Current Literature
THE LIFE OF ADMIRAL DE RUYTER By Professor P. Blok
. Holland in the seventeenth _century was prolific in great men. Among her sailors none is more attractive or im- pressive than the hero of the three Anglo-Dutch wars, and the late Professor Blok did full justice to him in his most readable and trustworthy Life of Admiral .De Ruyter (Been, 21s.), well translated by Dr. Herder.- De Ruyter, a year younger than Rembrandt and. like him of humble parentage, went to sea when he was eleven, and was later engaged in the Spitz- bergen whale fishery, which the Dutch developed. He made money as a merchant skipper and probably also as a privateer, and, having married for the third time, he gave up. the sea and settled at his native Flushing. He was then- forty-three. Two-years later war broke out with the Commonwealth, and De Ruyter, much against his will, was constrained to take a high command in the great fleet that the States General were collecting. Thenceforth De Ruyter was the most popular figure in the Dutch Navy and had to serve in every campaign until he died of wounds on his flagship in the Mediterranean in 1677. As Commander-in-Chief in the second and third Dutch wars, he undoubtedly saved his country. The English Navy has never had an abler foe than De -Ruyter, whose exploit of 1667, when he sailed up the Thames and burnt Chatham dockyard and the- fleet in the Medway, remains unique. Professor Blok's narrative of the hard-fought battles in the North-Sea and the Channel -is excellently clear. More- over, he gives an attractive picture of De Ruyter himself as a stern old Puritan who understood perfeet/y how to manage sailors, and who, by his complete indifference to .public opinion, won the passionate affection- of his countrymen.
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