On the 27th of September, Blake, who was at anchor in the Downs, was informed that the Dutch had made their appearance to the northward. He at once put to sea. On the following day the English fleet was very scattered. The van, under the command of Penn, and a part of the centre, including Blake's flagship, were together, stretching across the mouth of the estuary of the Thames. Part of the centre and the rear had not yet succeeded in getting clear out of the Downs. The wind was W. by N. While the English fleet was in this scattered condition, the look-out ships of Penn's squadron found the Dutch to the eastward, and leeward of the Kentish Knock, the farthest out of the shallows on the coast of Essex and Suffolk. The English ships had worked to windward, and had the weather-gage--that is to say, the power of bearing right down on the enemy with the wind behind them. Penn, as ready, if we are to believe his own report, to engage a superior enemy as he had been a month before near Bolt Head, asked Blake's leave to attack. He was told to wait until the rest of the fleet came up, and therefore stretched ahead of his commander-in-chief, leaving a sufficient space for his division to fall into line between him and Blake. In the course of stretching out, he came too near the Kentish Knock, on which his own flagship and two others touched. He found it necessary to tack, and as he must have been standing to the N. before, this would bring him round so that he headed south. In the meantime Blake had been joined by the remaining ships of the centre and rear, and held on his course to the north, passing well clear of the Knock to leeward. The Dutch had been lying to in a line, stretched from N. to S. As Blake stood on to the north, they filled, and passed on his lee side, heading to the south. While the two lines were passing one another and cannonading as they went past, the van, under the command of Penn, was heading more or less in the same direction as the Dutch, but on the other side of Blake's ships. Thus, when the Dutch cleared the centre and rear of the English fleet, the van, which had been moving in the same direction, fell, in Penn's words, "pat to receive them," and stayed by them till night. We must suppose that the centre and rear of the English fleet either tacked or wore together and fell into line behind Penn.