Battle of the Downs

On 21 October 1639, in the Downs, a sheltered anchorage off the Kent coast between Dover and Deal, a Dutch fleet under Maarten Tromp attacked and heavily defeated a great Spanish armada commanded by Antonio de Oquendo. The battle was fought in neutral English waters, with English ships and crowds on the shore looking on. Together with another failed Spanish expedition a few months later, it ended Spain's efforts to contest Dutch control of the seas during the Eighty Years' War.

By the late 1630s the Spanish Empire was fighting the Dutch Republic, France and, as an ally of the emperor, in the Thirty Years' War. Its Army of Flanders depended on supplies sent overland by the so-called Spanish Road from Italy, and that route was cut in December 1638 when an army backed by France captured Breisach. Since 1621 Spain had avoided major fleet actions with the stronger Dutch navy, relying instead on privateers from Dunkirk and Ostend and on shipping men through the neutral Kingdom of England under an arrangement with Charles I.

The chief minister, the Count-Duke of Olivares, now decided to send a large convoy to Flanders and to seek a decisive battle at sea that would restore Spanish prestige and push the Dutch towards peace. By August 1639 about 50 warships had been assembled, with about 6,500 seamen and 8,000 marines aboard, to escort transports carrying roughly 9,000 soldiers and three million escudos to pay the Army of Flanders.

The armada left Spain on 27 August and entered the Channel on 11 September. On 16 September it met Tromp, who, though heavily outnumbered, formed his squadron into a line of battle and attacked. Oquendo repeatedly tried to come to grips with Tromp's flagship instead of directing his whole fleet, and his formation fell apart. After several days of indecisive fighting, Oquendo took refuge in the Downs, under the eye of Vice-Admiral John Pennington's English squadron.

The Dutch blockaded the anchorage and called for reinforcements; the Dutch admiralties hired every large armed merchantman they could find, and Tromp eventually commanded around 95 ships and a dozen fireships. Meanwhile the Spanish slipped much of their cargo across to Flanders. A squadron of fast Dunkirk frigates escaped round the Goodwin Sands with 3,000 troops and the money. Spanish reckoning later held that about 6,000 soldiers had been landed, which let Oquendo claim he had largely fulfilled his mission. For weeks the two fleets lay side by side, and tension rose when a Spanish marksman shot a Dutch sailor.

On 21 October, with the wind in his favour, Tromp struck. He sent 30 ships under Witte de With to watch Pennington's squadron, posted squadrons to block escape routes and attacked with the rest, using fireships. Some large Spanish ships deliberately ran themselves aground and were plundered by locals. Oquendo's flagship broke out, but the great galleon Santa Teresa was set ablaze by a fireship and burned with heavy loss of life. Ships of the Portuguese squadron were taken or destroyed by Johan Evertsen's ships. Oquendo escaped through the fog to Dunkirk with about ten ships.

Accounts differ sharply. The Spanish naval historian Cesáreo Fernández Duro counted about a dozen ships beached and later mostly refloated, nine captured and several more lost. Contemporary and later writers gave much higher figures; one report of 15,200 dead is now regarded as greatly exaggerated. Dutch sources record the loss of one ship and about a hundred men, and the Dutch historian M. G. de Boer estimated Spanish losses at about 40 ships and 7,000 men.

Most of the troops and nearly all the money reached Flanders, but Spain had lost a fleet that had taken years to build. With the defeat of a further expedition against Dutch Brazil in January 1640, Spain could no longer challenge Dutch naval dominance in northern waters, and the setbacks contributed to the climate in which Portugal revolted against the Spanish crown.

Our 1650 map shows the Dutch Republic, the Spanish Netherlands and England around the Channel in the years after the battle.