Raid On The Medway - Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling dedicated a poem to these events, giving a not altogether historically correct view of them (the poem was written approximately two centuries after the events):

If wars were won by feasting,

Or victory by song,

Or safety found, by sleeping sound

How England would be strong!

But honour and dominion

Are not maintained so,

They're only got by sword and shot

And this the Dutchmen know!

The moneys that should feed us

You spend on your delight,

How can you then, have sailor-men

To aid you in your fight?

Our fish and cheese are rotten,

Which makes the scurvy grow –

We cannot serve you if we starve,:

And this the Dutchmen know!

Our ships in every harbour

Be neither whole nor sound,

And when we seek to mend a leak,

No oakum can be found,

Or, if it is, the caulkers,

And carpenters also,

For lack of pay have gone away,

And this the Dutchmen know!

Mere powder, guns and bullets,

we scarce can get at all;

Their price was spent in merriment

And revel at Whitehall,

While we in tattered doublets

From ship to ship must row,

Beseeching friends for odds and ends –

And this the Dutchmen know!

No King will heed our warnings,

No Court will pay our claims –

Our King and Court for their disport

Do sell the very Thames!

For, now De Ruyter's topsails

Off naked Chatham show,

We dare not meet him with our fleet –

And this the Dutchmen know!