Naval battle at Vigo
date | October 23, 1702 |
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place | Bay of Rande, Vigo , Spain |
output | Anglo-Dutch victory |
Parties to the conflict | |
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Commander | |
François Louis Rousselet de Chateau-Renault |
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Troop strength | |
32 English ships of the line 13 Dutch ships of the line (10,012 seamen, 13,587 landing troops) |
15 ships of the line 3 war galleons 3 frigates 5 smaller ships (10,790 sailors and soldiers) |
losses | |
800 dead |
2,000 dead |
Carpi - Chiari - Cremona - Kaiserswerth - Luzzara - Cádiz - Friedlingen - Vigo - Schmidmühlen - Ekeren - Höchstädt (1703) - Gibraltar - Speyerbach - Schellenberg - Bonn - Höchstädt (1704) - Vélez-Málaga - Cassano - Barcelona (1705) - Sendlinger Murder Christmas - Calcinato - Ramillies - Turin - Castiglione - Almansa - Toulon - Lille - Oudenaarde - Malplaquet - Almenara - Saragossa - Brihuega - Villaviciosa - Denain - Rio de Janeiro - Barcelona
The sea battle at Vigo (also sea battle at Rande) took place on October 12th July. / 23 October 1702 greg. in the War of the Spanish Succession in the Bay of Vigo (the innermost end of which is called the Bay of Rande) on the Galician coast. An Anglo-Dutch fleet under Admiral Sir George Rooke and Philipp van Almonde defeated a Spanish-French fleet under the command of François Louis Rousselet de Château-Renault and Manuel de Velasco .
Rooke originally sailed with the mission to conquer Cadiz , but had to retire after a defeat on September 29, 1702. In Lagos , Portugal , Rooke learned that the Spanish silver fleet of 1702, one of the richest of all time, left Havana in Cuba on June 24th and, because of its attack, was diverted to Vigo (instead of Cádiz as required) and there on September 23rd had arrived.
Course of the battle
In an effort to make up for his failure in front of Cádiz , Rooke sailed for Vigo. He found the treasure galleons there in the protection of a Franco-Spanish fleet of 30 warships. Chateau-Renault had fortified the innermost part of Vigo Bay, called the Bay of Rande, by a barrier of masts and cannons on land, near the town of Redondela , and on the island of San Simón. Rooke attacked on October 23, with Admiral Thomas Hobson on board the Torbay should break the barrier in the water, while soldiers of the Duke of Ormonde should attack the batteries.
The battle was a complete success for Rooke: the land batteries were stormed, the Torbay broke through the barrier in the water and all the Spanish and French ships were burned, sunk or captured. On the Spanish-French side there were about 2000 deaths, on the Anglo-Dutch side about 800. The winners captured silver worth 14,000 pounds, but a much larger sum - up to 3 million pounds - had been unloaded before the fight and headed inland been made.
The prey
Officially, the British captured 1,500,000 pounds sterling from the galleons that were captured or sunk in shallow water.
In addition, a large amount of misappropriated money can be expected. In 1703 English gold (5, 1, 1/2 guineas ) and silver coins ( crown , half crown , shilling , sixpence ) were minted with the inscription Vigo .
Treasure hunters believe that part of the treasure lies at the bottom of the bay to this day. This notion became part of the story 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea of Jules Verne , in which Captain Nemo draws his fortune from these wrecks.
Fleets involved
England + Netherlands
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Surname |
some frigates |
some bombarde ketches |
7? / 10? Fire |
France + Spain
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literature
- Robert Sténuit : Les Épaves de l'Or. German edition: The treasure hunters of Vigo. Ullstein, Berlin 1959 (description of the search for the wrecks, with an introduction to the battle.)
- O. Browning (Ed.): The Journal of Sir George Rooke, Admiral of the Fleet, 1700-1702. London 1897, pp. 228-234.
Web links
- Source collection. In: Website of Rafael Rojea. Archived from the original on July 13, 2009 ; Retrieved February 19, 2014 (English, Spanish).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Philip Skingley (ed.): Coins of England and the United Kingdom . Standard Catalog of British Coins. 47th edition. Spink, London 2012, ISBN 978-1-907427-19-0 , pp. 373-378 (English).
- ↑ On the French fleet under Château-Renault cf. Léonce Léonard de Lapeyrouse Bonfils: Histoire de la Marine française. Vol. 2. Dentu, Paris 1845, p. 23 note 1 ( online at Google Books).