James Baquet

The 1667 “Raid on the Medway,” in which the Dutch fleet sailed into an English river and destroyed several ships, was in retaliation for an equally unsavory act by the British, which came to be called “Holmes’s Bonfire” after its commanding officer Rear-Admiral Robert Holmes.

The Bonfire took place nearly a year before the Medway Raid. In it, the English fleet sailed into the estuary of the seaway called the Vlie in the Netherlands. The “Bonfire” refers to Holmes’s men setting to the torch some 130 ships of the Dutch merchant fleet.

The commanders of the English fleet had ruled out the advisability of setting up a blockade on the Dutch coast, because their supply line could not support their needs. Instead, they decided to destroy as many Dutch ships as possible while the fleet was recovering from the St. James’s Day Fight a few weeks earlier.

Rotterdam in the south, the most attractive Dutch target, was too far inland, and therefore dangerous to attack. Amsterdam, too, would be hazardous, both because of its location and because of the numerous Dutch ships in the area. Harlingen, reached by the Vlie, was within reach, and was a lesser but still significant naval port. Numerous merchant ships were anchored there waiting until the English fleet would sail away.

The Dutch wrongly assumed that they would be protected by the area’s treacherous shoals, unaware that the British had engaged the services of a turncoat Dutch pilot to guide their way.

Holmes first set fire to the fleet, then, misinformed as to the location of rich Dutch warehouses, discovered said warehouses on the shore opposite of the one where he had planned to land. With a landing party of hundreds, he entered the now-abandoned town of Terschelling, which he plundered and burned, then caught the high tide and sailed away.

Back home, English King Charles II ordered bonfires lit to celebrate the victory. A poem celebrated the raid’s success, reading in part:

Our streets were thick with bonfires large and tall

But Holmes one bonfire made, was worth’em all

Well done Sir Robert, bravely done I swear,

Whilst we made bonfires here, you made’em there

Vocabulary:

Which words above mean:

1. where a river’s current meets the sea’s tide

2. traitorous, treasonous

3. dangerous

4. while

5. lighting on fire

6. large fire in the open air

7. revenge, payback

8. objectionable, offensive

9. wisdom, sensibleness

10. person who can guide a ship