Lieutenant-Admiral Michiel de Ruyter virtually controlled the seas around the south coast of England after a battle that took place in what year ?
Raid on the Medway The Raid on the Medway during the Second Anglo-Dutch War in June 1667, sometimes called the Battle of the Medway, Raid on Chatham or the Battle of Chatham, was a successful and daring attack conducted by the Dutch navy deep upriver targeting the largest English naval battleships at a time when most were virtually unmanned and unarmed, laid up due to lack of funding in the fleet anchorages off Chatham Dockyard and Gillingham in the county of Kent. At the time, the fortress of Upnor Castle and a barrier chain called the "Gillingham Line" were supposed to protect the mothballed naval ships anchored off Chatham, the main English naval base in southeastern Stuart England.
Dutch West Indies campaign The Dutch West Indies campaign was a series of minor conflicts in 1781 and 1782, in the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War and the Anglo-French War. Following Great Britain's declaration of war on the Dutch Republic in December 1780, British Admiral George Brydges Rodney, the commander of the Royal Navy in the West Indies, was notified by a fast-sailing packet of the declaration. He immediately acted to gain control over as many of the Dutch colonies as possible, seizing Sint Eustatius, a vital entrepot of French and Dutch trade with the Americans, in early February 1781. He also captured Saba and Sint Maarten, and orchestrated the seizure of the Dutch colonial outposts of Berbice, Demerara, and Essequibo in South America. A planned expedition by Samuel Hood against Curaçao was called off on rumors that a French fleet was approaching. French action later in 1781 and in 1782 recovered the territories taken by the British, although Sint Eustatius never recovered its importance as a trading point.