But the operations against the enemy’s fisheries played only a small part in the war. The struggle for the command of the sea was concentrated in many fierce battles between the contending fleets in 1652 and 1653. The exploits of Blake, Dean, Monk, and Penn on the one side, and of Tromp, De Ruyter, Evertsen, and De With on the other, are famous in the naval history of the two countries; and although victory finally rested with England, there were times when the actual control of the British seas was in the hands of the Dutch. It was on one of those occasions that the Dutch admiral was said to have hoisted a broom at his mainmast-top as a sign that he would sweep the seas of all Englishmen. Tromp unexpectedly appeared in force in the Channel in the winter of 1652, and on 30th November he defeated Blake off Dungeness. From that date till the end of February in the following year no English fleet was able to oppose him. The Dutch were “lords and masters” of the sea, and English commerce suffered severely. But the popular story about the broom seems to have uncertain foundation. It was first set afloat in two English newspapers, published on 9th March 1653, after the decisive “three days’ battle.” In one it was said that Tromp had set forth “a flag (or standard) of Broom; and being demanded what he meant by it, reply’d, That he was once more going to sweep the Narrow Seas of all Englishmen.” The other paper gave a letter from the _Nonsuch_ frigate at Portsmouth, stating that the Hollanders had probably gone home after the battle, and that “their gallant Mr Trump when he was in France (we understand) wore a flagg of Broom, and being demanded what he meant by it, replied that he was going to sweep the narrow seas of all English men.” The story is not mentioned by Dutch authorities, and is now generally discredited, but in an earlier century the broom had been used in this way by a Dutch admiral to signalise a victory in the Baltic;[732] and it is said that after the two days’ battle in the following summer, when the Dutch had been driven from the sea, the English fleet rode triumphant off the Texel with a broom displayed at their mast-heads, perhaps in ironical parody of Tromp.