While the main tide of war had been ebbing and flowing through the North Sea and the Channel, there had been minor conflicts at the entry to the Baltic and the Mediterranean. The first is of comparatively little importance in naval history, and is indeed hardly worth mentioning, except on the ground that it illustrates a chronic difficulty of the English Government in all naval wars. We drew a great part of our stores from the Baltic. Pitch and tar, hemp for cordage, and pine wood for spars and planking, as well as part of the oak used in our ships, were supplied by Scandinavia and Russia. At a later period the American plantations entered into competition with the Baltic trade, but in the middle of the seventeenth century these indispensable articles were obtained only in the North of Europe. If they were cut off by the hostility of the Northern Powers, the task of fitting a fleet for sea was rendered almost impossible. The sense that they had it in their power to inflict so heavy a blow upon us, rendered the kingdoms of the North occasionally somewhat exacting. In the first Dutch war, the King of Denmark acted with open hostility to the Commonwealth. He had strong political motives for remaining on good terms with the United Provinces, and it is very possible that he shared the common incredulity of Europe as to our power to overcome the first naval power in the world. If the Dutch proved victorious, they would certainly be obliged to him for any harm he might have done us. Acting under the influence of a desire to please the Dutch, the King of Denmark availed himself of a pretext to arrest an English convoy at Elsinore in the autumn of 1652. A squadron of eighteen ships was despatched under the command of Captain Ball to enforce their release. Ball's force was scattered by a gale, and he was compelled to return without the convoy. A long and angry negotiation followed between the Governments, but the Danish king learned that it was more dangerous to offend England than Holland, before we were compelled to teach him the lesson directly.