There are, sometimes, observations and inquiries, which all historians seem to decline by agreement, of which this action may afford us an example: nothing appears, at the first view, more to demand our curiosity, or afford matter for examination, than this wild encounter of twenty-two ships, with a force, according to their accounts who favour the Dutch, three times superiour. Nothing can justify a commander in fighting under such disadvantages, but the impossibility of retreating. But what hindered Blake from retiring, as well before the fight, as after it? To say he was ignorant of the strength of the Dutch fleet, is to impute to him a very criminal degree of negligence; and, at least, it must be confessed, that from the time he saw them, he could not but know that they were too powerful to be opposed by him, and even then there was time for retreat. To urge the ardour of his sailors, is to divest him of the authority of a commander, and to charge him with the most reproachful weakness that can enter into the character of a general. To mention the impetuosity of his own courage, is to make the blame of his temerity equal to the praise of his valour; which seems, indeed, to be the most gentle censure that the truth of history will allow. We must then admit, amidst our eulogies and applauses, that the great, the wise, and the valiant Blake, was once betrayed to an inconsiderate and desperate enterprise, by the resistless ardour of his own spirit, and a noble jealousy of the honour of his country. It was not long, before he had an opportunity of revenging his loss, and restraining the insolence of the Dutch. On the 18th of February, 1652-3, Blake, being at the head of eighty sail, and assisted, at his own request, by colonels Monk and Dean, espied Van Trump, with a fleet of above one hundred men of war, as Clarendon relates, of seventy by their own publick accounts, and three hundred merchant ships under his convoy. The English, with their usual intrepidity, advanced towards them; and Blake, in the Triumph, in which he always led his fleet, with twelve ships more, came to an engagement with the main body of the Dutch fleet, and by the disparity of their force was reduced to the last extremity, having received in his hull no fewer than seven hundred shots, when Lawson, in the Fairfax, came to his assistance. The rest of the English fleet now came in, and the fight was continued with the utmost degree of vigour and resolution, till the night gave the Dutch an opportunity of retiring, with the loss of one flagship, and six other men of war. The English had many vessels damaged, but none lost. On board Lawson's ship were killed one hundred men, and as many on board Blake's, who lost his captain and secretary, and himself received a wound in the thigh.