Threedecks Forum

Im looking for detailed information on both the Dutch and British battle ships that took part in the action in July 1704, when Gibraltar was captured from the Spanish.

Threedecks has a raw list of the British https://threedecks.org/index.php?displa ... tle&id=297

Needs filling out though.

Hello Cy, many thanks for your quick reply.
I'll certainly have a look at that raw list, thanks

You're welcome, it's what we're here for.

The Manuscripts of the House of Lords vol. 6, 1704 - 1706 has a lot of material on Anglo-Dutch naval operations including a Line of Battle for Rooke's Anglo-Dutch Fleet dated 26th April 1704, which gives the commander, guns and men for each ship.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?num ... 8033431366

Individual ships are listed in the index to the volume at the back

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?vie ... 16;num=468

Grammont, that is absolutely fantastic!

I will look into this as soon as possible.

I have also contacted some Dutch museums looking for information from their side.

Can someone please advise me from where i might be able to get information of the Warships, both British and Dutch that took part in the battle for Gibraltar?

Bit surpirsed, Threedecks has them all.

Apologies, i need to rephrase what i'm asking for.
What i would like would be to find detailed information on each ship that took part in that battle.
e.g.
1. Who were the Commanding Officers of each ship and the officers?
2. Plans of these ships.
etc etc.

You are probably going to have to look up ship dimensions and standard armament one by one in navy directories. For the British and Dutch, there are the _____ Warships in the Age of Sail series published by Seaforth Publishing. There is a Dutch directory (Dutch Warships in the Age of Sail) that goes up to 1714 by James Bender. There are three volumes for the British (British Warships in the Age of Sail) by Rif Winfield: you'll need the first (chronologically) volume. For the French, the second volume of French Warships in the Age of Sail by Winfield and Steve Roberts, starting in 1786, has been published, but it appears that the first volume, up to 1786, has not been released yet. Armament and dimensions for French warships of the first decade of the 18th century can be found in Alain Demerliac, La marine de Louis XV: Nomenclature des vaisseaux du Roi-Soleil de 1661 à 1715 (Nice: Editions OMEGA, 1995), if you can find it in a library (I think it's out of print, but you can Google the author, title, and publisher if you want to buy it; the originals were rather expensive).

By "Battle for Gibraltar" do you mean the Battle of Velez Malaga, August 13 [British calendar]/August 24 [French and, I think, Dutch calendar], 1704? If so, British and some Dutch commanders are listed in William Laird Clowes, The Royal Navy, A History, volume III, pages 399–400. Other Dutch commanders might be found in a detailed Dutch naval history like Cornelis de Jonge, Geschiedenis van het nederlandsche zeewezen; 1704 is in volume III of the 1861 edition. Clowes has the French captains for the "private" ships (non-flagships). Probably a more reliable source for the French is O. Troude, Batailles navales de la France, volume I, pages 250–251. He also does not have captains for private ships; it is possible that none were assigned to flagships in the French navy at that time.

The Seaforth volumes have an occasional set of lines, but if you want the plans for every ship, as far as they are available, I think you are going to have to visit the [British] National Archives in Kew, London, and the Archives nationales in Paris. Dutch naval administration up to about 1799 was decentralized into five admiralties, and there was a fire in the central Dutch archives in the 1840s. If the archives of the five admiralties had been centralized by then, the ship plans might have burned up. If not, I don't know whether they have been centralized since. There are Dutch naval archives, but I don't know whether they include construction/design plans from the late 17th century (when most of the 1704 Dutch ships would have been built). You might get some idea from Bender's book.