[Illustration: Based on diagram of Mahan's in Clowes, _The Royal Navy_, Vol. II, p. 180-1.
Morning discovered them off the Isle of Wight, with the English on the north side of the Channel. As Tromp's chief business was to save his convoy and as the English force was now united, he took a defensive position. He formed his own ships in a long crescent, with the outward curve toward his enemy, and in the lee of this line he placed his convoy. The wind was so light that the English were unable to attack until late. The fighting, though energetic, had not proved decisive when darkness fell.
The following day, the 20th, brought a fresh wind that enabled the English to overhaul the Dutch, who could not move faster than the heavily laden merchantmen, and force a close action. Blake tried to cut off Tromp from the north so as to block his road home. Vice Admiral Penn, leading the van, broke through the Dutch battle line and fell upon the convoy, but Blake was unable to reach far enough to head off his adversary before he rounded Cape Gris Nez under cover of darkness and found anchorage in Calais roads. That night, favored by the tide and thick weather, Tromp succeeded in carrying off the greater part of his convoy unobserved. Nevertheless he had left in Blake's hand some fifty merchantmen and a number of men of war variously estimated from five to eighteen. At the same time the English had suffered heavily in men and ships. On Blake's flagship alone it is said that 100 men had been killed and Blake and his second in command, Deane, were both wounded, the former seriously.
The result of this three days' action was to encourage the English to press the war with energy and take the offensive to the enemy's own coast. English crews had shown that they could fight with a spirit fully equal to that of the Dutch, and English ships and weight of broadside, as de Ruyter frankly declared to his government, were decidedly superior. The fact that the shallow waters of the Dutch coast made necessary a lighter draft man of war than that of the English proved a serious handicap to the Dutch in all their conflicts with the British. Both fleets were so badly shot up by this prolonged battle that there was a lull in operations until May.