[3] King Charles took passage on Surprise after the defeat of the royalist cause in 1651, narrowly avoiding pursuing Parliamentarian forces.

After the royalist defeat at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651 King Charles II escaped and fled from the Parliamentarian forces who had orders to arrest him.

He travelled eventually to Brighton, where he met the captain of a collier, Nicholas Tettersell, and arranged passage to France.

[4] Tettersell agreed to make the passage, and safely landed the royal party at Fécamp on his ship, the Surprise.

[6][8] This article includes data released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported UK: England & Wales Licence, by the National Maritime Museum, as part of the Warship Histories project.