The despicable Nikolaus Van Hoorn and the Saint Nicholas Day

[modernknight1]

So a new member who could not join – and who I had to manually approve as is so often case on our clunky wordpress raft – pinged me on our Facebook page (which still isn’t linked to our website because of our clunky leaky wordpress canoe) – because he had a question.

Now these are the kind of questions I love to get and the kind of conversations I have been wishing for on the REEF forever!

So here is his question:

“I tried to contact via the website. Does it work? I have a question about your historical sources concerning the name of the flagship of Nicolaas van Hoorn. Some sites call it “st Nicholas” while others including yourself call it “st Nicholas day” It sounds like something minor, but it might have a bigger meaning.”

chears, Michiel

Well Michiel, from everything I have read and looked into (with the exception of the depositions) it is indeed Saint Nicholas Day, but I believe Van Hoorn did not name the ship himself. I believe it was renamed after its purchase – (originally named the “Mary and Martha” (40 guns) of 400 tons), and procured by English investors who had it restored and refit for a slave trading venture. Because you asked I am going to use this opportunity to talk about one of the worst villains of that time.

Nicholaas Van Hoorn is celebrated as a famous pirate now, but the fact is that there is only one thing that anyone can admire about the man. From all of his many exploits he was clearly VERY brave and I think I would even say fearless. However, that is his only good trait.

Van Hoorn was the very worst of what makes a pirate a pirate. He was a liar, a thief, a swindler, and a merciless blood thirsty killer and murderer.

The ship Saint Nicholas Day was just one of many in his long list of thieving acquisitions. I have a hard time believing that those English investors actually trusted him. I personally think that the only reason they did was because he had a terrible reputation of raiding Dutch commerce during their wars with England. That’s right, Van Hoorn (a Dutchman) preyed upon his own country’s shipping during their wars with England. So no loyalty for his own homeland can be added to his fine list of attributes. Add to this that it was an unlikely and even dangerous clandestine mission to take on smuggled slaves in Spanish territory from Spanish smugglers – illegally – under the dubious assurances that the seller had a contract and license granting Grand Assiento rights which could only come from high level customs officials or title holders like Viceroys within the Spanish government.

The Saint Nicholas Day was privately built and was a large and heavily armed vessel constructed in the manner of warships and (Blackwall or Chatham) Indiamen of that time. I believe she would have very much resembled another similar heavily armed privately built warship that some of you may be familiar with – The Mordaunt.

Her armament was known to have been on-loaded at London and even coordinated through the English government provided by the Master at Arms of the Tower of London itself – in other words – guns from the Royal Armory!

Van Hoorn also must have been handsome and charismatic to get away with what he did. He must have been a fast smooth talker and very convincing. Frankly I can’t believe a movie hasn’t been made about this guy.

So lets go back to what he was doing after the end of the 1st Dutch War when he could no longer prey on his own countrymen’s ships safely. He goes to the Caribbean and offers his services to the French who gladly accept and give him a letter of commission as a privateer against Spain. He becomes a sheer terror to the Spanish taking Spanish ships left and right, however the war ends in 1659. Does that stop Van Hoorn – NO. Now Spanish authorities are complaining to the French who tell them – Hua hua he’s not working for us no more – but he is and they are taking his prizes and paying him for them.

Finally Van Hoorn decides he can get away with taking French prizes and they won’t know. BAD MOVE! The French not only find out about it but send naval expeditions after him – he is nearly boarded at one point and barely escapes with his life!

So what does this man with STEEL BALLS do??? He hears about these treasure galleons just sitting there at anchor in San Juan Puerto Rico, awaiting an escort. There are six of them altogether and they had missed the regular flota convoy of roughly 20 to 50 ships home to Spain. So Van Hoorn – a known pirate and enemy of Spain – sails right into San Juan Puerto Rico as brave and calm as can be – and asks to see the Governor. I am surprised they didn’t hang him.

Anyway, he tells the story to the Governor of how he turned against the French and began capturing their ships and how he was a marked man and that he couldn’t travel safely anywhere because everywhere he went he was hunted by the French. He says the only way he will be safe is in the employ of the Spanish King and empire. well…. ….and….. THE GOVERNOR ACTUALLY BUYS IT AND HIRES HIM!!!

His first job you ask??? With his own flotilla of three or four small warships, he is to ESCORT THE SIX GALLEONS SAFELY HOME TO SPAIN! That’s like asking a fox to take the chickens for a walk around the block and bring them all back safely – AM I RIGHT!

Well you can guess what happened – as soon as he gets out into the Atlantic far away from any danger of Spanish naval forces, he sets upon the galleons and plunders them for all they’re worth. This made him an extremely rich man and may be one of the reasons the English investors decided to trust him.

Well forward to Van Hoorn leaving with the Saint Nicholas Day – he sailed off for the Caribbean once again, master of the largest, finest and mightiest ship he had ever had.

For the first part of the venture he actually attempts to make good on the bargain and links up with the smugglers – however, the whole thing was a sham. There were no slaves. An infuriated Van Hoorn then tries to procure slaves from other sources – even seizing slave ships – but is not even close to successful in procuring the large numbers of slaves that the investors required. So what does he do? – he goes pirate once again and the Saint Nicholas Day becomes a full fledged pirate ship. Probably one of the largest and best armed ever in the pirate annals.

However, word reached back in less than a year of what had transpired and those rich, important, and well connected investors wanted Van Hoorn’s head. Letters reached the Governor of Jamaica from the crown that Van Hoorn was to be taken by the Royal Navy.

However, This was no easy task. The Brethren of the Coast was at its zenith of power during the 1670s and 1680s and rarely did pirate ships travel alone. Van Hoorn had joined other well known pirates and yet others had joined him.

I wont go into much more here about his other escapades but in my upcoming book on Piracy, I cover Van Hoorn in great detail. I will just briefly finish the tale for those who are still reading.

Van Hoorn ends up joining the great Dutchman pirate lord Laurens DeGraaf. The collaboration started badly from the beginning because Van Hoorn seized two great Spanish ships that DeGraaf had been secretly watching for weeks. He seethed with anger because he was waiting for them to be loaded. Van Hoorn ruined the whole thing and the take was minor.

However, DeGraaf was happy to have Van Hoorn on their next venture which is one of the greatest pirate adventures of history. DeGraaf not only planned to sack Vera Cruz which was the center of Spanish gold distribution in the Americas, but his plan was also after taking the city to wait for the treasure fleet to arrive and bag it as well.

DeGraaf, Adrienszoon, Yankey, Grammont, Van Hoorn and other lesser captains in a night-time surprise attack with somewhere between 800 and 2000 pirates successfully took Vera Cruz and all of her forts with hardly a casualty. Luck had been with them from the beginning. The Spaniards believing DeGraaf’s own fleet to be the expected treasure fleet guided them in with torchlight.

Estimates put the initial take at 6 million dollars and it is believed that much more of the treasure was hidden out of sight. This infuriated the pirates and they tore the city apart looking for more – which they found. They took 1500 important hostages. Word came from DeGraaf’s scouts that the treasure fleet was inbound – however, accompanying it was also a large well armed escort consisting of the Barlovento Guardia Flota (literally translated the “Windward Guard Fleet”) – think the US 7th fleet – the Spanish equivalent. The pirates knew there was no way that they could hold Vera Cruz or take the treasure fleet now.

While DeGraaf was still sizing up the situation and trying to find the rest of the Spanish gold, Van Hoorn became impatient. He ordered 10 of the hostages to be murdered and their heads lopped off and sent into the city to motivate the officials of Vera Cruz to cough up the ransoms.

When DeGraaf returned he was furious when he found out what Van Hoorn had done. He had already been called a coward once by him before – previous to the Vera Cruz attack when DeGraaf was waiting for the opportuned time to move in. This was the final straw and a classic Hollywood style swashbuckling duel took place with DeGraaf winning the battle and wounding Van Hoorn – who was then taken in irons back to his ship.

Van Hoorn’s wound became infected and gangrenous and he was dead in less than a week – buried not too far away on Isla de Muerte – The island of the dead.

I find the greed among this group amazing in that we know that when they split the loot that every pirate got 800 pieces of eight!!!! That is among the richest of pirate scores in all of history. Every single one of them would have been an extremely rich man. One piece of eight at that time would buy room and board AND FOOD for an entire YEAR! Two or three pieces of eight could buy a small piece of property or a half decent house. A hundred or two hundred pieces of eight would buy a very respectable ship.

There were repercussions to this raid that no pirate histories I’ve read ever cover and that this raid in 1683 was one of the causes of the War of Reunions between Spain and France. Try finding that cause in an actual modern history book LOL. Spain blamed France for allowing the Brethren of the Coast and Tortuga to go on as a lawless place without proper French controls. They blamed the sack of Vera Cruz totally on the pirates out of Tortuga even though DeGraaf had never made Tortuga one of his primary haunts. Most people say the war was political maneuvering by the Sun King and leave out the Caribbean part of this war – but it happened and it was indeed part of the cause. I can prove it. The war ended a year later in 1684 with concessions on both sides – but particularly from the French Crown that they promised to gain control over Tortuga and the Brethren – the verbiage can be found in the Treaty of Ratisbon 1684.

What happened to his ship??? I DON’T KNOW!!! If anyone has a source for this please tell me because that is the part of this grand story that I can’t finish.

I have had suspicions for sometime that the English took it back with Van Hoorn’s second or whoever was elected next as captain. The reasons for this are the numerous available depositions taken by English officials before the courts of Jamaica from pirates who were members of Van Hoorn’s crew. They are some pretty fascinating reading and I will enter some pieces below after answering one last question.

What are my resources: I don’t have access to my library at the moment so I can’t give you ISBN numbers. However, I will be back at my other house in Louisiana in about two weeks time and I will provide the list of books then. I have several books specifically on Dutch pirates and Zee Roovers, “The Wild Coast”, and then of course there is David Marley – Marley wrote two books that mention the Saint Nicholas Day – The Sack of Vera Cruz: The Great Pirate Raid of 1683 and then there is of course his landmark work – Pirates of the Americas (I believe Van Hoorn’s bit is in Volume 1 if I am not mistaken)

In the depositions below the ship is referred to as simply the “St Nicholas” and its previous name was the “Mary and Martha”. So it could be just St Nicholas, however, I very much trust the scholarship of David Marley. I promise though that I will look further into the matter – just for my own edification and information for my own book if nothing else – and will provide the details of what I find out.

I am also very interested to hear about these different meanings and if they have some bearing on the subject. Was the ship actually named Mary and Martha when it left England? Nothing I have found suggests that. However, if that is indeed the case then Van Hoorn could have actually named the ship himself. Did he wait to do that until after he went pirate? All I can promise is that I will continue to dig into the subject.

MK

Depositions:

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
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 Graaf 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.

• This topic was modified 6 years, 11 months ago by modernknight1.
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• This topic was modified 6 years, 11 months ago by modernknight1.
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• This topic was modified 6 years, 11 months ago by modernknight1.
• This topic was modified 6 years, 11 months ago by modernknight1.
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