The Battle of Terheide

On 10 August 1653, off the dunes between Scheveningen and Terheide on the Dutch coast, the fleet of the Dutch Republic attacked an English fleet that had been blockading its ports for weeks. It was the last great battle of the First Anglo-Dutch War, a war over trade and command of the sea. At the centre of this huge canvas, nearly three metres wide, the Brederode, the Dutch flagship, fires its guns at the Resolution, the English flagship of George Monck, an army general who had been given command at sea.

The Dutch lost the battle, and early in the fighting their commander, Lieutenant-Admiral Maarten Tromp, was killed by a musket shot on board the Brederode. Jan Abrahamsz Beerstraaten signed the picture on a piece of driftwood in the lower left corner, and the Rijksmuseum bought it in 1808.