Ostend, a port on the North Sea coast, offered more resistance.

Determined not to "give the enemy any breathing space", Marlborough detached Dutch and British forces under Henry de Nassau, Lord Overkirk to deal with it.

[3] Naval support for the besiegers came from a Royal Navy squadron under Sir Stafford Fairborne.

Fairborne used bomb ketches to fire on the town, setting it alight.

In the wake of Ostend's fall, Marlborough was offered the Governor Generalship of the Spanish Netherlands but was forced to decline it for fear of offending his Dutch allies.