Naval history of the Netherlands
As overseas trade was a traditional cornerstone of the Dutch economy, naval defence was indispensable for the protection of commercial interests.
Wealthy merchants and local authorities in the many ports of the Low Countries took initiative to arm ships since the 15th century and incidentally attacked pirates and foreign competitors.
Their capture of Brielle was the first significant victory of the revolt, and led to the entire province of Holland and Zealand declaring for the Prince and against the Habsburg overlord, Philip II of Spain and the Spanish government.
Other activities included blocking the port of Antwerp and the Flemish coast (to prevent the Spanish troops there from getting supplies) and escorting the Dutch merchants in the Baltic.
In the course of the 17th century, Dutch maritime and commercial expansion led to increasing tensions with other European nations, most prominently England.
[1] The Third Anglo-Dutch War was in fact an alliance between France, England, Cologne and Münster to attack the Netherlands and end the dominance of the Dutch Republic over the seas.
A new era arrived in 1688, when a new Anglo-French alliance seemed imminent; the Dutch stadtholder William III took a desperate gamble by sailing to England with a large fleet that landed in Torbay in Devon.
In the 25 years after this 'Glorious Revolution' the Dutch and the English successfully fought together with various other allies against France, then at the height of its powers during the reign of Louis XIV.
At the start of the 17th century, the squadrons of the Dutch fleet were reinforced with merchant ships adapted for battle in earlier conflicts.
The federative decentralised naval command was now replaced by a central organisation in The Hague, reflecting the increasingly centralised structure of the country.
The warships stayed in the drydocks, although a number of ships managed to follow the fleeing stadtholder William V to Great Britain; others, like the ships sailing in East Asia, were later joined with the forces of William V. After the surrender of a naval squadron at Saldanha Bay (1796) and the defeat at the Battle of Camperdown (1797), the surrender of the fleet near the Vlieter in 1799 proved to be the death of the Batavian Navy.
The Dutch navy in the 19th century suffered from a constant shortage of manpower, forcing the government to hire crew from its colonies; this increased the total employees from 5000 in 1850 to over 10,000 in 1900.
During the Second World War the Dutch navy was based in Allied countries, due to the conquest in May 1940 of the Netherlands by Nazi Germany.
[7] Around the world Dutch naval units were responsible for troop transport, for example during Operation Dynamo in Dunkirk and D-Day, they escorted convoys and attacked enemy targets.
During the war the navy suffered heavy losses, especially in defence of the Dutch East Indies against the Japanese in the Battle of the Java Sea (February 1942) in which rear admiral Karel Doorman went down with most of his ships and with 2,300 of his crew.
The establishment of the Republic of Indonesia two days after the Japanese surrender cooled the Dutch plans for re-establishing its colonial authority.
At the time of the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the military focus was on the army and air force; it was not until the Korean War (1950–1953) that the navy got more recognition.
The Soviet Union-dominated Warsaw Pact was perceived as the main permanent threat; this made a fixed military strategy useful.
In the 1960s the Soviet Union abandoned its traditional land based strategy and built up a navy with worldwide impact, with many submarines and even an aircraft carrier.
The main task of NATO navies was the protection of shipping lanes across the Northern Atlantic between the NATO-allies in North America and western Europe.
The tradition of maritime painting was strong in the Netherlands, especially in the Golden Age, and one of the favourite topics was celebrating Dutch Naval victories.
