List of ships of the line of the Dutch Republic

This is a list of Dutch (United Provinces of the Netherlands) ships of the line, or sailing warships:
The Dutch were often handicapped by the smaller size of their ships relative to the vessels of other nations, particularly those of England and France. This was due to the shallow home waters of the Netherlands. Consequently the Dutch did not build large three-deckers such as were found in the navies of England and France, except for a brief period from 1685 to 1693. However, the Dutch made up in sheer quantity of ships what they lacked in terms of the size of vessels; the list below is fragmentary and does not include the majority of the many hundreds of Dutch warships belonging to the United Provinces between 1579 and 1795 (in which latter year the French invaded and established the puppet state of the Batavian Republic).
Administratively and politically, there was not a single Dutch Navy but five distinct Admiralties - Admiralty of Zeeland covering the Province of Zeeland in the south, three covering the Province of Holland (the Admiralty of de Maze in the south of Holland, centred on Rotterdam, the Admiralty of Amsterdam in the centre of the Province, and the Admiralty of the Noorderkwartier in the north of Holland), and the fifth Admiralty of Friesland covering the Province of Friesland). Each Dutch warship belonged exclusively to one or other of the five Admiralties. The names of Dutch warships were often common to several Admiralties, so that there were vessels bearing the same name in different Admiralties.

Armament was often changed.

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 9/7/2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.