The Battle of Camperdown did not make the Batavian Navy irrelevant. In 1805 Carel Hendrik Ver Huell successfully moved shallow-draft invasion craft through difficult coastal waters to the French assembly area. Those vessels were intended to wait for the larger battle fleet and therefore formed an important part of the invasion threat to Britain. In this assessment, Camperdown posed a more immediate danger than Trafalgar because a defeat off the Dutch coast left little between the enemy and London, whereas other British fleets could still converge after a reverse farther south. The comparison distinguishes political weakness and one major defeat from the continuing operational value of Dutch seamanship and coastal expertise.
Notable Point · 35:33-37:28
Why the Batavian Navy remained dangerous
Camperdown was a major defeat, but Carel Hendrik Ver Huell later showed that Dutch shallow-water skill could still support a serious invasion threat.