duty without a break, organising the scattered fleet on its journey home. The British admiral did find time however to play a game of whist in his cabin with De Winter after dinner: when the Dutch admiral lost a rubber, he commented that it was hard to be beaten twice in one day by the same man. On 13 October, Duncan completed his official despatch and sent it ahead of his wallowing ships with Captain William George Fairfax on the cutter Rose: he praised all of his men, reserving special mention for Trollope and the late Burges, whom he called a "good and gallant Officer...a sincere Friend". De Winter was permitted to send despatches to the Batavian government, in which he blamed Story and his centre for not maintaining the combat longer. He also attributed overwhelming British numbers to his defeat and suggested that he may have captured some of the British fleet if he had been better supported. When this letter was later published it provoked a storm of criticism in Britain, one officer describing it as "a garbled account which, for ought I know, might have been collected by people on shore who knew nothing of the action". During the afternoon of 12 October, a gale sprang up which inflicted further damage to the battered ships and caused water to gush through the many shot holes in the ships' hulls. Aboard the Dutch ships, the situation was especially dangerous. Casualties had been significantly higher, particularly on Vrijheid, than on board the British vessels and the small numbers of British sailors placed aboard as prize crews were unable to cope alone, and in the high winds many masts collapsed to the deck and huge quantities of water leaked into the hulls. Delft, captured in the early stages of the battle, was under the command of the Dutch Lieutenant Heilberg and the British Lieutenant Charles Bullen, with a small prize crew of 69 men. Ninety-three Dutch prisoners had been removed, and among the remaining Dutch sailors were 76 wounded men. As the gale intensified, it rapidly became clear that despite a tow line attached from Veteran the ship would never reach Britain, and a large board was raised on deck with the chalked message "The ship is sinking". Reacting at once, boats from nearby ships organised an evacuation and began loading the Dutch prisoners for transfer to more seaworthy vessels.