In the winter of 1672, a small squadron of warships, commissioned by the Admiralty of Zeeland, set sail on a secret mission. Under Commander Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest, the expeditionaries were charged with nothing less than the capture of the enormously rich English East India Company fleet off the South Atlantic island of St. Helena. Failing in that, they were to turn to the Americas, to raid French and English colonies in South America, the West Indies, Virginia and New York, and to destroy the bountiful Newfoundland fisheries.

Reconstructing the Evertsen expedition from contemporary Dutch and English records, journals, secret minutes and narratives, the authors weave a narrative of this major, though all-but-forgotten military episode in American history—a campaign that resulted in a major naval invasion of the Chesapeake Bay, the capture or destruction of nearly 200 English and French vessels, and the reconquest and restoration of New York, New Jersey and Delaware to the United Provinces of the Netherlands' control. And, ironically, it was a campaign that signaled the end of Dutch military and commercial influence in the Western Hemisphere forever after.