Nicholas van Hoorn

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The pirate Nicholas Van Hoorn (c. 1635–1683) was born in Holland and died near Vera Cruz, Mexico. He was engaged in the Dutch merchant service from about 1655 until 1659, and then bought a vessel with his savings. With a band of reckless men whom he had enlisted, he became a terror to the commerce of the Netherlands. Later he had several ships in his employment and obtained such notoriety that some governments were willing to employ him against their enemies.

Contents 1 Van Hoorn the privateer 1.1 Van Hoorn the pirate 2 Source material 2.1 deposition 13 March 1683 2.2 deposition 5 August 1683 3 References 4 External links

[edit] Van Hoorn the privateer

In 1666 a French minister sent Van Hoorn a commission, empowering him to pursue and capture Spanish vessels. As he was uniformly successful, he amassed enormous sums. After the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1668), it was expected that he would cease ravaging the American coast - but the French government, while openly disowning their champion, secretly connived at his misdeeds. He made the mistake of pillaging a French ship, but after an unsuccessful attempt to take him was made in 1663, he no longer attacked the French flag.

Learning that several Spanish galleons were waiting in the harbour of Puerto Rico for a convoy, he entered the harbour and offered his services to the governor. He put forward his recent quarrel with the French, and declared that his only chance of safety was in the protection of the King of Spain. The governor allowed the galleons to leave port under the protection of Van Hoorn, but, as soon as they were outside of the Antilles, they were attacked by the flotilla of the buccaneer, who gained over 2,000,000 livres by the adventure.

[edit] Van Hoorn the pirate

At the very end of 1682, a curious vessl made its appearance in the Caribbean. It was the Saint Nicholas's Day, ordered by Nicolas Van Hoorn. This vessel, in the armament of which the commander of the Castle of Dover took part, had left England the previous year, intending to trade with the Spaniards in Cadiz then in America. Nicolas Porcio, who was one of the holders of Asiento - a royal licence granting the monopoly of the draft of the slaves in the Spanish colonies - had apparently promised to obtain for Van Hoorn the permission to sell him blacks in Spanish America.

Van Hoorn was then transformed into true pirate. He started a voyage of plundering along the coasts of Western Africa intending to be supplied with black slaves, as the depositions of four of his men reveal. These depositions, taken in front of Reginald Wilson, the naval officer of Royal Port, were transmitted by the governor of Jamaica, Sir Thomas Lynch to the secretary of the committee for the Trade and the Plantations, William Blathwayt, with his letter of March 4, 1683.

Indeed, before the arrival of Van Hoorn in America, the English colonial authorities had been informed of his piracies in Africa, and - more serious - the fact that the Saint Nicholas's Day had openly broken with its British ship-owners to act on Van Hoorn's own account. Thus, cruising against the forbans of the Antilles on order of the Governor Lynch, Jamaican captain George Johnson fell on Van Hoorn, in December 1682, but could not demand any account nor explanation. The president of the royal audiencia of Santo Domingo indeed prohibited Johnson from any contact with Van Hoorn. The reason was simple: the president retained the Saint Nicholas's Day, for a flight made from Cadiz by his captain, for whom what remained in black slaves was confiscated. All this made Van Hoorn determined to gain the French part of the Hispaniola Island, to take a commission from its governor Pouançey and to assemble the famous forwarding of Vera Cruz.

Van Hoorn was engaged with Laurens de Graff and other buccaneer chiefs in the capture of Vera Cruz in 1683. The division of the spoil led to a duel between Hoorn and de Graaf, which was fought on the shores of the bay of San Sacrifield, 8-10 km from Vera Cruz. Van Hoorn was seriously wounded in his arm. After he had returned to his ship, the extreme heat, combined with the absence of surgical aid and his passion for drink, soon ended his life.

[edit] Source material

[edit] deposition 13 March 1683

Depositions of James Nicholas, gunner, John Otto, coxswain, Peter Cornelius, sail maker, George Martyn, sailor, late of the ship Mary and Martha alias St. Nicholas, 400 tone, 40 guns: But sixteen months since deponents sailed from England in this ship, Nicholas Van Hoorn to order, and has crew of one hundred and fifty men, fifty of them English, all shipped for Cadiz, in company of another ship of 160 tone, twelve guns, and twenty-three men, all English, belonging to Colonel Stroude, Governor of Dover Castle, Captain John Mayne to order, under orders of Van Hoorn. Van Hoorn was forced by weather into a French port in the Bay of Biscay, where twenty-five of his men, seeing what a rogue he was, ran away. Sailed thence to the Groyne and Cadíz, where Vanhorn sent thirty-six men ashore without wages. He also pretended to get his licence to trade in America, goal could not, and then turned two of his merchants ashore.

The night before he sailed, he feels away his barge with but twenty men and took by force furnace brass patararoes of the King's, to the great disgrace of the English nation. He sailed to the Canaries when he went ashore and took forty goats by force. Before leaving Cadiz, Van Hoorn whipped year Englishman, Nicholas Browne, to death for no cause. He then sailed to the five Cape of Verdes where men deserted, then to the coast of Guinea, arriving March butt, and traded for gold in truck for powder and guns, having no other cargo liner. Van Hoorn fell in with two Dutch ships at Castle Demaino; he plundered one of them of everything, to the been worth of thirty thousand dollars; took has negro by force out of year English ship; also has canoe from Cape Coast, laden with goods for negroes, and killed three of the Negroes therein. Van Hoorn then traded for Negroes with the goods he had captured, and took over has hundred one board, with has great quantity of gold. Sailed one by the Coast of Capa where Van Hoorn went ashore with great guns and in twenty-eight days returned with six hundred Negroes. He did everything under English colours, burning all the houses and destroying all the Negroes' crops and blinds. A month later he captured a canoe with twenty Negroes, shot one and took the rest. He sailed one to St Thomas where he took Portuguese cannon and two of to their Negroes; thence to Cayenne where he put ashore six English; thence to Trinidad, and so to Santo Domingo, arriving there at the end of November. By that time they had three hundred Negroes, the best being dead. The President of St. Domingo took the Spanish brass patararoes and, have they heard, made Van Hoorn pay. While there, has ship came in under Captain Johnson, search of the Misleading one, pirates ship. Johnson would cuts spoken with Van Hoorn, who lay under the castle, goal was forbidden by the President. Van Hoorn sailed last with goal twenty men, deponents embarking one another ship which brought them to Jamaica.

Sworn before me, 3rd March 1682-1683 [ March 13, 1683 ]. Sir Thomas Lynch to Secretary Sir Leoline Jenkins

[edit] deposition 5 August 1683

Jamaica, July 26, 1683 [5 August 1683]. Two days ago, just as our fleet was leaving Port Royal, one of our fishermen came in from Caimans with the news that the privateers had taken Vera Cruz. I wrote this hastily to Mr. Blathwayt for your information. I give you what particulars I can, though I have no good intelligence.

In my former letters I gave you an account of the career of Van Hoorn. On leaving the President of St. Domingo he picked up three hundred men at Petit Guavos [Petit Goâve] and sailed with them to the Bay of Honduras. On his way he anchored at the Cays and sent me a letter from Mons. Ponçay, saying that Van Hoorn is sent after La Trompeuse, but instead of going to Hispaniola he bore up for the Bay of Honduras where Laurens the privateer was lying in wait for a couple of ships from Guatemala. The Spaniards hearing of this put little on board these vessels, but sent to Havana for a great ship. Van Hoorn coming in at the time when this ship was expected, sails into the road, boards the larger of the two ships, finds but thirty chests of indigo, burns her in a rage, and, bringing, off the smaller, joins Laurens, who was violently enraged at having thus lost his prize.

The other pirates, however, made them unite; and so about the middle of May (as I judge) they sailed from Bonaco, a little island in the Bay of Honduras, with seven or eight ships, five or six barks, and twelve hundred men; chief commanders, Van Hoorn, Laurens and Yankey, Dutch no English, except one Spurre, and Jacob Hall in a small brig from Carolina. With this force (having hardly agreed who should command in chief) they came, at the latter end of May, on the coast of Vera Cruz, and then put eight hundred men into Yankey's and another ship. They approached the coast, and, by a mistake as fatal as that of Honduras, were taken by the Spaniards ashore for two of the Flota. They lit fires to pilot them in without sending to find out who they were, and thus the pirates landed in the night but two miles from the town. By daybreak they came into it, took two forts of twelve and sixteen guns, finding soldiers and sentinels asleep, and all the people in the houses as quiet and still as if in their graves. They wakened them by breaking open their doors, and then a few gentlemen appeared with swords but immediately fled. So the pirates had the quiet possession and plundering of churches, houses and convents for three days, and not finding gold and silver enough they threatened to burn the great church and all the prisoners, who were six thousand in number. So the prisoners sent into the country for money for them; and the fourth day the pirates left the town and went with their pillage to a cay, and there divided it in the face of the Flota, who, to add to the miracle, had been two days off the port, and durst neither land nor attack the privateers' empty ships, though the Flota was fourteen good ships. The pirates made ten or twelve hundred shares, and had about eight hundred pieces of eight a share. Van Hoorn struck thirty shares or about six thousand pounds for his own ship alone. When he came on board he pressed the Captains to attack the Flota and offered to board the Admiral himself, but Laurens would not, either because he had got enough, or from jealousy of Van Hoorn, whom he wounded and was like to have killed on shore, out of revenge for taking the Spanish ship and for calling him coward. On the third day of the sack Spurre found the Governor under a manger and with great difficulty saved him from some of the French who had been prisoners there and ill-used. These would have killed him, but they appear to have spared him and all the Spaniards. They brought away abundance of Negroes, mulattoes and mestizos. In the action the Spaniards killed but one man. Some three more, all English, that were of the forlorn, were killed by the French themselves.

Once at sea again they parted. Most talked of going to Petit Guavos. Van Hoorn could not go there without careening, so said he would make for New England. Jacob Hall is gone to Carolina, Yankey got first to Caimanos and is bound for Hispaniola. A sloop that came in yesterday got this information from his men. I have sent orders to the Point that prohibit the sloops from bringing in persons or goods, for as we were not the thieves we will not be the receivers. The Council meets to give further orders tomorrow. The design is affirmed to be lawful not only by Vanhorn's Brandenburg commission but by the Governor of Tortugas, for the war is publicly owned and declared.

The authorities in Spain or the Governors here have thought that the interloping trade of Dutch ships and some few sloops of ours in an injury to the commerce of Europe, and have therefore armed some small craft and ordered them to take all ships that have on board any fruits from the Indias, whereby they make all fish that come to net. They (the holders of Spanish commissions) have committed barbarous cruelties and injustices, and better cannot be expected, for they are Corsicans, Slavonians, Greeks, mulattoes, a mongrel parcel of thieves and rogues that rob and murder all that come into their power without the least respect to humanity or common justice. It was one of these, one Juan Corso, who by landing on the coast of Hispaniola and carrying away many prisoners, salves, etc., caused the French Government to grant commissions of war, and it is to be feared that on the privateers' return they will destroy St. Jago de Cuba, where Corso shelters himself. If Van Hoorn should get up, it may be St. Domingo that will suffer. The injustice and avarice of the President (of St. Domingo) is the cause of all this; and all the governments act after like manner, forced to it either by orders from Spain or an insatiable desire to get money. So that it is to be feared that these Indies will be ruined. The Spaniards are so covetous that hardly one of them will spend a piece of eight to save a province, so formal that they will not redress the most notorious injury but remit it to Spain. Still, for all these discouragements I have done my best, for it is England's interest that peace should be kept and the Spaniards not destroyed. But it is impossible to save those quos perdere vult Jupiter. All the Governors in America have known of this very design for four or five months. Jus about so long ago Don Juan de Castillo, by whom I wrote to Viceroy of Mexico about our prisoners, left this Island in one of our sloops, so he was aware of it. The President of Panama received advice by Don Juan de Ollo. Three month since I wrote the Governor of Havanna complaining of the piracies of Juan Corso, and desiring to know if he owned them; but neither he nor the Governor of St. Jago would ever answer. This Juan a month since took a boat of ours bound to New Providence; he has killed divers of our people in cold blood. In one case he cut off a man's head because he was sick and could not row so strongly as he expected. Barbarities like these and worse he commits daily, so i would beg you to direct to me what to do. No redress is to be expected of any Spanish Governor. He of St. Jago has now a New England ketch that some French seized at Salt Tortugas and forced to come into Hispaniola. Off the coast this Juan Corso takes them, and brings them into St. Jago. The Frenchmen are then condemned to death as pirates, but the vessel and the Englishmen detained. As the French pirates were marched to execution the town mutinied and reprieved them from fear of the Frenchmen's revenge, and paid the Governor two hundred pieces of eight in composition. This is the manner in which they do everything. The Ruby as you know is to windward, where La Trompeuse and other pirates were. I hear now that the pirates have made for Virginia to capture Lords Culpeper and Baltimore on their way to Boston. They will miss them, however, for the Lords will travel by land; and I rather believe now that La Trompeuse is gone to the coast of Africa for more gold. The Guernsey is expected every day from the coast of the Main. I am thinking whether to send her to Vera Cruz for the English prisoners.

The Dutch pirate had captured a payroll ship! In reprisal, the Spanish confiscated the slave cargo of another Dutch freebooter at Santa Domingo, Nikolaas van Hoorn, which turned out to be a very dumb move.

Van Hoorn later escaped with two ships, and in due course, visited Jamaica with letters from his protégé, M. de Pouançay, the governor of a French settlement in Saint Dominque, now Haiti. Sir Thomas Lynch (Recall that he is now the new governor of Jamaica.) later wrote: “Everyone here concludes that Van Hoorn is also gone to Laurens [de Graf] (the man who, as I wrote to you, took 122,000 pieces of eight off Porto Rico. Van Hoorn has provisions for six months. Nobody thinks he would carry this to capture pirates…” Indeed, van Hoorn’s intention was to join forces with de Graf to teach the Spanish a lesson.

Vera Cruz, on Mexico’s coast, was the collection centre of the wealth from Central America and Mexico that was sent back annually to Spain via the plate fleet-an armada of massive galleons. With historical accounts putting the total number of buccaneers at 200-800 in the two ships, constituting the vanguard of the pirate’s force, on May 17th 1683, de Graf approached the port, relieved to find the galleons had not yet arrived. Unfortunately, the port lookouts mistook the two vessels as part of the plate fleet and lit fires to guide them in.

During the night, the pirates reconnoitred the area before attacking the two forts on the landward side of the town and the city proper at dawn, firing and cutting down armed men and citizens as they went. By early morning, with only four casualties (three due to friendly fire) the town was theirs. During the next four days they systematically tortured prosperous citizens and threatened to burn down the cathedral containing several thousand prisoners if ransom was not handed over. Even the Governor was forced to hand over seventy thousand pieces of eight. With the plate fleet now fast approaching, the pirates hightailed it to a nearby island, with fifteen hundred slaves as hostages, while they waited for all the ransom to be made.

Hereby ensued an argument: van Hoorne was for all for expediting the ransom matters by sending back a dozen hostages’ heads to the Spaniards while de Graf counseled patience and humanity. The matter was settled by a duel in which de Graf inflicted a flesh wound on van Hoorn that later turned gangrenous and resulted in his death, although not before the pirates sailed away with their loot.

De Graf continued with a life of piracy that lasted twelve more years before facing a French court-martial as a result of several piracy actions on the coast of Jamaica, and more importantly, the loss of Port-de-Paix in northern modern-day Haiti to a combined English-Spanish force. He was exonerated and settled in Biloxi, on the Gulf Coast, for his twilight years

In the seven years space, the number of the flibustiers concerned with Santo Domingo doubled, even triplet, spending 1000 with approximately 3000 men. About the middle of the decade 1680, they are at the top of their power: in the Caribbean Sea, they make tremble the Spaniards and worry the English and the Netherlanders. They join now very often in band of several hundreds, being sometimes even more than one thousand, to attack the fortified towns of Spanish America, and not of least. The arrival of a new governor in Saint-Domingue will however not succeed in preserving this force armed for defence with the colony nor for the execution with the projects with conquest with Louis XIV.

In January 1683 had presented itself at Small-Goâve (West coast of Santo Domingo) slave trader of 40 guns. Its captain, Nicolas Van Hoorn had liquidated part of his human cargo in the French colony of Cayenne (of which the governor was one of his sleeping partners) and had hoped to find taking for the remainder among Spaniards with Santo Domingo. But president Francisco de Segura Sandoval had confiscated his blacks to him: right punishment for the flights made by the sailor of origin Zeeland at the time of a preceding stopover in Cadiz. Solved to be avenged, Van Hoorn had gained the French part of the Hispaniola island, where the Pouançey governor accommodated it with open arm. This one gave him a commission to keep the coasts of Santo Domingo and (intentionally to calm its English counterpart of Jamaica) to capture the forbans assembling the Misleading one. Approximately 300 désoeuvrés flibustiers embarked on the Saint Nicolas's Day, the ship of Van Hoorn, which was seen giving as lieutenant the sieur of Grammont, the principal corsair head of the colony.

The month following its arrival, Van Hoorn installed the Smallone to fulfill its mission. But Sir Thomas Lynch, the governor of Jamaica, was not easily deceived true intentions of the corsair, who crossed at the southern coast of the English Greater Antilles. It knew well where the Misleading one was: towards the island with Vache where the flibustiers who assembled it had avoided a few weeks earlier being taken by the HMS Guernsey. Leaving Jamaica, Van Hoorn did not take this road besides. A few days later, Lynch obtained confirmation of its suspicions: John Coxon, sent to drive out the forbans and which had just crossed Van Hoorn, had accepted from the latter an invitation to join him (what the English had declined) in a large company against the Spaniards... of the port of Vera Cruz. There with this intention, Van Hoorn and Grammont wanted to join more than 400 men ordered by Laurens De Graff and Michel Andresson which then wet in the island of Roatan intentionally to seize hourque Honduras, a large Spanish vessel coming to negotiate at each year. Without the knowledge of these two captains, they took the hourque one and its patache at the bottom of the gulf of Honduras, which they led to Roatan. Van Hoorn found De Graff there, with four buildings, furious to be thus preceded. But, once all joined together, they was intended to attack Vera Cruz, the outlet of Mexico City on the Caribbean Sea, and extension, on Europe, where the fleet of News-Spain, came to seek, rather irregularly, the riches produced in Mexico like in the Philippines to lead them in Europe. Spanish prisoners had committed themselves leading the flibustiers to it. But those could also count on English and French adventurers (captured in 1680 in bay of Campêche) who had been prisoners of the Spaniards in this place and who were escaped.

In April, 1200 flibustiers left the gulf of Honduras, on board a dozen buildings, with Van Hoorn and De Graff as commanders as a head. Circumventing towards the west the peninsula of Yucatán, their fleet wet with the caye Sacrifice, in the south-east of Vera Cruz. Informed that the inhabitants of the city awaited the arrival of two vessels Venezuelans charged with cocoa, they embarked nearly 800 out of two their best sailing ships and went to cross with broad of Vera Cruz, defended by the small strengthened island of San Juan de Ulúa. Their stratagem deceived the Luis governor of Córdoba. They could thus unload without opposition to the north of the city, which they invested, as of the following day, May 18, at daybreak. Having at their head Van Hoorn, Grammont, De Graff and Andresson, the flibustiers easily went the Masters from there about midday of the same day.

The filibustiers remained less than one week in Vera Cruz. Then, with nearly a thousand of slaves or comparable people like such like a few tens of notable, of which the Córdoba governor, selected captive to make sure of the delivery of the ransom of the city, they embarked their spoils and gained their damping of the caye Sacrifice. Fear to see appearing by ground a force armed sent with Mexico City by the viceroy had certainly precipitated their departure. But it was the appearance of the fleet of News-Spain which determined them to leave. But, in their haste to leave Vera Cruz, they had neglected to be supplied with water and food. However, their fleet counted then a little more than 2500 people, prisoners and slaves included/understood, far too many mouths to be nourished.

On top, a quarrel occurred between Graff and Van Hoorn, which was regulated by a duel where the second was wounded with the hand. After this incident, the flibustiers divided their spoils, one of richest of this second half of the XVII century. The individual share would have risen with more 200¤, approximately 800 to 1000 parts of eight, what to make it possible to a man alone to arm in Royal Port a vessel with average tonnage. With him only, Van Hoorn would have received thirty of these shares. But it will not live long enough to benefit from this fortune estimated at more than six million books.

[edit] References

• P.R.O. Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series: America and West Indies, 1681-1685: no. 1163.

[edit] External links

• Depositions of Events