Item: i81257


Authentic Medal of:

Great Britain. Battle of Camperdown Historical Medal
1797 Bronze Medal 38mm (27.13 grams)
Reference: BHM 428
Certification: NGC  MS 61 BN 5706336-008
LORD VIS(Coun)T DUNCAN OF CAMPERDOWN ADMIRAL OF THE BLUE, Uniformed bust of Admiral Lord Viscount Duncan of Camperdown three-quarter facing,
BRITANNIA TRIUMPHANT DUTCH FLEET DEFEAT 11. SHIPS TAKEN OcTR 11 . 1797.,  Britannia seated right with lion's head at her knee, holding a laurel wreath in her right hand and leaning on a rudder and with ensign in her left hand;

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The Battle of Camperdown (known in Dutch as the Zeeslag bij Kamperduin) was a major naval action fought on 11 October 1797,^{[Note 1]} between the British North Sea Fleet under Admiral Adam Duncan and a Batavian Navy (Dutch) fleet under Vice-Admiral Jan de Winter. The battle was the most significant action between British and Dutch forces during the French Revolutionary Wars and resulted in a complete victory for the British, who captured eleven Dutch ships without losing any of their own. In 1795, the Dutch Republic had been overrun by the army of the French Republic and had been reorganized into the Batavian Republic, a French client state. In early 1797, after the French Atlantic Fleet had suffered heavy losses in a disastrous winter campaign, the Dutch fleet was ordered to reinforce the French at Brest. The rendezvous never occurred; the continental allies failed to capitalize on the Spithead and Nore mutinies that paralyzed the British Channel forces and North Sea fleets during the spring of 1797.

By September, the Dutch fleet under De Winter were blockaded within their harbour in the Texel by the British North Sea fleet under Duncan. At the start of October, Duncan was forced to return to Yarmouth for supplies and De Winter used the opportunity to conduct a brief raid into the North Sea. When the Dutch fleet returned to the Dutch coast on 11 October, Duncan was waiting, and intercepted De Winter off the coastal village of Camperduin. Attacking the Dutch line of battle in two loose groups, Duncan's ships broke through at the rear and van and were subsequently engaged by Dutch frigates lined up on the other side. The battle split into two mêlées, one to south, or leeward, where the more numerous British overwhelmed the Dutch rear, and one to the north, or windward, where a more evenly matched exchange centered on the battling flagships. As the Dutch fleet attempted to reach shallower waters in an effort to escape the British attack, the British leeward division joined the windward combat and eventually forced the surrender of the Dutch flagship Vrijheid and ten other ships.

The loss of their flagship prompted the surviving Dutch ships to disperse and retreat, Duncan recalling the British ships with their prizes for the journey back to Yarmouth. En route, the fleet was struck by a series of gales and two prizes were wrecked and another had to be recaptured before the remainder reached Britain. Casualties in both fleets were heavy, as the Dutch followed the British practice of firing at the hulls of enemy ships rather than their masts and rigging, which caused higher losses among the British crews than they normally experienced against continental navies. The Dutch fleet was broken as an independent fighting force, losing ten ships and more than 1,100 men. When British forces confronted the Dutch Navy again two years later in the Vlieter Incident, the Dutch sailors, confronted with superior British fire power as they had been at Camperdown and in the face of pro Orangist insurrection, abandoned their ships and surrendered en masse.


The Battle of Camperdown, 11 October 1797, Thomas Whitcombe, 1798, NMM. The painting shows the British flagship Venerable engaged with the Dutch flagship Vrijheid.

Adam Duncan, 1st Viscount Duncan (1 July 1731 - 4 August 1804) was a British admiral who defeated the Dutch fleet off Camperdown (north of Haarlem) on 11 October 1797. This victory is considered one of the most significant actions in naval history.Adam was the second son of Alexander Duncan, Baron of Lundie, Angus, (d. May 1777) Provost of Dundee, and his wife (and first cousin once removed) Helen, daughter of John Haldane of Gleneagles. He was born at Dundee. In 1746, after receiving his education in Dundee, he entered the Royal Navy on board the sloop Trial, under Captain Robert Haldane, with whom, in HMS Trial and afterwards in HMS Shoreham, he continued till the peace in 1748. In 1749 he was appointed to HMS Centurion, then commissioned for service in the Mediterranean, by the Hon. Augustus Keppel (afterwards Viscount Keppel), with whom he was afterwards in HMS Norwich on the coast of North America, and was confirmed in the rank of lieutenant on 10 January 1755.

In action with the Dutch

During the first two years of Duncan's command the work was limited to enforcing a rigid blockade of the enemy's coast, but in the spring of 1797 it became more important from the knowledge that the Dutch fleet in the Texel was getting ready for sea.

The situation was one of extreme difficulty, for the mutiny which had paralyzed the fleet at the Nore broke out also amongst the crews under Duncan, and kept him for some weeks in enforced inactivity. Duncan's personal influence and some happy displays of his vast personal strength held the crew of Venerable to their duty; but with one other exception, that of Adamant, the ships refused to quit their anchorage at Yarmouth, leaving Venerable and Adamant alone to keep up the pretence of the blockade.

Fortunately the Dutch were not at the time ready for sea; and when they were ready and anxious to sail, with thirty thousand troops, for the invasion of Ireland, a persistent westerly wind detained them in harbor till they judged that the season was too far advanced. For political purposes, however, the French Revolutionaries who controlled the government in Holland, in spite of the opinion of their admiral, De Winter, to the contrary, ordered him to put to sea in the early days of October.

Duncan, with the main body of the fleet, was at the time lying at Great Yarmouth revictualling, the Texel being watched by a small squadron under Captain Henry Trollope in HMS Russell, from whom he received early information of the Dutch being at sea. He at once weighed anchor, and with a fair wind approached the Dutch coast, saw that the fleet was not returned to the Texel, and steering towards the south sighted it on the morning of 11 October about seven miles from the shore and nearly halfway between the villages of Egmont and Camperdown. The wind was blowing straight on shore, and though the Dutch forming their line to the north preserved a bold front, it was clear that if the attack was not made promptly they would speedily get into shoal water, where no attack would be possible. Duncan at once realized the necessity of cutting off their retreat by getting between them and the land. At first he was anxious to bring up his fleet in a compact body, for his numbers were at best equal to those of the Dutch; but seeing the absolute necessity of immediate action, without waiting for the ships astern to come up, without waiting to form line of battle, and with the fleet in very irregular order of sailing, in two groups, led respectively by himself in Venerable and Vice-admiral Richard Onslow in Monarch, he made the signal to pass through the enemy's line and engage to leeward.

It was a bold departure from the absolute rule laid down in the Fighting Instructions, still new, though warranted by the more formal example of Howe on 1 June 1794; and on this occasion, as on the former, was crowned with complete success. The engagement was long and bloody; for though Duncan, by passing through the enemy's line, had prevented their untimely retreat, he had not advanced further in tactical science, and the battle was fought out on the primitive principles of ship against ship, the advantage remaining with those who were the better trained to the great gun exercise, though the Dutch inflicted great loss on the Royal navy.

It had been proposed to De Winter to make up for the want of skill by firing shell from the lower deck guns, and some experiments had been made during the summer which showed that the idea was feasible. However, want of familiarity with an arm so new and so dangerous presumably prevented its being acted on in the battle.

Great Britain, also known as Britain, is an island in the North Atlantic off the north-west coast of continental Europe. With an area of 209,331 km² (80,823 sq mi), it is the largest island in Europe and the ninth-largest in the world. In 2011 the island had a population of about 61 million people, making it the third-most populous island in the world, after Java in Indonesia and Honshu in Japan. The island is the largest in the British Isles archipelago, which also includes the island of Ireland to its west and over 1,000 smaller surrounding islands.

The island is dominated by an oceanic climate with quite narrow temperature differences between seasons. Politically, the island is part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, constituting most of its territory: most of England, Scotland, and Wales are on the island, with their respective capital cities, London, Edinburgh, and Cardiff. The term Great Britain often extends to include surrounding islands that form part of England, Scotland, and Wales.

A single Kingdom of Great Britain resulted from the Union of Scotland and England (which already comprised the present-day countries of England and Wales) in 1707. More than a hundred years before, in 1603, King James VI, King of Scots, had inherited the throne of England, but it was not until 1707 that the Parliaments of the two countries agreed to form a unified state. In 1801, Great Britain united with the neighboring Kingdom of Ireland, forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, which was renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland after the Irish Free State seceded in 1922.