Stern carving.
Give it back, it's part of our history!
The Dutch are preparing to invade English seas with a fleet of 90 vessels after a previous expedition boarded the Royal Navy’s flagship and stole the Royal Coat of Arms from her. In a celebration of Dutch Admiral De Ruyter’s 1667 raid on Chatham Dockyard, which resulted in English flagship HMS Royal Charles being boarded and …
Yeah, we have such a good record on that ourselves of course!
Still, at least theyhaven't tried restoring it in any way
"It'll float back to us when the Rijksmuseum is under 40 foot of water."
Dutch engineering isn't as sloppy as British engineering - it seems that the past few years it's England that's drowning, rivers busting their banks, people feeing their homes whereas the Dutch are just looking at it astonished about Britain's incapability of just dealing with it.
"Give it back, it's part of our history!"
The French don't complain about us keeping the stern piece of HMS Implacable, formerly known as the French ship Duguay-Trouin, captured in a cleaning up exercise a few days after Trafalgar!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Implacable_(1805)#/media/File:HMS_Implacable_(1805)_stern.JPG
http://www.britishpathe.com/video/Implacable-to-the-end
....but if the Brexit goes ahead, 'our' could refer to two different countries.
Hollanders opine that Albion got its just in deserts in 1667 for the destruction it wrought on the Dutch fleet in 1666.
http://historiek.net/1666-twee-vergeten-rampen-bij-vlieland/45120/
Captain Rude Lubbers is coming for your rusty Iron Lady.
What about the Tirpitz bulkhead? Taken from a German ship, it was presented by Norway to the RAF, where upon it became the target of intense rivalry between 617, and 9 sqn, both of which claim to have dropped the fateful bomb that finally sunk the Tipitz.
Oh wait, those are all in dock for repairs. Well, a couple Harriers could wa...wait, forget I said that. Dispatch a Nimrod maritime patro....strike that, none of those around anymore either.
So you were saying that the first time this happened, the Dutch got away scot-free because the British were laid up due to lack of funding? The past really is prologue!
In the meantime Dutch frigates (which really should be destroyers if you look at their spec) are all combat ready and operational: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HNLMS_De_Zeven_Provinci%C3%ABn_%28F802%29
It also has anti-ship armament (something Royal Navy no longer has).
If wars were won by feasting,
0r victory by song,
Or safety found in sleeping sound,
How England would be strong!
But honour and dominion
Are not maintained so.
They're only got by sword and shot,
And this the Dutchmen know!
The moneys that should feed us
You spend on your delight,
How can you then have sailor-men
To aid you in your fight?
Our fish and cheese are rotten,
Which makes the scurvy grow -
We cannot serve you if we starve,
And this the Dutchmen know!
Our ships in every harbour
Be neither whole nor sound,
And, when we seek to mend a leak,
No oakum can be found;
Or, if it is, the caulkers,
And carpenters also,
For lack of pay have gone away,
And this the Dutchmen know!
Mere powder, guns, and bullets,
We scarce can get at all;
Their price was spent in merriment
And revel at Whitehall,
While we in tattered doublets
From ship to ship must row,
Beseeching friends for odds and ends -
And this the Dutchmen know!
No King will heed our warnings,
No Court will pay our claims -
Our King and Court for their disport
Do sell the very Thames!
For, now De Ruyter's topsails
Off naked Chatham show,
We dare not meet him with our fleet -
And this the Dutchmen know!
Kipling, "The Dutch in the Medway"
"The Gods of the Copy-Book Headings" is also pretty trenchant about forgetting the past. Kipling is very under-rated.
Samuel Pepys records that the English sailors heard Englishment taunting them from the Dutch attacking ships. A lot of British sailors were so fed up about not being paid that they had signed-on with the Dutch navy, which did pay promptly. That's how the Dutch knew how to get past the defensive chains strung across the Medway.
BTW, it's not just the Royal coat of arms that the Dutch took away. It was the whole ship. The stern section is still displayed, as noted above, in the state naval museum. And very impressive it is, too.
> Samuel Pepys records that the English sailors heard Englishment taunting them from the Dutch attacking ships
The Dutch, not being stupid, realised that passage up the Medway would require local pilots. So they simply hired them. There were plenty of volunteers from amongst the English sailors.
The English were repeatedly warned about the impending attack and dismissed it. As the Dutch proceeded up the Medway the English upped and ran away. It got so bad that banks in London were swamped with people trying to empty their accounts in case the Dutch just steamrollered straight into the capital.
It was such a screw up, such a humiliation that it pretty much led to the end of the war.
Apparently the only sailors who showed any sort of backbone were the Scots on Royal Oak, who fought their ship until it burned out from under them.
Yes.
The only question is how we intend to go about it. We could transition to the EEA/EFTA for continuity and then use that as a place to negotiate long-term deals, or we could do it the way May wants: run around gibbering, jump off a cliff and shoot ourselves in the face on the way down.
If the Dutch get too out of hand after sailing from Vlissingen, seems like an appropriate response would be some kind of return visit a few weeks later to celebrate the 208th anniversary of the bombardment and capture of the French port of Flushing. Surely they've got the mosquitoes under control there by now.
1. It seems some wayward Scots fought back, but many were in the Dutch side. Maybe England can hire some part time Scots sailors /out of work fisher folk to greet the Dutch folk.
2. PS I am some what biased. a Scots exile in England these past 60 odd years with happy memories of time in The Netherlands.