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This is the last of a three-episode series on the Dutch “raid on America” in 1673, during the Third Anglo-Dutch War. Commander Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest of the Admiralty of the Dutch province of Zeeland – “Kees the Devil” – and a privateer named Jacob Benckes had pillaged English possessions in the Indies. By late June 1673 their fleet of at least 12 ships was sailing to the Chesapeake Bay, where the year’s crop of tobacco from Virginia and Maryland had been loaded on merchant ships to sail by convoy to England. Arriving there on July 10, Evertsen and Benckes fought two English warships in the second Battle of the James River, and captured or destroyed thousands of hogsheads of tobacco. As they left with their haul, they grabbed a ketch with, among other people, a couple of the New Jersey rebels on board. They gave Evertsen important intelligence about the shoddy defenses of New York. By the end of July, only three weeks after arriving at the Chesapeake, Kees the Devil would reconquer New Netherland.
But not before a brave English soldier got decapitated by a cannon ball.
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Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)
Donald G. Shomette and Robert D. Haslach, Raid on America: The Dutch Naval Campaign of 1672-1674
John E. Pomfret, Province of East New Jersey, 1609-1702: The Rebellious Proprietary
Robert C. Ritchie, The Duke’s Province: A Study of New York Politics and Society, 1664-1691
Battle of the James River (1667) (Wikipedia)
