On this day 27 February

[7eat51]

On the 27th of February 1665, Vice-Admiral de Ruyter defeated the English at the Battle at Elmina, Gold Coast.

The above was all I could find on popular-level history sites. I looked around quite a bit for any information on this, but I only found a little in a Ph.D. dissertation; I discovered that de Ruyter did perform military operations in the Gold Coast during the previous weeks with mixed results, and on the 27th of February, he set sail for the West Indies.

De Ruyter:


Elmina, Gold Coast (Ghana):


Elmina Castle:



For more about de Ruyter:
http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/...p/deruyter.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michiel_de_Ruyter

[csadn]

Short version: In order to provoke a war with the Netherlands, Sir Robert Holmes was sent to capture Dutch possessions in West Africa; he did so easily, as the African bases were not well-protected. De Ruyter was sent to take them back; with the exception of Cape Coast Castle, he did so as easily as Holmes had.

England got the war it wanted -- it most-definitely did *NOT* get the result it wanted.... >;)

[7eat51]

From what I read, the major stumbling block for de Ruyter was his inability to secure sufficient cooperation from the local people (Efutu). Had he overcome their resistance and engendered their goodwill, the future of Ghana could have been quite different.