 Ordered to attack, the warships eventually fled after a cannonball hit the gunpowder room of the warship "Den Dolphijn", the resulting explosion killing its crew and commander Captain Willem Dirkszoon Cloyer.After the death of Captain Mathieu Jacobsen of the warship "Parel", the fishing fleet was defenceless against the privateers.The fishermen, many of them Mennonites, were reportedly treated harshly in retribution for similar treatment of captured Dunkirkers (as described in 1661 by Van Meteren's "Historiën").