438 Burned to Sticks

January 12, 2026·35 min·3 clips

Admiral Monk faced 30 more Dutch ships but declared, 'I didn't get where I am today by worrying about impossible odds.'

The battle is ugly for the Dutch from early on. Trump, the younger admiral, goes chasing personal glory with his own squadron, then comes back to find the main body battered. De Witte somehow keeps the fleet moving. Under heavy English pressure, including the fireship Land of Promise, he turns a wreck of a day into a fighting retreat. The bill is still savage: 7,000 Dutch dead, two ships lost, and command of the seas handed to the English. De Witte also gives the episode its dose of theatre. His line about wanting one cannonball to take him gets treated as melodrama, because the host is not letting that pass. The cannonball declines the invitation. When de Witte and Trump meet again, nobody mistakes it for a calm review. There are words, gentle listeners. Trump gets blamed for helping make the mess, and then August makes the mess worse. Holmes spots the opening. With help from a Dutch traitor, he reaches 150 defenceless merchantmen on the Dutch coast and burns them. Holmes's Bonfire is born. He then goes ashore and burns a local Dutch town too, for no better reason than damage. The Terschelling raid bites deep. Dutch papers answer with fury, fire, brimstone, and revenge promised later. Politics turns the wound sour. Trump is the Orangist figure, so naval blame becomes public slander. The 1666 campaigning season winds down with a croaky sign off, the brick business parked for later, and parliamentary democracy and the Great Rebuilding waiting next.

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