Holmes’ Bonfire (Anglo-Dutch Wars) war movies

Holmes’ Bonfire 19 August 1666

During Second Anglo-Dutch War the St. James’s Day battle casualties caused Dutch navy to retreat to ports. Having the complete control over North Sea English commanders prepared a raid on Dutch coast. While most of the ports were well guarded English made use of the knowledge brought by Dutch captain, Laurens Heemskerck, who fled to England. He pointed the West-Terschelling mooring as good target, where merchant ships were sheltering during the English blockade.

The raid aimed to pillage the Vlieland island and capture or destroy the Dutch merchant ships that would be found there. On 19th August 1666 there were about 140 of them merchant ships on the mooring. While Rear-Admiral Robert Holmes approached the island he discovered that there were very little installations on land, so there was not much for him to destroy and thus he decided to make the fleet his primary target. While the area was difficult to navigate Holmes decided to attack using fireships, which worked well for him - the five fireships managed to sink the only two Dutch warships that were guarding the mooring and set fire to three large merchant ships. This caused the panic among the crews of the merchant and fire quickly was spreading among them. Only about 11 vessels managed to flee the mooring, rest (about 130) were destroyed.

On the second day Holmes discovered that the land installations he was looking for were on the other end of the island, so he deployed his landing party that soon took over control of the West-Terschelling, a wealthy whale-industry town, and burnt it down.

Three weeks after Holmes’ Bonfire the Great Fire of London swept the English capital destroying about 80% of the city. In Dutch Republic it was interpreted as divine retribution for Holmes’s Bonfire