Fights for the Flag (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Fights for the Flag

And yet the fighting quality of these clumsy fleets was of a very high order. These Dutchmen, heavy footed, solid, grim, were in the seventeenth century, to use the phrase of a French writer, the Phoenicians of the modern world, the waggoners of all seas. They were the commercial heirs of Venice. The fire of their long struggle for freedom had given to the national character the edge and temper of steel. They had swept the Spanish flag from the seas. The carrying trade of the world was in their hands. They fished in all waters, traded in all ports, gathered the wealth of the world under all skies, and, as far as marine qualities were concerned, might almost have been web-footed. Holland to-day is a land Without ambition, comfortable, fat, heavy - bottomed. In the middle of the seventeenth century Holland proudly claimed to be the greatest naval power in the world, and by daring seamanship, great fleets, famous admirals, and a world-encompassing trade, it went far to justify that boast.

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