James II's envoys expected English captains and crews to abandon the Anglo-Dutch fleet and join the French. Protestant English sailors were being asked to support a Catholic restoration alongside a French fleet during a period of acute confessional conflict. The numerical gap also made the expectation implausible: roughly nineteen of the eighty-two Allied ships would have had to defect merely to equalize the battle lines. That represented approximately an entire squadron, including its senior flag officers and subordinate divisions. The criticism of the invasion plan therefore concerns the scale and political improbability of the defections it assumed.
Notable Point · 1:58:47-2:02:56
James II’s implausible hope for English fleet defections
The 1692 invasion plan assumed English ships might defect to James II, but confessional loyalties and the fleet imbalance made that expectation highly implausible.