During the night of the 26th the wind rose, and De Ruyter steered for the Scheldt, followed up by Monk's two divisions. The Dutch admiral covered his retreat with his best ships, and a running fight began at dawn. Even before the sun rose the sounds of a heavy cannonade had come through the darkness, telling that Tromp and Smith were hard at it again in their detached battle. Early in the day Monk abandoned the chase of the Dutch, and steered towards the sound of the cannonade. Soon the fleet came in distant sight of the battle. Tromp with the "Zealand squadron" was making a dogged retreat, working to the south-east, close-hauled on the wind from the north-east. Monk tacked and made more than one attempt to place himself across the course of the Dutchmen, hoping to catch them between his fleet and Smith's Blue Division as between hammer and anvil. But Tromp slipped between his enemies and was before long in full sail for Holland, with the three English divisions combined in a stern chase. Monk said that if Smith had pressed Tromp closer early in the day, his retreat would have certainly been cut off. Smith and his friends protested that if the "general at sea" had laid his fleet on a better course, Tromp would have been taken. The honours of this last move in the game were with the Dutchman. A substantial victory had been gained, though there were few trophies to show for it. The enemy had been met and forced by sheer hard knocks to abandon his station off the mouth of the Thames, and take refuge in his own ports. Monk was on the Dutch coast, picking up returning merchantmen as prizes, blockading the outgoing trade, and keeping the great fishing fleet in ruinous idleness. With the help of information supplied by a Dutch traitor, Monk reaped further advantage from his victory and inflicted heavy additional loss on the enemy. On 8 August the fleet sailed into the roadstead behind the long island of Terschelling, one of the chain of islands at the mouth of the Zuyder Zee, and burned at their anchors a hundred and sixty Dutch merchantmen that had taken shelter there, including several great East Indiamen. Next day landing-parties burned and plundered the ranges of warehouses on the island, and destroyed the town of Terschelling. The loss to the Dutch traders was estimated at over a million sterling. The victorious battle off the Thames in July, 1666, is practically forgotten, so far as the popular tradition of our naval successes goes. It has not even a name by which it might live in the memory of our people. But it practically broke the power of Holland and brought the war to an end. What men do remember, and what has banished from their minds the living tradition of the great North Sea battle, is the ugly fact that in the following year De Ruyter sailed unopposed into the Thames, and captured and burned in the Medway dismantled ships that had fought victoriously against him in the North Sea battle--the "Royal Charles" being among his prizes.