Affair of Fielding and Bylandt

The affair of Fielding and Bylandt was a brief naval engagement off the Isle of Wight on 31 December 1779 between a Royal Navy squadron, commanded by Commodore Charles Fielding, and a naval squadron of the Dutch Republic, commanded by rear-admiral Lodewijk van Bylandt, escorting a Dutch convoy. The Dutch and British were not yet at war, but the British wished to inspect the Dutch merchantmen for what they considered contraband destined for France, then engaged in the American War of Independence. Bylandt attempted to avoid the engagement by offering the ships' manifests, but when Fielding insisted on a physical inspection, Bylandt put up a brief show of force, before striking his colours. The British then seized the Dutch merchantmen and conducted them as prizes to Portsmouth, followed by the Dutch squadron. The incident worsened the diplomatic relations between Great Britain and the Dutch Republic almost to breaking point. It also contributed to the formation of the First League of Armed Neutrality to which the Dutch acceded in December, 1780. To prevent their receiving assistance from other members of that League, Britain declared the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War shortly afterwards.

The Dutch Republic had, after a period of strife during the second half of the seventeenth century, become a steadfast ally of the Kingdom of Great Britain, initially (after the Glorious Revolution of 1688) as the senior partner in the alliance, but later in the eighteenth century as the increasingly junior partner. It was bound to Britain by a number of treaties of military alliance (notably those of 1678, 1689 and 1716) which arguably obliged it to offer armed support. On the other hand, it had obtained in the Treaty of Breda and its offshoot, the Commercial Treaty of 1668 (confirmed in the Treaty of Westminster) an important concession from England: the right to transport non-contraband goods in its ships to countries with which Britain was at war, without these goods being subject to seizure by Britain even if they were owned by subjects of belligerent powers (this was usually referred to as the principle of "free ship, free goods"). The concept "contraband" was narrowly defined in these treaties as "arms and munitions." So-called "naval stores" (by which were commonly understood: ship's timbers, masts and spars, rope, canvas, tar and pitch) were not to be considered contraband. This right became important during wars in which Britain was a participant, but the Republic remained neutral, like the Seven Years' War and after 1778 the American Revolutionary War, in which Britain opposed the rebelling American Colonies and their allies, France and Spain. Arguably it exempted Dutch bottoms from inspection by the Royal Navy (or at least from confiscation of the goods in British prize courts), thereby undermining Britain's ability to maintain an effective embargo on the trade of her enemies, especially because Dutch shipping at the time still played a major role in the European carrying trade.

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