, five or six captains among them. The fleet has gone to Sole Bay to repair losses and be ready to encounter the Dutch fleet, which is gone northward" ("Calendar of State Papers," 1664-65, pp. 526, 527). Medals were struck in Holland, the inscription in Dutch on one of these is thus translated: "Thus we arrest the pride of the English, who extend their piracy even against their friends, and who insulting the forts of Norway, violate the rights of the harbours of King Frederick; but, for the reward of their audacity, see their vessels destroyed by the balls of the Dutch" (Hawkins's "Medallic Illustrations of the History of Great Britain and Ireland," ed. Franks and Grueber, 1885, vol. i., p. 508). Sir Gilbert Talbot's "True Narrative of the Earl of Sandwich's Attempt upon Bergen with the English Fleet on the 3rd of August, 1665, and the Cause of his Miscarriage thereupon," is in the British Museum (Harl. MS., No. 6859). It is printed in "Archaeologia," vol. xxii., p. 33. The Earl of Rochester also gave an account of the action in a letter to his mother (Wordsworth's "Ecclesiastical Biography," fourth edition, vol. iv., p. 611). Sir John Denham, in his "Advice to a Painter," gives a long satirical account of the affair. A coloured drawing of the attack upon |
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