Affair of Fielding and Bylandt
- When
- 1779
- Where
- Texel; off the Isle of Wight; Portsmouth, England
- Episodes
- 3
The Affair of Fielding and Bylandt was a brief naval engagement off the Isle of Wight on 31 December 1779, in which a Royal Navy squadron under Commodore Charles Fielding inspected and seized a Dutch convoy escorted by Schout-bij-nacht Lodewijk van Bylandt, taking ships and prizes to Portsmouth.
Episodes
- Dutch squadron departs the Texel
Bylandt's squadron, escorting a convoy bound for France and the Mediterranean, left the Texel on 27 December 1779.
- Naval engagement off the Isle of Wight
Fielding demanded physical inspection of the Dutch merchantmen; after conflicting accounts of the initial firing, Bylandt fired a broadside and struck his colours.
- Capture of the convoy and escort to Portsmouth
Fielding demanded a treaty salute, then took the Dutch convoy as prizes to Portsmouth, followed into port by van Bylandt, who lodged a complaint.
Background and detail
Background. The Dutch and British were not yet at war, but Britain suspected Dutch merchantmen carried contraband destined for France, then engaged in the American Revolutionary War. Amsterdam merchants supplied France with naval stores needed for naval construction, which the French could not otherwise procure due to British blockades.
Dutch Convoy Preparations. In November 1779 the States General ordered limited convoy services for Dutch shipping despite a navy weakened by neglect. When the first convoys were prepared in December 1779, the stadtholder instructed that ships transporting naval stores be excluded to minimize friction with Britain.
Engagement and Aftermath. Bylandt attempted to avoid an engagement by offering to allow inspection of the ships' manifests, but when Fielding insisted on a physical inspection, Bylandt fired a single broadside before striking his colours. Fielding's squadron took the Dutch convoy as prizes to Portsmouth, followed by van Bylandt's squadron.
Diplomatic Consequences. The incident worsened already strained Anglo-Dutch relations and contributed to the formation of the First League of Armed Neutrality, to which the Dutch tried to accede in December 1780. In April 1780 Britain abrogated the Commercial Treaty of 1668 and declared it would treat the Dutch like any other neutral nation, refraining from granting "free ship, free goods" rights.
Sources
- Affair of Fielding and Bylandt Wikipedia, revision of 2026-06-09
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.