Battle of Stromboli, 1676: de Ruyter against Duquesne off Sicily

For two days in January 1676 the smoke of two fleets drifted over the sea between Sicily and the volcanic islands to the north. On one side stood the most famous admiral of the Dutch Republic, sent far from home with too few ships; on the other, the best French seaman of his generation, with the wind in his favor and a convoy to protect. Stromboli settled nothing on the day. It was the first of three battles off Sicily that year, and the opening of the last campaign of Michiel de Ruyter.¹

Who won the Battle of Stromboli and why?

Neither side won outright. Duquesne's French fleet had the wind, more ships and heavier guns, but its attack fell into disorder and could not break de Ruyter's line. The Dutch held, yet they did not stop the French from joining their reinforcements and reaching Messina, which is why France claimed a victory and the Dutch a draw.²

Both national memories claimed it. Stichting De Ruyter notes that French historians count Stromboli and the later battle off Etna as French victories, because de Ruyter failed to destroy or drive off the French fleet, while Dutch and Spanish historians count them as a successful draw, because France never managed to take Sicily. Royal Museums Greenwich, describing a portrait of Duquesne, speaks of a series of indecisive engagements before his great victory off Catania. The Dutch heritage agency simply calls Stromboli undecided.³

Background: a Dutch fleet in Spanish waters

By 1674 the Dutch had made peace with England, but their war with Louis XIV went on. That same year the city of Messina rose against its Spanish rulers, and France took it under its protection as a way of striking at Spain. By early 1675 French troops were established in the city and the French navy in the Mediterranean was growing, while the Spanish navy proved too weak to do anything about it.⁴

Spain turned to its Dutch allies and asked for a fleet under de Ruyter, offering to pay for it. The Republic, worn down by war and debt, could spare only a squadron of eighteen warships with a few smaller vessels and fireships. De Ruyter, who had watched the French navy grow, thought the force far too small. Mahan wrote that he sailed oppressed in spirit, but with his usual calm.⁵

He reached Cadiz in September 1675 and then lost weeks to Spanish delays, arriving off the north coast of Sicily only in late December. There he learned that a French fleet was on its way to Messina with troops and supplies, and he took station between Messina and the Lipari Islands to intercept it.⁶

Each admiral had a clear task. Duquesne was to bring his convoy through and join the French squadron of the Marquis d'Alméras, which was to come out of Messina and would give France a fleet of some thirty ships; de Ruyter was to prevent that junction. An English captain met at sea told the French that de Ruyter had said he was waiting there for “the brave Duquesne.”⁷

Armies and commanders

De Ruyter flew his flag in the Eendracht, the ship that would carry him through the whole Sicilian campaign. He was the foremost figure of the Dutch navy and the great admiral of the wars against England. His ships, though, were smaller and more lightly armed than the French, ship for ship.⁸ › Battle of Lowestoft, 1665

The French commander, Abraham Duquesne, was a veteran of every kind of sea service. He had commanded ships under Cardinal Richelieu and had fought the Danes while serving in the Swedish navy. Mahan rated him the best French naval officer of the century, with the possible exception of Tourville. His task in January 1676 was to bring a convoy of troops and supplies safely to Messina. He had twenty ships of the line and six fireships against nineteen allied ships, one of them Spanish, and four fireships.⁹

The battle in phases

7 January: the weather gauge. The fleets sighted each other on 7 January, and the day passed in maneuvering. At first the Dutch held the weather gauge, the windward position that let a fleet choose when and how to attack. In the night the weather turned squally, the Spanish galleys with the Dutch ran for shelter under Lipari, and the wind shifted to the west-southwest. By morning the French had the wind and the choice of attack. Mahan found it surprising that the man who had made the furious attacks of Solebay and the Texel three years earlier had not pressed the French on the 7th; his reasons, Mahan wrote, have not come down to us, but the defensive position suited an inferior fleet facing an impetuous enemy.¹⁰

The French accounts add detail to this picture. On the afternoon of the 7th de Ruyter signaled his ships to form for battle, but as evening fell he put the attack off until the next day. Duquesne spent the night beating to windward, and by morning, off the island of Alicudi at the western end of the group, he had the wind.¹¹

8 January: the French attack. Duquesne sent his convoy ahead and formed his line heading south; de Ruyter formed his own line and waited. Mahan, who followed the French accounts, describes the French line bearing down at an angle on the Dutch at about nine in the morning, a hard maneuver that exposed the attackers to the defenders' fire as they came on. Two ships of the French van were badly damaged, the van crowded together, and the French came into action one after another rather than all at once.¹²

Both admirals divided their fleets into three. The French van was led by the Marquis de Preuilly, the center by Duquesne himself and the rear by Gabaret; de Ruyter set Rear Admiral Nicolaas Verschoor against Preuilly and Vice Admiral Jan den Haen against Gabaret, and kept Duquesne for himself. The French van came into action badly. The Prudent of the Chevalier de La Fayette ran ahead into the Dutch van and was dismasted, and Preuilly was left for a time to fight several Dutch ships at once. Two French fireships sent against de Ruyter lost way when the wind died and were shot to pieces before they could reach him, and a third was sunk by gunfire.¹³

The long fight. In Mahan's account Duquesne gradually restored order and the whole line was engaged. The Dutch, engaged along their whole line, held everywhere. Their rear was separated from the rest, but the French could not cut it off, and every attempt to break the Dutch failed. The battle ended at about half past four in the afternoon, and Spanish galleys came up to tow the disabled Dutch ships away.¹⁴

Verschoor was killed in the fighting. In the afternoon a gap opened between de Ruyter and den Haen's rear, and Duquesne sent ships under the Chevalier de Tourville into it, but Gabaret's division was slow to come up after one of its captains, the Chevalier de Forbin, fouled his commander's ship, and the falling wind ended the chance to cut off the Dutch rear. Late in the day nine Spanish galleys came up from Lipari; heavy shot from Tourville drove them off, and they returned to tow the most damaged Dutch ships away. Writing to the States General the next day, de Ruyter said he had never been in a harder fight, and that the French had done wonders.¹⁵

Turning point: a defense that held

The French had more ships, heavier guns and the wind, and still they could not break de Ruyter., and they were too battered to follow up their attack.¹⁶

Mahan saw in the battle a lesson for a century of naval warfare. Whether or not de Ruyter chose the leeward position on purpose, he wrote, the Dutch admiral reaped all its benefits: the French, attacking with fury but imperfect seamanship, came down ship against ship without trying to concentrate on part of the Dutch line, and wore themselves out. Mahan judged that Duquesne attacked in a wholly unscientific manner, yet he thought the battle worth study because it marked the highest point French naval tactics had then reached.¹⁷

Counting the losses

Both fleets were badly knocked about. The French lost about four hundred men killed and wounded, by the counts of Jal and La Roncière, and Duquesne himself was among the wounded, but none of their ships was sunk. On the Dutch side Rear Admiral Verschoor was among the dead, and the Essen, already badly damaged, sank the next day while Spanish galleys were towing her toward Palermo. The French had spent so much powder and shot that they were in no state to follow up.¹⁸

Where was the battle fought?

Even the place is given differently. The name comes from Stromboli, one of the volcanic Aeolian Islands; Mahan places the Dutch between Messina and the Lipari Islands, and a French print of 1844 calls it the combat of the Lipari Islands. The Dutch prints of 1676 are vaguer: one sets the fight near Palermo, another by Messina, and the Dutch heritage agency's register places it near Palermo.¹⁹

French historians usually give the battle another name. Jal and La Roncière call it the battle of Alicudi, after the westernmost island of the group, off which most of the fighting took place, and both use the name Stromboli for an earlier fight in the same waters on 11 February 1675. One French officer, the Chevalier de Valbelle, placed the fleets that morning between Panarea and Stromboli.²⁰

Aftermath: Etna and the death of de Ruyter

The French did not have to fight again. On 10 January d'Alméras came out of Messina with ten ships and joined Duquesne near Stromboli, while Spanish reinforcements under the Prince of Montesarchio reached de Ruyter, eight ships by Jal's count and nine by La Roncière's. On the 11th, facing a stronger French fleet, de Ruyter declined to renew the battle. Duquesne judged the passage of the narrow strait too risky, sailed round Sicily by the south and brought his fleet into Messina on 22 January.²¹

De Ruyter took his fleet into Palermo, and there the Spanish ships finally joined him. Command of the combined fleet passed to Spanish admirals, junior to de Ruyter in rank and, in his view, far less capable. On 22 April 1676 the two fleets met again off Agosta, in sight of Etna. The balance was worse than before: Mahan counts 29 French ships against 27 allied, ten of them Spanish, and Stichting De Ruyter 29 French ships of the line against 19 allied ships of the line with frigates and galleys. De Ruyter wanted the Spanish ships spread through the line where the Dutch could support them, but the Spanish commander kept them together in the center. The Spanish center hung back at long range and the Dutch van under de Ruyter took the brunt of the fighting. Early in the battle a cannonball struck him. He died of his wounds a week later, on 29 April, at Syracuse.²²

A month later the French attacked the allied fleets at anchor off Palermo and destroyed many of their ships. Yet the French never turned their foothold at Messina into the conquest of Sicily, and in the end Louis XIV gave the enterprise up. For him, Mahan writes, Sicily had only ever been a diversion from the war on land.²³

Legacy and memory

In Amsterdam the battle was in print the same year. The publishers Jacobus Robijn and Marcus Doornick each brought out an etched broadsheet in 1676, a picture of the fleets with a long printed account of the fight in Dutch beneath it, and both are now in the Rijksmuseum.²⁴

De Ruyter remained a Dutch national hero. In Vlissingen a statue by the sculptor Louis Royer was raised in 1841, and it is now a national monument. Two bronze ship's guns stand beside it. Stichting De Ruyter says they were raised from the site of the battle off Etna and given to the Netherlands by Italy in 1907; the national monument register records that they were cast in 1617 and 1622.²⁵ › Battle of Beachy Head, 1690