de Halve Maen, Vol. 92, No. 2

de Halve Maen

Journal of The Holland Society of New York Vol. 92, No. 2 2019

The Holland Society of New York requests the pleasure of your company at the 134th Annual Meeting and Dinner on Saturday, April 4, 2020 at the Lotos Club 5 East 66th Street, New York, NY 10065

2020 Annual Medalists Carolyn McCormick and Byron Jennings will receive the Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Arts Annual Meeting 4:30 PM Cocktails 6:00 PM Dinner 7:00 PM Presentation 8:30 PM $80 for Members and Fellows $190 for Friends and Guests Dress: Black tie optional Please respond no later than March 28, 2020; make check payable to: The Holland Society of New York. Please mail your response and payment to 1345 Avenue of the Americas, 33rd Floor, New York, NY 10105, or visit our website at www.hollandsociety.org and pay via Paypal.

This year, the election ballot for the Board of Trustees will be electronic. Please stay tuned for a mailing that provides a link to the election slate.

I will attend the Holland Society Annual Meeting Dinner on April 4, 2020. Enclosed is my check for payment.

Name:___________________________________________________________________________ Address:_________________________________________________________________________ Tel:_________________________________Email:_______________________________________

de Halve Maen

The Holland Society of New York 1345 SIXTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, NY 10105 President Andrew S. Terhune Vice President Col. Adrian T. Bogart III Treasurer R. Dean Vanderwarker III

Magazine of the Dutch Colonial Period in America VOL. XCII Secretary James J. Middaugh Domine Rev. Paul D. Lent

Advisory Council of Past Presidents Kenneth L. Demarest Jr. W. Wells Van Pelt Jr. Robert Schenck Walton Van Winkle III Peter Van Dyke William Van Winkle Charles Zabriskie Jr. Trustees Laurie Bogart Andrew A. Hendricks Bradley D. Cole Sarah E. Lefferts D. David Conklin David D. Nostrand Christopher M. Cortright Gregory M. Outwater Eric E. DeLamarter Richard Van Deusen David W. Ditmars Kenneth G. Winans Philips Correll Durling Stuart W. Van Winkle

Trustees Emeriti Adrian T. Bogart Kent L. Stratt John O. Delamater David William Voorhees Robert G. Goelet Ferdinand L. Wyckoff Jr. Robert Gardiner Goelet Stephen S. Wyckoff David M. Riker Donald Westervelt Rev. Everett Zabriskie

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NUMBER 2

IN THIS ISSUE: 26

Editor’s Corner

27

High Seas Adventures on den Soutberg

by Rudy VanVeghten

35

Discovery and Disaster: The Five Ships of Rotterdam

by Peter A. Douglas

42

Here and There in New Netherland Studies

43

Society Activities: Interview with Society Gold Medalists Carolyn McCormick and Byron Jennings

47

In Memoriam

Burgher Guard Captain Sarah Bogart Vice-Presidents Connecticut-Westchester R. Dean Vanderwarker III Dutchess and Ulster County D. David Conklin Florida James S. Lansing International Lt. Col. Robert W. Banta Jr. (Ret) Jersey Shore Stuart W. Van Winkle Long Island Eric E. DeLamarter Mid-West David Ditmars New Amsterdam Eric E. DeLamarter New England Niagara David S. Quackenbush Old Bergen-Central New Jersey Gregory M. Outwater Old South Pacific Northwest Edwin Outwater III Pacific Southwest (North) Kenneth G. Winans Pacific Southwest (South) Paul H. Davis Patroons Robert E. Van Vranken Potomac Christopher M. Cortright Rocky Mountain Adrian T. Bogart IV South River Walton Van Winkle III Texas James J. Middaugh Virginia and the Carolinas James R. Van Blarcom United States Air Force

United States Army Col. Adrian T. Bogart III United States Coast Guard Capt. Louis K. Bragaw Jr. (Ret) United States Marines Lt. Col. Robert W. Banta Jr., USMC (Ret) United States Navy LCDR James N. Vandenberg, CEC, USN Editor David William Voorhees Production Manager

Sarah Bogart

Editorial Committee Peter Van Dyke, Chair Christopher Cortright John Lansing

Copy Editor Rudy VanVeghten

David M. Riker Rudy VanVeghten

by Sarah Bogart Cooney

The Holland Society of New York was organized in 1885 to collect and preserve information respecting the history and settlement of New Netherland by the Dutch, to perpetuate the memory, foster and promote the principles and virtues of the Dutch ancestors of its members, to maintain a library relating to the Dutch in America, and to prepare papers, essays, books, etc., in regard to the history and genealogy of the Dutch in America. The Society is principally organized of descendants in the direct male line of residents of the Dutch colonies in the present-day United States prior to or during the year 1675. Inquiries respecting the several criteria for membership are invited.

De Halve Maen (ISSN 0017-6834) is published quarterly by The Holland Society.

Subscriptions are $28.50 per year; international, $35.00. Back issues are available at $7.50 plus postage/handling or through PayPaltm.

POSTMASTER: send all address changes to The Holland Society of New York, 1345 Sixth Ave., 33rd Floor, New York, NY 10105. Telephone: (212) 758-1675.

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E-mail: info@hollandsociety.org Website: www.hollandsociety.org Copyright © 2019 The Holland Society of New York. All rights reserved.

Cover: Willem van de Velde II, “Dutch Ships and Small Vessels Offshore in a Breeze” (circa 1660), National Gallery, London [WP:PD].

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25

Editor’s Corner

S

HIPS TOUCHED EVERY aspect of life in the early modern era. Water travel was not only the most efficient and cost-effective method for transporting people and goods but often the only way.

Holland’s rich network of canals and waterways greatly contributed to the prosperity of the state, while Dutch ships brought goods from all parts of the globe. “Decisive for the rise of Holland was the first half of the fifteenth century,” historian Jonathan Israel wrote. “It was then that the Hollanders first developed the full-rigged seagoing ships which formed the basis of the subsequently burgeoning bulk-carrying trade.” Two essays in this issue of de Halve Maen take us on exciting voyages during the period of Holland’s maritime expansion throughout the world and which contributed to the shaping of New Netherland.

Early modern ocean voyages were “always harrowing, frequently dangerous, and occasionally deadly,” Rudy VanVeghten notes in this issue’s opening article,“High Seas Adventures on den Soutberg.” As an example, VanVeghten provides a riveting account of a dramatic Atlantic crossing of the Dutch West India Company ship den Soutberg. The vessel departed from Holland for New Netherland in late July 1632 carrying a new Company director, more than 100 soldiers, a new minister for Manhattan, and Manhattan’s first schoolmaster in addition to numerous passengers and livestock. Yet, instead of taking the usual eight to twelve weeks to cross the ocean, the ship did not reach Manhattan until eight months later.

Arriving, that is, with the livestock no longer on board, and the sailors and passengers having some traumatic tales to tell.

In these pages, VanVeghten unravels the mystery of den Soutberg’s crossing. Contemporary details of the voyage are “sketchy” he informs us. There is no extant ship’s log or passenger’s diary to explain why the crossing took so long. To recreate the voyage, VanVeghten turns to the correspondence of Kiliaen van Rensselaer. In 1632, Van Rensselaer needed to transport farmers and livestock across the ocean to populate his Hudson River colony.

When his nephew Wouter van Twiller was appointed director of New Netherland, VanVeghten speculates Van Rensselaer took advantage by reserving space for his workers and livestock on the same Company ship carrying his nephew to America. “Although it is not identified in Van Rensselaer’s correspondence,” VanVeghten writes, “it is assumed it was den Soutberg, the ship on which Director Wouter van Twiller later arrived in New Amsterdam.”

Through careful detective work, VanVeghten paints a vivid portrait of an epic adventure on the high seas.

A generation before den Soutberg’s voyage, two wealthy

Rotterdam merchants formed in 1598 a company to fund an expedition of five ships known as the “Five Ships of Rotterdam” to sail to the Molucca Islands in present-day Indonesia. Though predating Henry Hudson’s voyages of discovery by a decade, Peter Douglas’s essay illuminates what drove so many in that era to venture into the scarcely charted maritime world of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

As he notes, “These forces had to be undeniably powerful to convince so many men so many times to risk their fortunes and lives to sail the world for years on end, in extreme danger and discomfort, to bring back home the strange seeds, fruits, roots, and bark of exotic plants that grow only in hot climates.”

The 1598 fleet with a combined crew of around 500 men was one such venture. Their voyage to obtain the riches of the East, Douglas informs us, was different from previous ones. To avoid Portuguese- and Spanish-controlled waters, the plan was to get to the Pacific by going around South America then head northwest across the Pacific and approach the Indies from the east. Furnished for war and trade, part of the plan was to raid Spanish settlements on the coast of Chile and Peru for treasures before crossing the Pacific. A little more than two years after the five ships had departed, only one of the expedition’s ships limped back to Rotterdam, empty-handed and containing only thirty-six out of the 500-odd sailors to embark. “The financial failure of the expedition, along with its human cost,” Douglas notes, “should not detract from the great courage and fortitude of those who survived to return.”

Moreover, in this tale of deadly encounters he reveals that the survivors brought back something even more valuable for future generations than spices or gems. Such tales as these will never cease to amaze and to encourage the venturous to risk their lives in new exploits in unchartered realms.

Since 1922, The Holland Society Trustees have recognized distinguished achievement by those who are not Society members but have made an outstanding contribution in some field of human endeavor by presenting them with the Distinguished Achievement Medal. Holland Society Executive Administrator Sarah Bogart Cooney sat down with the Society’s 2020 medalists, Carolyn McCormick and Byron Jennings, who will receive the Society’s Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Arts on April 4, 2020. Her fascinating interview with these two theatrical stars appears under Society Activities.

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David William Voorhees Editor

de Halve Maen

High Seas Adventures on den Soutberg

by Rudy VanVeghten

P

ATROON Kiliaen van Rensselaer needed farmers to populate his New World colony. He needed farm animals as well. In order to situate them on their farms, he had to send them across the ocean in always harrowing, frequently dangerous, and occasionally deadly ocean voyages on overpacked and crowded ships.

Fighting against obstacles that had broken other patroonships in New Netherland, Van Rensselaer refused to let his large Rensselaerswijck plantation go under.

When his nephew Wouter van Twiller was appointed director of the Dutch colony of New Netherland in 1632, Van Rensselaer took advantage by reserving space on the West India Company ship that was to carry Van Twiller across the Atlantic, booking passage for a head farmer and his helpers. In addition, the patroon arranged to send over a supply of young calves. These animals would help stock the farms he was creating along the Hudson River near the Fort Orange trading post.

Eight months later, the ship finally anchored in the roadstead off Manhattan Island. Van Rensselaer’s cattle were no longer on board, and his farmers, along with the sailors and WIC personnel, had some harrowing and exciting tales to tell about their long and eventful voyage aboard a ship with the curious name den Soutberg—the Salt Mountain.

a quick review is in order to set the context for den Soutberg’s journey. That voyage came a little more than a decade after formation of the Dutch West India Company [WIC] in 1621. A group of nineteen leading investors from the Netherlands’ major commerce centers, known as the Heren XIX, sat at the head of the Company.

Among the six delegates representing the “chamber” of Amsterdam was Kiliaen van Rensselaer. “From the beginning,” writes his biographer Janny Venema, “Kiliaen, who had signed on for a sufficient sum, was chosen to represent the shareholders, both in the chamber and in the meetings of the Heren XIX.”1 Along with fellow investors Samuel Blommaert, Michiel Pauw, Samuel Godyn, and Johannes de Laet, Van Rensselaer took especial interest in the colonizing possibilities afforded by New World territory claimed by the Netherlands. They realized that for the WIC to succeed, it was important to establish a more robust presence in New Netherland than remote outposts used by fur traders. Article II of the WIC charter expressly directs that the company “must

The West India Company. The story of the West India Company and Rensselaerswijck’s beginnings has been told often, but Rudy VanVeghten’is a frequent contributor to de Halve Maen. His background in journalism and publications led him to become immersed in local and regional history as a long-time newspaper editor. More recently, he pivots an interest in family genealogy to focus his research on Hudson Valley Dutch history.

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advance the peopling of those fruitful and unsettled parts, and do all that the service of those countries, and the profit and increase of trade shall require.”2 Early attempts by the WIC to colonize Manhattan Island by establishing six company farms were slow in meeting the company’s goals.3 Hoping to turn this situation around, one subgroup of the directors conceived a new idea. It would rely on additional financial investments on their own part rather than draining the resources of the WIC as a whole. This plan consisted of establishing private colonies financed and governed by small groups of investors, each led by a patroon. In 1629, the WIC approved a set of regulations called the Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions that set out the rules under which these patroonships would operate. It set up a 1

Janny Venema, Kiliaen van Rensselaer (1586-1643): Designing a New World (Albany, 2011), 174.

2

“Charter of the Dutch West India Company: 1621,” Yale Law School’s Lillian Goldman Library, http://avalon.law. yale.edu/17th_century/westind.asp, retrieved 11/24/13.

3

Jan Folkerts, “The Failure of West India Company Farming on the Island of Manhattan,” in de Halve Maen 69:3 (Fall 1996), 48.

MANHATTAN’S FIRST FARMS—Failure of six initial farms along Manhattan Island’s East River to fill the nascent New Amsterdam granary needs was one factor in the company’s decision to allow formation of patroonships. This map detail from I. N. P. Stokes shows the location of the WIC’s farms along the Bowery path (at left) relative to the presentday grid of streets and avenues.

(Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island PL. 84b, vol.

6:69.)

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RENSSELAERSWIJCK FARMS C. 1632—After establishing his first two farms named Rensselaers Burg at the north end of Castle Island (at left) and De Laets Burg at the outlet of Mill Creek (opposite Fort Orange), Patroon Kiliaen van Rensselaer planned another farm to be called Bloemerts Burg (at right), and booked passage for farmer Gerrit de Reux on board the West India Company ship den Soutberg. mechanism for establishing patroonships in New Netherland as well as West India Company holdings in the Caribbean.4 Establishing Rensselaerswijck. On November 19, 1629, Kiliaen van Rensselaer backed by “associates” Albert Coenraets Burgh, Samuel Godyn, and Samuel Blommaert petitioned to become patroon of a colony “on the North River of New Netherland beginning above and below Fort Orange,5 on both sides of the river with the islands therein, as many leagues downwards as the Assembly of the XIX has determined, intending to send a colony thither at the first opportunity on the conditions framed as aforesaid.”6 As a model for his New World enterprise, Van Rensselaer drew on the established feudal system in pre-Revolutionary Europe, particularly his own holdings in the Gooi district of the United Provinces. In his respected study of Rensselaerswijck, S. G. Nissenson notes that Kiliaen “envisioned his patroonship as worked much like a large estate in the agricultural provinces of the Netherlands. This required him to erect, stock and equip farms, and to procure and employ the labor for their cultivation.”7 Unlike with European fiefdoms, however, Van Rensselaer had to contrive ways to administer his new estate across a wide ocean.

Farms need animals, and the patroon charged WIC employee Wolfert Gerritsen van Couwenhoven to help acquire them. “Wolffert Gerritssz shall therefore try to obtain as many animals as possible from this one and that one.” With hopes of reaching the fifty-settler commitment required for patroonships, Van Rensselaer initially sought to establish eight farms in his colony. He advised his farming overseer to stock each of these “with four horses, four cows, two heifers, six sheep and six hogs.”8 Fulfillment of this ambitious goal was several years in coming.

Using laborers hired from Director Pieter Minuit and the WIC, Wolfert Gerritsen set about the patroon’s task of establishing farms with living quarters, barns, hay ricks and other husbandry necessities. “In a short time,” wrote the late Amsterdam archivist Nicolaas de Roever, “two were ready, viz, Rensselaersburg and Laetsburg.”9 The former was located on Castle Island with Rutger Hendricksz van Soest in charge.

Kiliaen named the second farm de Laetsburg after Johannes de Laet, a new partner in the Rensselaerswijck project. It was situated along the Mill Creek almost directly opposite Fort Orange. He assigned Roelof Jansen van Masterlandt and his wife, Anneke Jans, to manage this farm.10 Van Rensselaer soon had much of his colony land procured and an initial staff of

28

farmers, millers, and essential tradesmen assembled. He had obtained some horses and cattle and was actively looking on both continents to add to his inventory of both farmers and livestock. Like Shakespeare’s Prospero, he could set about fashioning a magical paradise out of an exotic virgin wilderness. “Now Kiliaen’s dream could begin,” writes Venema. “But things would not be that easy.”11 Dissention Among the Heren XIX. Back in Amsterdam, WIC directors debated the impact of patroonship colonization on the company’s control of the peltry trade. A growing faction, according to de Roever, “alleged that the patroons’ aim was to monopolize the fur trade and thus to injure 4

A. J. F. Van Laer, trans. and ed., Van Rensselaer Bowier Manuscripts (Albany, 1908), 137–53. Hereafter VRBM. One patroonship application by Albert Coenraets Burgh was for St. Vincent island in the Caribbean (Ibid., 156).

5

Present-day Albany.

6

VRBM, 157. Burgh’s share was subsequently purchased

by Johannes de Laet.

7 Samuel G. Nissenson, The Patroon’s Domain (New York, 1937), 35.

8

VRBM, 162.

9

Nicolaas de Roever, “Kiliaen van Rensselaer and his colony of Rensselaerwyck,” Alan H. Strong, trans., in VRBM, 57.

10

Venema, 247.

11

Ibid. Van Rensselaer initiated his patroonship within two decades after Shakespeare wrote The Tempest.

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the Company.”12 Tempers flared at Company headquarters in Manhattan as well. In his 1630 letter to Van Rensselaer, Symon Pos noted, “[T]he director [Minuit] and Jan Ramonde are very much embittered against one another.” In addition, “the minister, Jonas Michielsz, is very energetic here stirring up the fire between them; he ought to be a mediator in God’s church community, but he seems to me to be the contrary.”13 Discouraged by the anti-patroon faction, all but one of the investors who registered New Netherland patroonships eventually failed and returned their properties to the Company.14 Van Rensselaer alone was inspired—some might say stubborn—enough to continue. He had sufficient influence left among the directors to encourage the transfer of Bastien Jansen Crol, who had been instrumental in Kiliaen’s purchase of land from the Indians, from Fort Orange down to Manhattan as interim director in place of Minuit. Even more significant, Van Rensselaer succeeded in winning the new director post for his nephew, Wouter van Twiller.15 Former Director Minuit, along with Gerrit de Reux and Pieter Bijevelt, two WIC Manhattan farmers, had returned to Amsterdam on recall orders from the Company. As he debriefed Minuit, de Reux, and Bijlvelt over in Amsterdam, Van Rensselaer developed a rather bold plan. He had been the prime mover behind establishing the Manhattan farms back in 1626. He had been the one scouring the Dutch countryside to hire farmers and laborers for these farms that, through no fault of his own, had proven incapable of supplying New Netherland with an adequate supply of grain. Now he had acquired a colony upriver that promised far richer harvests. As his plan came together, he realized he might purchase the assets of failing Company farms on Manhattan, and then transfer the livestock and farm implements up to his new Rensselaerswijck colony.16 “Paradoxically,” writes Jan Folkerts, “it was the great protagonist for agricultural settlement in New Netherland and large shareholder of the Company, Kiliaen van Rensselaer, who played a central part in the problems that evolved” regarding the failing farms on Manhattan Island.17 Next step in Van Rensselaer’s plan to shift the Company’s agricultural effort to his upriver colony came on June 15, 1632.

Kiliaen came to terms with former Manhattan farmer Gerrit de Reux to establish a

new farm in Rensselaerswijck. Plans called for the location of this farm to be along a stream the patroon called “Bloommaert’s kil” (later named Patroon’s Creek), north of Fort Orange. For his initial bank of farm animals, including four horses and five cows, the contract encouraged de Reux to use “the animals which he has in that country if they are still alive and to be had.”18 Before de Reux’ new farm was developed, Roelof Jansen, his wife, Anneke Jans, and children left their Rensselaerswijck farm across from Fort Orange and relocated to Manhattan Island. As a result, de Reux took over the vacant de Laetsburg instead of establishing a new farm.19 In order to pursue his plans to reinvigorate his colony, Van Rensselaer needed to transport his farmers, tools, and animals across the Atlantic, and he looked to West India Company vessels to assist him. While he had been busy with these patroonship plans, the WIC had been active down in the Caribbean developing a new enterprise on one of the Leeward Islands. This landmass had remained mostly undeveloped while Spanish conquistadores over the preceding century focused instead on siphoning precious metals out of Mexico and South America. Dutch and French interlopers, however, had discovered another raw material could be found in abundance on the isle—Salt.

Dutch Sint Maarten 1631–1633. Named St. Martin by Columbus after first spotting the island on November 11, 1493, the feast day of St. Martin of Tours, the native Amerindians living there at the time called

it Soualiga—“the land of salt.” Spain had little use for the mountainous and salty terrain, where neither mining of gold and silver nor sugar farming were options.

Based on their exploitation of other islands, it is likely the one raw material the Spanish harvested from the island was its native population, sending them to other locations as slaves and thus depopulating the island.

Later explorations by the Dutch, English, and French, however, saw an opportunity.

Salt was already a necessity for preserving meat and farm products such as butter and meat.20 It also became part of an early triangular trade between Europe, the Caribbean, and North America. “For a number of years in the period prior to 1621, Dutch merchants had been sailing to areas of the Atlantic, other than New Netherland,” writes Dutch scholar Jaap Jacobs. “To patria they carried sugar from Brazil, the Canary Islands, Sao Tome, and Madeira, 12

De Roever, VRBM, 58.

13

VRBM, 169.

14

Venema, 249.

15

VRBM, 59–60; Venema, 248.

16

Venema, 283.

17

Folkerts, 49.

18

VRBM, 193, 193n.

19

Wouter van Twiller granted Roelof Jansen a farm along the Hudson River north of New Amsterdam. After Roelof Jansen died in 1636, his widow, Anneke Jans, became the wife of den Soutberg passenger Domine Everhardus Bogardus: Stephen P. Nash, Anneke Jans Bogardus: Her Farm, and How It Became the Property of Trinity Church, New York (New York, 1896), 22; I.N.P. Stokes, ed., Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909, 6 vols., (New York, 1915–1928), 4:263.

20

VRBM, 212, e.g.

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY CARIBBEAN—The Manesson Mallet map of “Isles Caribes” gives a fairly accurate representation of the Caribbean in the seventeenth century, including Dutch/French St. Martin in the Lesser Antilles at top right, and the Dutch islands of Aruba, Curaçao, and Bon Aire, lower left.

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TRIBUTE TO THEIR HERITAGE—Present day Sint Maarteners at Philipsburg pay tribute to the historic salt harvesting industry with this monument near the Great Salt Pond. Salt mining, begun by the Dutch in 1631, remained the economic backbone of the island for over three centuries.

Spanish in 1629, a remnant of Dutch and French pioneers stayed on Sint Maarten.

“A few dozen Frenchmen and Dutchmen then decided to remain on the island and started to cultivate tobacco and gather salt on Great Bay,” reports the French St. Martin bilingual magazine Heritage. “The Dutch built a fort at the present location of Fort Amsterdam.”25 This fort sits atop a peninsular hill between Great Bay and Little Bay on the island’s south side.

Common thinking among modern-day Sint Maarteners is that the Dutch set up salt 21 Jaap Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland: A Dutch Settlement in Seventeenth-Century America (Ithaca and London, 2009), 27.

22 Mike Dash, “White Gold: How Salt Made and Unmade the Turks and Caicos Islands” (December 14, 2012), https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/white-goldhow-salt-made-and-unmade-the-turks-and-caicos-islands161576195/, retrieved 5-20-2019.

23

VRBM, 421.

24

and salt from the Cape Verde Islands, the coast of Venezuela, and islands in the Caribbean. Salt was essential to the Dutch fishing industry.”21 Entrepreneurial merchants used salt to profit from the rich fisheries of Newfoundland and Georges Bank. Atlantic cod harvests had become coveted as a delicacy over in Europe, and in order to capitalize on this growing market, it was necessary for fishing vessels to preserve their catches for the return trip to Europe. “The demand for salt to preserve fish was so vast that the Newfoundland cod fishery alone needed 25,000 tons of the stuff a year,” according to a Smithsonian.com article.22 Kiliaen van Rensselaer, himself, dabbled in this cross-continental trade. In 1638, six years after den Soutberg’s 1632 voyage, the patroon engaged the Arms of Norway to carry workers and supplies over to New Netherland. Flying, as its name suggests, the Norwegian coat of arms from her rigging, the vessel’s primary destination was the Grand Banks off Newfoundland.

Shortly after she arrived in New Netherland, Governor Kieft reported that the ship had left for “terra neuf [Newfoundland] or Canada to trade for fish or peltries.”23 And later, after returning to Europe, Van Rensselaer reported that “our ship . . . has had a poor catch and caught not much over 12,000 codfish.”24 By hiring out to Van Rensselaer in April 1638, the owners were able to capitalize on the outgoing voyage as well as the return trip.

With a need for large supplies of salt to keep the catches from spoiling in ship

holds, the Dutch and French saw an opportunity on St. Martin, the island the Spanish had little use for. When they arrived in the 1620s, the salt island was reportedly depopulated through a combination of disease and exportation of the Native population. Following a skirmish with the

Ibid., 431. At this time, St. Maarten was once again in Spanish hands, so the Dutch were attempting to mine salt from other islands, including Bonaire in the Southern Caribbean just east of the WIC stronghold at Curaçao, governed by Petrus Stuyvesant. See Charles T. Gehring and J. A. Schiltkamp, trans. and eds., Curaçao Papers, 1640–1665 (Interlaken, NY, 1987), 10.

25 “The Concordia treaty,” in Heritage Saint-Martin/SintMaarten, Editeur: Association Archeologique, Hope Estate, (Marigot, Saint Martin, March 2010), 10.

ISLAND OF SALT PONDS—This pre-1630 map of Spanish St. Martin clearly shows a fort on the peninsula between the Great and Little Bays on the island, suggesting the original fort was built before the Dutch and French took control of the island in 1631. Note the compass rose at lower left, indicating the Dutch south side of the island is at the top of the map. (Sint Maarten Historical Society collection; original owned by Archivo de las Indias, Seville.)

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SPAIN RECAPTURES ST. MARTIN—Juan de la Corte’s Expulsion of the Dutch from the Island of San Martin shows Spanish sea and land forces under the command of the Marquis of Cadeyreta and General Don Lope de Hoces overwhelming the Dutch defenses at Fort Amsterdam in June 1633. (Wikimedia Commons). mining operations on the island in 1631, with the French following soon thereafter at Grand Case on the north end. Claims about the Dutch origins of Fort Amsterdam, however, might be somewhat skewed. A copy of a pre-1630 Spanish map displayed at the Sint Maarten Historical Society in Philipsburg suggests the fort was originally built by the Spanish conquerors.26 If that is the case, it is also possible the Spanish had made some use of the salt resource.

Regardless, it seems the West India Company had little trouble taking control of the fort and the island in 1631 and naming (or renaming) the bastion Fort Amsterdam. In little time they had begun harvesting salt from the shores of what is known as the Great Salt Pond located just inland from Great Bay. A later assessment of the island’s resource was stated by Petrus Stuyvesant in a 1644 letter. “The saltpans of St. Martyn are more accessible than any other in this region and for this reason the ships from the fatherland as well as elsewhere would prefer to seek a cargo there than elsewhere.”27 Today a monument within a Phillipsburg traffic circle near the Salt Pond pays tribute

to the important economic role of salt mining over the island’s next three centuries.

The West India Company enjoyed only a couple of years at Sint Maarten before the Spanish took exception to their presence.

“Seeing the settlers from Northern Europe strengthen their positions in the islands of the Lesser Antilles, the Spanish again decided to send an expedition to drive them out,” according to Heritage magazine. They (re)captured Fort Amsterdam in 1633 and “negotiated the surrender of the inhabitants of Saint Martin. 150 Dutchmen and 40 black workers refused to surrender to the enemy immediately, several galleons opened fire and engaged combat with the fort.” In the end, Dutch commander Jan Claeszoon Van Campen surrendered, and the Spanish reclaimed the island.28 For the next decade and a half, the Dutch pestered the Spanish at Sint Maarten in hopes of retaking control of the salt resource. In one of these skirmishes in April 1644, Petrus Stuyvesant, serving as the WIC governor of Curaçao, famously lost his lower right leg to a cannonball.29 Following the 1648 Münster peace treaty that

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ended the Eighty Yearsʼ War, Spain once again abandoned St. Maartin. Dutch and French contingents quickly moved back in and signed the so-called Concordia Treaty to divide the salt island between them.

During that small window of 1631–1633 when the Dutch controlled Great Bay and the Great Salt Pond, the West India Company had big plans for Sint Maarten and its ample raw material. In hopes of capitalizing on the saline resource, they named one of their ships den Soutberg—the Salt Mountain. There are many spectacular hills surrounding Fort Amsterdam and the Great Bay. Which of these hills the ship was named after has been lost to history. One local tour guide conjectured Salt Mountain was the relatively low prominence on which Fort Amsterdam sits. Curators at the Sint Maarten Historical Museum in 26 A note accompanying the displayed map reads, “This is the first known map of the island of St. Maarten: it dates from before 1630, the original is in the Archivo de las Indias, Seville.”

27

Gehring, Schiltkamp, 34.

28

Heritage, 11.

29

Ibid.; Curaçao Papers, 46.

31

2010, however, had never heard the name.

Whatever the source, the name Soutberg certainly connotes the importance of the commodity it was apparently designed to transport, as well as the importance of a harbor strategically located between the West India Company’s interests in Brazil to the south and New Netherland to the north.

It was this vessel they chose to transport Wouter van Twiller and his entourage across the ocean in 1632.

Preparations for Voyage. Kiliaen van Rensselaer’s writing desk was never employed more than in the early summer of 1632, as he hurriedly dipped his quill repeatedly into the ink well racing against the last minute before this West India Company ship would set sail for America. His urgency was heightened because he’d had no successful crossing to his patroonship since July 1631. With an opportunity now at hand, he booked passage on the twentygun Company ship for animals and supplies as well as farm workers. Although it is not identified in Van Rensselaer’s correspondence, it is assumed it was den Soutberg, the ship on which Director Wouter van Twiller later arrived in New Amsterdam.

Van Rensselaer began the torrent of correspondence on June 15, 1632, by forging a contract with recalled WIC Manhattan farmer Gerrit de Reux to return to New Netherland as a head farmer in Rensselaerswijck colony.30 He also engaged four farm workers to make the crossing: Hendrich Frerixsen from Bunnick, Cornelis Thonissen from Meerkerc, and two farm boys, twenty-year-old Cornelis Jacobsen from Marttensdijck and seventeen-year-old Marcus Mensen from Cuijlenburch, all to work on the de Reux farm.31 It was important for the patroon to keep his minority investors informed of his business decisions involving Rensselaerswijck, so Van Rensselaer dispatched a letter to partner Johannes de Laet on June 27. In the letter, the patroon mentioned the two established farms in the infant colony: de Laetsburg and Rensselaersburg. He also outlined his plans for a new farm: “The fourth creek above Fort Orange on the west side is called Blommaerts kil, where on the arrival of this ship shall be established a farm according to the contract made with gerrit de reux, who with two men and two boys sails thither, with horses and tools and all sorts of supplies needed for himself as well as for the other farms.”32

WOUNDED IN ACTION—Dutch forces attempted but failed to regain possession of St. Martin in April 1644. Commander Petrus Stuyvesant, then the West India Company’s director of Curaçao, was struck by a cannonball during the battle and lost his lower right leg as a result. This statue at Philipsburg, Sint Maarten, pays homage to the famous peg-legged Dutchman.

Van Rensselaer noted he had purchased farm animals from de Reux’ former farm on Manhattan Island, adding he had plans for more. “I hope to obtain some more animals which are left on the director’s farm and shall also get my nephew wouter van Twiller, who now goes thither as director of the Company, to buy still others.” He added, “I intend now by this ship to send six or eight more heifer calves.”33 Although patroonships were intended to be polities unto themselves, Van Rensselaer clearly had intentions to leverage his blood relationship with the new West India Company director. On July 1, 1632, Kiliaen assigned to his nephew Van Twiller power of attorney to swear in the patroonship’s sheriff. Then on July 20, he followed up with a letter to his nephew asking him “to look after the persons who for my account go over on the same ship as you,” meaning Gerrit de Reux and his workers, and also “to take good care of the calves which are sent over with them.” In addition to watching over the men, animals, and a variety of supplies and accoutrements on the voyage, Van Rensselaer asked Van Twiller, “Meanwhile, you will please take charge and superintend my men as much as possible and request somebody at Fort Orange to keep an eye on

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them during your absence.”34 He clearly had high expectations of his nephew working to his colony’s best advantage.

Van Rensselaer also drafted letters regarding patroonship affairs to a number of others, including Rutgers Hendricksen van Soest, his appointed sheriff; Coenraet Notelman, who had taken over Gerrit de Reux’ WIC farm on Manhattan; Dirck Cornelisz Duyster, then serving as Fort Orange commissary; Bastiaen Jansen Crol, serving as interim director of New Netherland between the recall of Minuit and the arrival of Van Twiller; and Wolfert Gerritsz, who had assisted in establishing the first Rensselaerswijck farms but declined an offer to manage one himself. The patroon also compiled administrative documents, including: a census of his current, new, and hoped-for future employees; an inventory of colony livestock including “6 heifer calves which will now go across with Reux by this ship; 30

VRBM, 193.

31

Ibid., 196.

32

Ibid., 198. Plans changed due to the resignation of Roelof Jansen, who relocated down to Manhattan with his wife, Anneke Jans, and family. Gerrit de Reux was therefore reassigned as head farmer at the established de Laetsburg farm after arriving, instead of beginning a new farm.

33

Ibid., 199.

34

Ibid., 204–205.

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cost ƒ 81:13”; and documents related to the WIC livestock he was negotiating to purchase from WIC’s Manhattan farms.35 All in all, the stationery dealers in Amsterdam must have enjoyed a spike in business due to the volumes of paperwork produced by Van Rensselaer that June and July.

With all of this bookkeeping accomplished on July 20, 1632, the ship (presumably den Soutberg) sailed from Amsterdam through the shallows of the Zuider Zee to the island of Texel, where final preparations were made for the Atlantic crossing. Van Rensselaer took advantage of this layover to scratch out another batch of correspondence on July 27. Among these letters were final instructions to Van Twiller regarding the purchase of Manhattan livestock and other Rensselaerswijck affairs. “And herewith ending,” he wrote, “I commend you to the gracious protection of Almighty God, who grant you a speedy voyage.”

As it turned out, it was anything but.

The Voyage. Den Soutberg sailed from Texel shortly after July 27, 1632. On board, in addition to the Rensselaerswijck farmers and new WIC Director Van Twiller, were over 100 soldiers; a new minister for Manhattan, twenty-six-year-old Everardus Bogardus, destined to be a thorn in the side of both Van Twiller and his successor Willem Kieft; Adam Roelandsen, Manhattan’s first schoolmaster; young company employee Govert Loockermans, who became a prominent Manhattan merchant; and even a barmaid of ill repute, Grietje Reyniers.36 Details of the voyage are sketchy. Instead of the usual two- to three-month ocean crossing, their ship didn’t reach its destination in New Netherland until March 1633.

There is no extant ship’s log or passenger’s diary that fully explains the reasons why a sometimes eight-week crossing in this case took eight months. By piecing together a few bits and pieces, however, a picture emerges of an epic adventure on the high seas.

The Netherlands was still at war with Spain, and encounters between ships of the two countries were never friendly. Privateers from the Flemish port of Dunkirk, employed by Spain, harassed Dutch naval trade by intercepting ships passing through the English Channel. The Dutch government branded these “Dunkirker” privateers as pirates. 37 Ships departing from the Netherlands were forced to run a gauntlet through these marauding vessels.38 “The hope,” according to one study, “was that the

NEW NETHERLAND GOVERNOR—Among the passengers on den Soutberg’s 1632 voyage was Wouter van Twiller, selected by the West India Company to replace New Netherland Director Peter Minuit. When American author Washington Irving prepared to publish the third edition of his classic lampoon on the History of New York, he engaged his artist friend Washington Allston to create illustrations, including this caricature of Van Twiller.

Dunkirkers could force the Dutch to agree to a peace compatible with Spanish interests and the king’s honour more quickly.”39 In addition to the Dunkirkers, English and Dutch ships had to watch out for Moorish pirates farther south. One of these pirates was a Dutch native named Jan Janszoon (1570–1641?). Coming from Harlaam in the province of North Holland, he started out as a Dutch-sponsored privateer attacking enemies of the United Provinces, particularly Spanish ships. After capture and indoctrination by Moors, he evolved into a full-fledged pirate along the Barbary Coast of Africa, plundering Dutch, English, or any other nation’s ships with the same vigor as Spanish vessels. He patriotically flew the Dutch flag when attacking a Spanish treasure ship. For anyone else, including his own country-

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men, he would fly the red half moon symbolizing the Turkish Corsairs of the Barbary Coast. He converted to Islam in 35

VRBM, 204-229.

36

John Romeyn Brodhead, History of the State of New York, 2 vols. (New York, 1853), 1:223; Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World (New York, 2004), 85.

37 Oscar Gelderblom, Cities of Commerce: The Institutional Foundations of International Trade in the Low Countries, 1250–1650 (Princeton and Oxford, 2013), 226.

38 A few years later, Van Rensselaer acquired his own ship and named it the Rensselaerswijck. Captain Jan Tiepks Schellinger wrote in his ship log for October 9, “At noon we saw the Flemish coast and at the same time we saw two sails, one off the Flemish coast sailing northward, the other off the English coast sailing southward, but they did not approach us and remained unknown. In the evening toward sunset duinkercken (i.e. Dunkirk) lay about five leagues S.E. from us.” VRBM, 356.

39 Paul Arblaster, “ ‘Our Valiant Dunkirk Romans’: Glorifying the Habsburg War at Sea, 1622–1629,” in News Networks in Early Modern Europe (Leiden, Boston, 2016), 586–87.

NEW PASTOR—Another passenger crossing the Atlantic on den Soutberg was young Domine Everardus Bogardus, assigned as the minister of New Amsterdam’s Dutch Reformed Church. The fiery-tongued, hard-drinking minister later became a bitter critic of both Governor Wouter van Twiller and his successor, Willem Kieft.

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FIGHTING THE DUNKIRKERS—Dutch ships like den Soutberg bound for the New World had to navigate through the waters of the English Channel patrolled by Spanish-aligned privateers called Dunkirkers. In 1639, matters escalated into a full-fledged naval battle between the two countries known as the Battle of the Downs, depicted here in a painting by Willem van de Velde. the early 1600s and adopted the Muslim name Murad Reis after an earlier Moorish captain of the same name.40 Between the Dunkirkers and the Moors, the 1630s were a particularly dangerous time for Dutch ships attempting to follow normal trade routes to the West Indies and the American continents. Hostile shipping lanes disrupted not only the delivery of colonists and supplies to New Netherland, but also caused severe delays in communication, with letters back and forth across the Atlantic often taking a year or more to reach their destination, if at all.

It was through this odyssey of hazards that den Soutberg sailed after leaving Texel in late July 1632. Although we don’t know all the details of their voyage, there is much we can glean indirectly from Kiliaen van Rensselaer’s correspondence.

We know, for instance, that Van Twiller’s ship harbored at St. Maarten island over the winter of 1632–1633. Nearly two years after Van Twiller sailed from the Netherlands, his uncle finally received copies of his letters written during the interval. Van Rensselaer responded to him on April 23, 1634: “Passing over the letter which your honor wrote to me from the island St Martin (since the ships Gelderlant and Nieu Nederlant have both been taken by the Dunkirkers, I find myself in receipt of several letters from your

honor.”41 Later in his response, Van Rensselaer refers to a story circulating about Van Twiller’s questionable behavior while staying on the island. “When your honor went with the minister to the preaching at St Marityn, it would have been better if you had stayed away; wishing to have it understood that you had drunk too much.”42 Word of another exploit that occurred on the way to Sint Maarten involved the capture of a Spanish sugar ship, reported to Van Rensselaer by Van Twiller adversary Marcus de Vogelaer. “When he afterwards heard from St Marttijn that you had taken a prize,” wrote Van Rensselaer in his letter, “he began at once to scold that your honor had not dispatched the sugar.”43 Another letter Van Rensselaer received from Van Twiller had been posted “November 25 [1632], by the Cat from St. Marityn.” An even more harrowing adventure comes through from Van Rensselaer’s answer to this late-arriving correspondence. “I will say that your honor should be most grateful to God that he has delivered you out of the hands of the Turks (even if my calves were cast overboard).” He had referred previously to receiving “news of the killing of my animals.” Later in the letter,

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Van Rensselaer wrote, “The indemnity demanded by your honor for the loss I have incurred will come in well for part of my expenses.”44 It is regrettable that the Van Twiller letters to which his uncle responded no longer exist. On the other hand, it is fortunate that Van Rensselaer’s response discloses scraps of information regarding the Atlantic crossing and the layover at Sint Maarten.

It appears from these bits and pieces that the lengthy layover at St. Martin was not wholly planned. As New Netherland was currently without a governor, it is hard to imagine the ship’s itinerary would have included several months’ worth of business there. But then again, with a newly profitable salt supply at St. Martin, the ship could well have been under Company orders to stop at the little island.

Could it be only coincidence, after all, that a ship named The Salt Mountain was visiting an island with a salt-processing 40

Peter Lamborn Wilson, Pirate Utopias: Moorish Corsairs & European Renegadoes (Brooklyn, 2003), 95–141.

41 VRBM, 266. It is hard to conceive, from our perch in the instant-communication age of the 21st century, the degree of angst Van Rensselaer must have felt not knowing what happened to the ship, his nephew, and his farm assets for nearly two years.

42 Ibid., 269. The minister was likely Domine Bogardus, who had a similar reputation for hard drinking.

43

Ibid., 273–74.

44

Ibid., 266–67.

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operation?

Van Rensselaer also responds in the same epistle to Van Twiller’s letter of March 18, 1663, writing, “I will say that I thank the Lord with you for your safe, though difficult and perilous journey, being pleased to hear that you like the country so well.”45 This letter is key to determining the date when the Soutberg finally landed at Manhattan. It is likely that Van Twiller’s letter was composed somewhat after his arrival in the colony.

New Netherland scholar Janny Venema thus dates the ship’s arrival as “sometime in February or March 1633.”46 Van Rensselaer’s letter is not alone in shedding light on Van Twiller’s difficult journey. Capt. David de Vries confirms the presence of den Soutberg in the Manhattan roadstead early in 1633 with the following entry in his log under the date April 16, 1633: “Arrived at noon before Fort Amsterdam [on Manhattan], and found a Company’s ship there, called the Soutbergh, with a prize taken on the way, laden with sugar. She had brought a new governor, Wouter Van Twiller of Newkirk. He had been a clerk in the West India Department at Amsterdam. They had left Holland after us.”47 Another pertinent document is a deposition given in 1639 by ship carpenter Tymen Jansen, in which he testifies that in the year 1633, he worked on “the ship

‘Soutberck’ repaired and provided with new knees.” A ship’s “knee,” as defined

by Oxford, is “an angular piece of timber used to reinforce the junction of two surfaces of different planes; usually made from the crotch of a tree where two large branches intersected, or where a branch or root joined the trunk.” 48 They were used as supports for ship hulls and decks.

Additionally, Jansen also worked on “The yacht Hope, which was captured Ao. 1632 by said van Twiller, he had entirely rebuilt and planked up.”49 In neither case does the carpenter indicate whether the work was performed at Manhattan or at Sint Maarten. If den Soutberg incurred damage to its knees either during its confrontation with Turkish pirates or the Spanish sugar ship, it would explain why it took from July to November to arrive at Sint Maarten and why it lay in harbor for several months.50 It is interesting that here the captured “prize” is called the Hope.

New Netherland Secretary Cornelis Van Tienhoven in 1650 referred to the ship as the St. Martin.51 Fitting the Pieces Together. Among the first to rearrange some of these puzzle pieces into a cohesive, chronological story was early nineteenth-century historian Edmund O’Callaghan. His description of Van Twiller’s appointment and journey to America, in particular, has

SHIP’S KNEES—Several years after the fact, carpenter Tymen Jansen testified that in 1633 he had made repairs to the “knees” on den Soutberg. Ship’s knees, as pictured here, were often used to support a vessel’s deck planking.

(Google Images)

been frequently cited ever since: The return of Director Minuit having rendered necessary the appointment of another Director-general over New Netherland, Wouter van Twiller, of Nieuwkerke, one of the clerks in the employ of the West Indian Company, and a near relative of the Patroon van Rensselaer, received that high and responsible office. The appointment occasioned, at first, considerable surprise. It seems to have been owing to the above connection, rather than to any particular merit of the nominee, who arrived at Fort Amsterdam [Manhattan] in the spring of this year [1633], in the company’s ship the Salt Mountain, (de Zoutberg,) of twenty guns, manned with fifty-two men, and having on board, for the service of the province, one hundred and four soldiers, the first military force ever detailed for New Netherland…”52 The new Director-General was accompanied to the Manhattans by the carvel St. Martyn, or the Hope, which was captured from the enemy in the course of the preceding year. This vessel was commanded

by Juriaen Blanck, and on board came Govert Lookermans an apprentice.53 By collating everything together, the following synopsis of Van Twiller’s eventful voyage takes shape. About July 27, 1632, the twenty-gun West India Company ship den Soutberg departed from the island of Texel in the Nether45

Ibid., 274.

46

Venema, 252.

47 J. Franklin Jameson, ed., Narratives of New Netherland 1609–1664 (New York, 1909), 186. Van Rensselaer noted in his June 27, 1632, letter to Johannes de Laet that de Vries’ ship had encountered difficulty shortly after departure and had limped into Portsmouth, England, for repairs (VRBM, 196–97).

48 J. Richard Steffy, “Illustrated Glossary of Ship and Boat Terms,” in The Oxford Handbook of Maritime Archeology, available online at https://www.oxfordhandbooks. com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199336005.001.0001/ oxfordhb-9780199336005-e-48, retrieved 6-1-2019.

49

Col Docs, 14:17; Provincial Secretary, 1:111.

50

An alternate explanation, that the ship underwent repairs on the Europe side of the Atlantic, seems unlikely, as there was no correspondence from the ship’s captain or passengers to that effect, as was the case for similar incidents involving de Vries’ ship (see note 47), and also the Rensselaerswijck in 1637 (VRBM, 355–66).

51

Jameson, 376.

52

Edmund O’Callaghan, History of New Netherland, or New York under the Dutch (New York, 1848), 141–42.

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lands crammed full with a new governor and a large contingent of soldiers, a new minister, a schoolmaster, farmer Gerrit de Reux and a handful of Rensselaerswijck farm hands, a barmaid, and a supply of young cows for Van Rensselaer’s farms.

Early in their journey, the Soutberg encountered a rogue Turkish Corsair vessel that put her to the chase. Whether this was the ship of Jan (Murad Reis) Janszoon or another of his Barbary fleet is not recorded. By scuttling some cargo, including some or all of Kiliaen’s dearly acquired calves, the European vessel was able to escape capture. There is a good probability this encounter entailed some damage to den Soutberg, possibly from hostile cannon fire.

Before arriving belatedly at Sint Maarten in November 1632, her adventures continued when the crew spied a Spanish ship loaded with Caribbean sugar. This time the Soutberg was the pursuer, overtaking and capturing the “prize” caravel. Judging from the various names attributed to the captured ship, it was possibly called Hope by the Spanish but renamed the St. Martin by its Dutch captors. Side by side, the two vessels proceeded to the then safe harbor at Sint Maarten, likely in the Great Bay under the watchful protection of Fort Amsterdam. She seems to have anchored there in November 1632, remaining for several months before proceeding up the North American coast to Manhattan, her ultimate destination. Alternatively, the salt island of Sint Maarten was possibly a designated first stop for the ship that was named the Salt Mountain. During their layover on the island, it seems ship carpenter Tysen Jansen made repairs to the captured Spanish ship; it might have been there also that he repaired the ship’s “knees” of den Soutberg. Also during their stay, it appears that both Director Van Twiller and Domine Everardus Bogardus raised concerns over their drinking habits.

Judging from their arrival at Manhattan, it would have been sometime in February when den Soutberg and the St. Martin left the Caribbean island and headed north, riding the Gulf Stream toward their final destination in New Amsterdam. Van Twiller’s entrance as governor must have been quite dramatic.

He arrived with the captured Spanish ship in company. Whatever glory the governor might have reaped from these spoils, one

FORT AMSTERDAM RUINS—Perched atop a peninsula on the Dutch side of present-day Sint Maarten, the ruins of old Fort Amsterdam still command a 270-degree vista of the Atlantic and surrounding bays. In 2017, the centuries-old fort survived category 5 Hurricane Irma far better than much of the rest of the island that continues to rebuild two years later. can only imagine the impression on the likes of schoolmaster Adam Roelandsen or seventeen-year-old farm boy Marcus Mensen about the dangerous exploits they had endured on the Atlantic.

A final postscript to this swashbuckling tale is the account of that other Soutberg passenger, Grietje Reyniers, a barmaid of questionable repute whom Russell Shorto suggests might have been Van Twiller’s mistress. 54 Testimony some years later—given by Adam Roelantsen, and subpoenaed by Domine Bogardus, both fellow Soutberg passengers—relates that shortly after landing, Grietje was seen provocatively raising her skirts to the amusement of the sailors. “[I]n the year 1633, Grietje Reyniers being with the deponent at the strand, near the late warehouse of cargoes, he heard the sailers of the ship De Soutberg, then lying in the roadstead, cry out to Grietje aforesaid, ‘Whore! Whore!,’ whereupon she lifted up her petticoat and slapped her backside, saying: ‘Blaes my daer achterin!’ [i.e.

‘Kiss my ass!’].”55 Whatever her loose morals and behavior might have been, Grietje Reyniers has become one of the more colorful

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characters of New York’s history. She is featured prominently in Shorto’s 2004 book The Island at the Center of the World in the chapter titled “The King, the Surgeon, the Turk and the Whore.” Not long after her arrival in New Amsterdam, Grietje wed Anthony Jansen Van Salee, a dark-skinned rogue commonly known as “The Turk.” Van Salee, as it turns out, was the son of the Barbary pirate Jan (Murad Reis) Janszoon. Had Janszoon or another of his Turkish Corsairs succeeded in capturing and/or sinking den Soutberg in the summer of 1632, he ironically would have deprived himself of a future daughter-in-law.

53 O’Callaghan’s fellow historian John Romeyn Brodhead cited O’Callaghan in his History (1:223). Brodhead’s passage was then referenced in Corwin’s Ecclesiastical Records (1:84), which in turn was cited by Karen Sivertsen’s Babel on the Hudson, 151, 151n. O’Callaghan in a footnote references a communication from Rensselaerswijck partner Johannes de Laet, who “rates the Zoutberg at 140 lasts burden, carrying six metal and twelve iron guns.” Some later writers have mistakenly given Govert Lookermans a larger role in the captured ship’s entry into New York Harbor, claiming it was he who “brought it safely to port.” (e.g. http://www. nycourts.gov/history/legal-history-new-york/luminariesdutch/loockermans-govert.html, retrieved 6-6-19).

54

Shorto, 85–86.

55

Provincial Secretary, 1:69.

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Discovery and Disaster: The Five Ships of Rotterdam

By Peter A. Douglas

From left to right: Blijde Bootschap, Trouwe, Geloof, Liefde, and Hoop. Seventeenth-century engraving.

D

ISCOVERY, COMMERCE, and patriotism were the fundamental driving forces that committed the Netherlands, along with other European powers, to sending fleet after fleet of ships into the many hazards of the scarcely charted maritime world of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These forces had to be undeniably powerful to convince so many men so many times to risk their fortunes and their very lives to sail the world for years on end, in extreme danger Peter Douglas studied at the University of Leeds and obtained a graduate degree in library and information science from the University of Liverpool. He worked in public libraries in London for several years before joining the staff at the New York State Library in Albany, from where he retired in 2009. His association with the New Netherland Institute led to an interest in early Dutch navigators and explorers. His various publications include Dutch Renaissance: The Story of the New Netherland Project, which won the American Library Association’s 2009 Notable Government Documents Award.

and discomfort, to bring back home the strange seeds, fruits, roots, and bark of exotic plants that grow only in hot climates.

In a word: spices.

Not to diminish the honest nationalistic sentiments of the navigators and cartographers and their curiosity about the world beyond the horizon, but plain profit was certainly a huge motivation. It’s a true cliché that at the time, cloves were valued at more than their weight in gold, and a full cargo of spices was worth more than the ship that carried it.1 When the carrack Victoria, the only surviving ship of Ferdinand Magellan’s fleet, returned to Spain in 1522 under the command of Juan Sebastián Elcano, the 381 sacks of cloves it brought back were worth more than the five ships that set sail on the expedition three years earlier. Remarkably, the voyage had been profitable, despite the loss of four ships.2 Today we probably appreciate spices solely in the culinary context, but four hundred years ago and beyond, they were not only for flavoring food but also for preserving it, along with a variety of other uses.

Spices were used for making perfumes

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and incense, and were associated with certain rituals or superstitions, or to fulfill a religious obligation. Moreover, spices have been used for their reputed medicinal properties as far back as traceable history, and doubtless beyond, to enhance or suppress certain sensations. They were used as digestives, stimulants, diuretics, antiseptics, to ward off colds, as a local anesthetic, and for the treatment of liver problems, scurvy, gastric ulcers, fainting fits, anemia, and many other complaints and needs.3 Given the state of medieval medicine and the prevalence of disease, it’s no wonder that these supposed remedies were so highly prized. For his initial heavy investment to fit out ships bound for the Spice Islands, or to find a safer and faster route to get there, a rich merchant could expect a 1

Jeanne Willoz-Egnor, “Giving the Dutch the What For in 1599,” The Mariners’ Museum Blogs, Newport News VA https://www.marinersmuseum.org/blog/2018/10/givingthe-dutch-the-what-for-in-1599/.

2 Charles Rathbone Low, Maritime Discovery: A History of Nautical Exploration from the Earliest Times, 2 vols.

(London, 1881), 1: 284.

3 Jack Turner, Spice: The History of a Temptation (New York, 2005).

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huge return when, eventually, sacks of pepper, nutmeg, cloves, or cinnamon landed in his dockside warehouse. This idea of anticipating making one’s fortune in a risky adventure—from the return of a ship from foreign parts laden with a rich cargo—is a universal human theme, and is thus the origin of the expression, “When my ship comes in,” meaning when my fortune is made, when more affluent times arrive.4 In the case of the Dutch such a motivation was equally tinged with their deep hostility toward Spain and Portugal (dynastically united with Spain), strong rivals in this enterprise. The Dutch were, after all, between 1568 and 1648, engaged in what’s known as the Dutch Revolt, the uprising of the northern, largely Protestant, Seven Provinces of the Low Countries against the rule of the Roman Catholic Habsburg King Philip II of Spain, hereditary ruler of the provinces. Enjoying their maritime mastery, the Dutch trading empire covered the globe.

As various European countries created their own overseas empires, so the rivalries and wars between the countries broadened to their colonies. The most significant of these conflicts would become known as the Dutch-Portuguese War, which started in 1602 and lasted throughout the first half of the seventeenth century, involving drawn out colonial conflicts in the Americas, Africa, Ceylon, India, Macau, the Philippines, Formosa, and the East Indies.5 So it was to extend this lucrative Dutch global commerce that in 1598 two wealthy merchants in the southern Netherlands, Pieter van der Hagen and Johan van der Veeken, formed a voorcompagnie called the Magelhaensche Compagnie to fund an expedition of five ships bound for the Moluccas in the Dutch East Indies.6 A voorcompagnie, or “pre-company,” was a Dutch company that traded in Asia between 1594 and 1602, before they all merged to form the Dutch East India Company. The investors were “very desirous of promoting, to the utmost of their power, such discoveries as might prove beneficial to their navigation and commerce.”7 This voyage was, however, to be somewhat different from others. The usual route east was by way of Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope, and then bearing northeast across the Indian Ocean, past Madagascar and the tip of India. But the intention of this expedition was to avoid the waters controlled by Portuguese and Spanish ships and get to the Pacific (known as the South Sea) by way of South America, then head

northwest across the ocean and approach the Indies from the east.8 This alternative route had extra risks, given the severe weather conditions at that southern latitude, especially the strong westerly winds known as the “Roaring Forties,” between 40 and 50 degrees south.

By providing a strong west-to-east tailwind, these were a great help to ships sailing what came to be called the “Brouwer route” after 1611, when the Dutch explorer Hendrik Brouwer conceived this new faster route from Europe to the East Indies—from the Cape of Good Hope due east and then, at the right point, north to Java.9 The trick was to know when to turn north. Without an accurate way to determine longitude it was the captain’s skill that was paramount.

Hence the discovery of western Australia and the many shipwrecks there.

These winds would not favor this Rotterdam fleet. However, it was not planning to go around Cape Horn where the worst weather in that area was to be found, but through the Strait of Magellan, a winding 350-mile long navigable sea route in southern Chile that leads from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Magellan was the first European known to have sailed through the strait on his circumnavigation voyage in 1520.10 It’s a tricky route to navigate on account of the narrowness of some stretches of the passage and the unpredictable currents and winds, but it’s shorter and offers greater shelter than the often-stormy Drake Passage south of Cape Horn. The strait is two miles across at its narrowest point, and twenty-two miles at the widest. In modern times, piloting is compulsory for sailing the strait, so clearly there are still hazards to be avoided. In 2008, 2,258 ships passed through it.11 So in 1598 the Dutch fleet was assembled. The names of the ships in the

expedition, often referred to as the Five Ships of Rotterdam, represented Christian virtues. They were the Hoop (Hope, 500 tons), the flagship, captained by Jacques Mahu, admiral and leader of the expedition; the Liefde (Love or Charity, 300 tons), captained by Simon de Cordes, vice admiral and second in command; the Geloof (Faith or Belief, 320 tons), captained by Gerrit van Beuningen; the Trouw (Fidelity or Loyalty, 220 tons), under Captain Jurriaan van Boekhout; and the Blijde Boodschap (Glad Tidings or the Gospel, 150 tons), under captain Sebald de Weert. The last was previously known as the Vliegend Hart (Flying Hart).12 The Liefde used to be called the Erasmus, and it has been conjectured that the ship’s 4

Willoz-Egnor, “Giving the Dutch the What For in 1599.”

Although the phrase dates to later than the events described here, the reference is used as a link between the long seafaring practices and human idea of equating one’s personal fortune with a ship.

5

For the Dutch Portuguese War see, https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Dutch%E2%80%93Portuguese_War.

“Magelhaensche Compagnie,” https://nl.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Magelhaensche_Compagnie.

6

7

John Harris, Navigantium Atque Itinerarium Bibliotheca, or a Complete Collection of Voyages and Travels…, John Campbell, ed. (London, 1764), 37.

8 C. J. Purnell, The Log-book of William Adams, 1614-19: With the Documents Relating to Japan, Cochin China, Etc..

Transactions of the Japan Society of London (London, 1916), 157.

9

“Brouwer Route,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brouwer_Route.

10 Charles Rathbone Low, Maritime Discovery: A History of Nautical Exploration from the Earliest Times, 2 vols.

(London, 1881).

11

“Estrecho de Magallanes, Canales y Fiordos ChilenosRegulaciones y direcciones de Pilotaje, Rutas,” http://web. directemar.cl/pilotaje/PaginaB.html.

12 Harris, Navigantium, 37; James Burney, A Chronological History of the Voyages and Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean, from the Year 1579 to the Year 1620, 5 vols. (London, 1806), 2: 187–88; Willoz-Egnor, “Giving the Dutch the What For in 1599.”

Woodblock print of William Adams.

As no contemporary portrait of Adams exists, this depiction was created for a booklet produced for the dedication ceremony of a memorial clock erected in Gillingham, England, in honor of a native son in 1934. From Wikimedia Commons.

38

de Halve Maen

name was changed to fit in with the biblical theme of the fleet. The vessel still featured the stern carving of the famous Rotterdammer, which is now on display in the Tokyo National Museum (for reasons that will become clear later). This carving is often referred to as a figurehead (boegbeeld), and was thought to be one for a long time, but at the time Dutch ships did not generally feature figureheads. When Dutch scholars saw a photograph of the figure when it was displayed at an exhibition in Rome in 1926 they concluded that it was not a figurehead but a hekbeeld, a decorative image that was attached to the ship’s stern. The statue is the sole surviving tangible symbol of the maritime and human drama that was the voyage of the Liefde.13 These five ships had a combined crew of around 500 men. The veteran pilot, on whom Mahu chiefly depended, was an Englishman called William Adams, born in Gillingham, Kent, in 1564, who found a special place in Dutch history at the conclusion of this expedition, achieving, in fact, it’s only success.14 The ships were well provisioned for the voyage, and furnished for both war and trade, with powder and shot as well as a variety of trading merchandise, as part of the plan was to visit Spanish settlements on the coast of Chili and Peru in hope of getting some booty before crossing the Pacific to the Indies. Should there be difficulties with the East Indies destination, the secondary goal would be Japan.15 In spite of the inspirational names of these ships, this expedition was a great misfortune for all involved, and one of the most disastrous in the history of Dutch navigation. Things started to go wrong before they crossed the Atlantic. Sails were set on June 27, 1598, and the fleet departed from Goeree/Rotterdam in high but soon to be dashed hopes when contrary winds delayed their passage into and out of the English Channel, the ships being forced to lie at anchor at the Downs off the coast of Kent until mid-July. More provisions were taken aboard as a precaution.16

By August the fleet had reached the Cape Verde islands off the coast of Africa, where they remained for almost a month, creating a lot of friction with the Portuguese governor in their quest for supplies. Many crewmen died of fever and scurvy here and in subsequent days, including their muchadmired admiral and commander, Jacques Mahu, who was buried at sea.17 Mahu’s death necessitated a reshuffling of captains among the ships, and Simon de Cordes then

A wood figure of Desiderius Erasmus made in 1598. It was the stern ornament of De Liefde, which washed ashore to Japan in 1600.

A collection of Ryukoin Temple at Tochigi Prefecture. Tokyo National Museum.

became the expedition’s leader in the Hoop, with van Beuningen moving to the Liefde.

This opened up the command of the Geloof, which was given to Sebald de Weert, and Dirk Gerritsz Pomp took over the Blijde Boodschap.18 On September 15 they proceeded south, sailing with increasing difficulty as in the Hoop scurvy took its toll and there were too few crew members to work the ship. In November, assailed by contrary winds and rain, they next went ashore at Guinea on the western bulge of Africa, but were unable to replenish their provisions. They proceeded farther south and next made landfall on the island of Annabón, where they hoped to find fresh meat and oranges, but they again fell foul of the Portuguese and attacked the town there. They procured a few supplies, though not as much as they needed on account of the poverty and distrust of the natives. From here they sailed, on January 2, 1599, for South America, though not before burying their dead. They were glad to leave the island, as pilot William Adams wrote: “the unwholesomenesse of the aire was very bad, that as one bettered, an other fell sicke.”19 During the passage across the Atlantic the fleet lost thirty more men to scurvy.

The food situation was so grave that at this point de Cordes decided that it was necessary to impose food rationing on the crews, and the daily bread allowance was limited to a quarter of a pound a day, with

Summer 2019

a small amount of wine and water. Such a scant allowance weakened the crews and brought about ravenous hunger, so much so that some men were desperate enough to eat the calfskins with which the ropes were covered. This was not a promising beginning to what would be a long winter ordeal for the men. The fleet arrived at the Río de la Plata on March 12, and on April 6 arrived at fifty-three degrees south and the eastern entrance of the Strait of Magellan.20 Relieved as they must have been to see land and to arrive at this stage of their long voyage, the crews could have had no idea that they would remain in that region and make very little progress for the next four 13 Hans Brinckmann, “Erasmus / De Liefde” A lecture by at the Tokyo National Museum, under the auspices of the Japan-Netherlands Society, November 12, 2008, http:// www.habri.co.uk/ erasmus-de-liefde.

14 Giles Milton, Samurai William: The Adventurer Who Unlocked Japan (London, 2011).

15 Willoz-Egnor, “Giving the Dutch the What For in 1599.”

16 “Letters of William Adams,” Letters 1 and 2, http:// anthony.sogang.ac.kr/LettersWilliamAdams.html.

17 Burney, A Chronological History of the Voyages and Discoveries, 188.

18

Ibid.

19

Adams to Worshipfull Felowship of the Merchants of London trading into the East Indies, October 22, 1611, Adams Letters.

20

Frank B. Goodrich, Man Upon the Sea; or, A History of Maritime Adventure, Exploration, and Discovery, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time, Comprising a Detailed Account of Remarkable Voyages, Ancient as well as Modern, 8 vols. (Philadelphia, 1858), 287.

39

Image of the Dutch killing penguins from Theodore de Bry, Americae nona & postrema pars…

(Frankfurt, 1602).

months—four months of a bitterly cold southern winter marked by lack of food, snow, gales, hostile natives, sickness, and death.

At this point they had a good following wind and sailed deeper into the strait, and anchored at an island where they collected hundreds of penguins as food. Delighted by this discovery of fresh meat, pilot William Adams described them as “fowles greater than a ducke, wherewith we were greatly refreshed.”21 On April 9 they proceeded through the strait and sailed between two high shores that considerably narrowed the passage—probably the Primera Angostura, or First Narrows. The next day De Cordes sent fifty men ashore in search of food or inhabitants, but they found nothing, though some days later, some seventy miles from the mouth of the strait they came across a bay they christened Mussel Bay on account of the great quantity of mussels they found there, along with fresh water and wood.

On April 18 they stopped in a bay on the north side of the strait called Great Bay, where there was good anchorage on fine sand.22 Little did they know that the fleet would remain at Great Bay for the next four months.

April to August is the southern winter, and this winter was severe, bringing four months of great suffering and privation for the crews. Over this time they lost more than a hundred men, including Captain Boekhout of the Trouw, who was succeeded by Balthazar de Cordes, Simon’s brother.23 The hardships were great, with the extreme cold and frequent storms descending on them, with strong winds, rain, hail, and snow. The men’s suffering was all the greater because they had inadequate clothing, believing themselves bound for warmer climes and were not intending to winter over in such conditions. Shortage of

food frequently forced scavenging parties to go ashore for whatever they could find to eat, usually just roots and shellfish, which were eaten raw. On one such expedition at the end of May a party of local natives attacked the seamen and killed three of them with spears. On another occasion Captain de Weert went ashore in search of seals and such a great storm arose that he could not return to the ship for two days.

William Adams noted, “with colde on the one side and hunger on the other, our men grew weake.”24 One hesitates to second-guess a master mariner, but Admiral Simon de Cordes’ decision to remain in the Strait of Magellan through the whole winter must be

questioned. The explanation for the delay was that as they sailed through the strait they encountered strong adverse winds that impeded their progress. Even so, it’s hard to imagine that between early April and the end of August the sailing conditions were consistently so bad as to prevent the fleet from making some significant progress toward the western end of the strait and the Pacific. Given the terrible circumstances that the crews were enduring it hardly seems reasonable that attempts to proceed could not be made. The crews were freezing, weak, and starving, but their dire situation could only deteriorate if they remained marooned for long in the strait in such conditions.

It’s clear that William Adams had such thoughts. After entering the strait Adams comments: “Having at that time the wind at the north-east, six or seven days, in which time wee might have passed through the Streights.”25 Why didn’t they take advantage of favorable conditions? In his letters, Adams clearly lays the blame on Admiral 21

Adams to his wife, 1611, letter 2, Adams Letters.

22

Harris, Navigantium Atque Itinerarium Bibliotheca, 40.

23

Ibid.

24

Adams to Worshipfull Felowship of the Merchants of London trading into the East Indies, October 22, 1611, Adams Letters.

25

Ibid.

Jodocus Hondius, Fretum Magellanicum, or the Strait of Magellan, from Mercator-Hondius Atlas (1606).

40

de Halve Maen

Simon de Cordes, who, in Adams’ view, when the weather was propitious for sailing, wasted valuable time with less important tasks instead of advancing westwards.

De Cordes decided to order his longboat be converted into a pinnace, a light boat to serve as a tender, which was named the Postillion. Useful as this doubtless was, along with the need to gather what necessities the land offered, Adams balked at this risky delay while the wind was on their side, especially as provisioning the ship could take place anywhere in the strait.

“We weighed anchor, having much wind, which was good for us to goe through. But our generall would water, and take in provision of wood for all our fleet. In which strait there is enough in every place, with anchor ground in all places, three or foure leagues from one another.” Adams continues: “But, for refreshing our men, we waited, watering and taking in of wood, and setting up of a pynnas of fifteene or twentie tones in burthen.” The wind changed and halted their progress. “So at length, wee would have passed through, but could not by reason of the southerly winds.”26 It should be noted that in 1520, Ferdinand Magellan did somewhat better, sailing through the strait in only thirty-eight days, though that was in November, early summer in the southern hemisphere. Even so, Magellan’s ships spent much of that time searching for the route through the confusing maze of channels, islets, and fjords that make up the waterway. Magellan called it El Estrecho de Todos los Santos (the Strait of All Saints) to reflect the date of discovery, November 1. It was, by the way, Magellan who named the Pacific Ocean. He called it Mar Pacífico, meaning “peaceful” in the maritime sense, because, after sailing the stormy waters in the Cape Horn region, his expedition found favorable winds and calm waters in the ocean.27 On the 1599 expedition, William Adams seems to have had little doubt that what he saw as de Cordes’ uncalled-for dawdling was responsible for many of the problems they encountered, and contributed, in all probability, in retrospect, to the ultimate failure of the expedition as well as the death of many of his shipmates. In another letter, this one to his wife years later, he wrote with some feeling: “Many times in the winter we had the wind good to goe through the straights, but our generall would not. We abode in the straight till the foure and twentieth of August 1599.”28Adams was a very experienced pilot, so his opinion counts.

Nevertheless, to honor their commander the place was named the Bay of Cordes.

The commander decided that a curious ceremony should take place toward the end of August, shortly before the fleet reached the Pacific. To perpetuate the memory of the people who died on this dangerous voyage he instituted a new order of knighthood, of which he made his six principal officers knights. They bound themselves by oath never to do or consent to anything contrary to their honor or reputation, whatever danger they faced, even death itself. Nor would they allow to anything prejudicial to the interests of their country, or to their current voyage. The knights also promised to oppose all the enemies of their nation, and to do their utmost to conquer those countries where the king of Spain procured so much gold and silver that enabled him to wage war on their country.29 He called this new fellowship “The Order of The Lion Set Free,” or “The Knighthood of the Lion Unchained.” This was probably an allusion to the Belgic lion (Leo Belgicus), a map in the shape of a lion that symbolized the Low Countries, a patriotic motif inspired by the heraldic figure of the lion that appears in the coats of arms of several Netherlands provinces—which must be freed from the Spanish yoke. After this ceremony, a tablet was erected on top

of a high pillar on which the names of the new knights were inscribed, and the bay they were moored in was named the Bay of Knights.30 It seems quite an elaborate procedure, which one can imagine the admiral working out in his solitary cabin over many frigid nights. One can imagine too the sight of six bedraggled, hungry, and exhausted captains indulging, with grudging respect, their admiral’s whim, while the snow blew about them, and where loomed the hostile forest full of murderous natives.

Leaving this bay on August 28 they were soon becalmed and struggled to put in at another bay. Here de Cordes ordered de Weert to go back to the Bay of Knights and move the tablet to a more obvious location.

At that spot de Weert found a large gathering of natives with canoes. He retreated and returned with a party of well-armed sailors, but the natives had gone. The Dutch saw that the natives had molested the graves there, disinterring their recently buried comrades, and had “barbarously disfigured” them. They had also broken the knights’ 26

Ibid.

27

Haley Crum, “The Man Who Sailed the World.” Smithsonianmag.com. Smithsonian Institution (May 31, 2007).

28

Adams to his wife, 1611, letter 2, Adams Letters.

29

Burney, A Chronological History 191.

30

Ibid.

Frans Hogenberg and Michael von Aitszing, Leo Belgicus (1583) Koninklijke Bibliotheek Belgie. Wikimedia Commons.

Summer 2019

41

Image of conflict between the Mahu-De Cordes expedition and Patagonian natives on May 7, 1599. from Theodore de Bry, Americae nona & postrema pars…

(Frankfurt, 1602).

tablet that de Weert had returned for.31 The question of course is why did de Cordes feel the need for this baffling knightly ritual at such a time? We know that there was something to celebrate after so much misery. They were now close to the western outlet of the strait, and the Antarctic summer was approaching, with fair winds and kinder weather that would allow the fleet to emerge into the great South Sea in a few days. But the crew must still have been suffering from—and eager for deliverance from—the many hardships and adversities of the previous months, and, one suspects, can hardly have been in a mood for such bizarre jingoistic ceremonials. We can imagine that the common sailors witnessed this rite, but all they knew was that they were in a desperate situation at this unknown and inhospitable end of the planet, and here were their leaders engaging in some sort of incongruous knight-errantry.

We can speculate that De Cordes might have envisioned it as a kind of psychological boost, a public relations initiative, a distraction from their months of privation (was he feeling at all at fault for lingering in the strait?), a reassuring civilized spectacle with some panache and even a kind of normality in a very abnormal environment—along with a deliberate appeal to their patriotic urges in light of their likely imminent encounters with Spanish ships and ports. In his 1880 book History of the United Netherlands, John Lothrop Motley wrote of this episode that while the knights are no more, “. . . to an unsophisticated mind no stately brotherhood of sovereigns and politicians seems more thoroughly inspired with the spirit of Christian chivalry than were those weather-beaten adventurers.”32 This would sound stilted and patronizing were it not classic Victoriana.

Early in the night of September 3 the fleet finally left the Strait of Magellan and sailed into the South Sea, heading west-northwest

with a fair wind from the northeast. It was a relief to leave the unfriendly confines of the strait, but their emergence into the ocean was the start of the unraveling of the expedition. For a few days they had a good northeast wind and fine weather, but soon the sea began to get rough and the waves grew very high and the ships had to lie to and hoist aboard their boats.

At this point the Blijde Boodschap took some damage to her foremast or bowsprit, and both the Trouw and the Geloof, sailing astern of the other ships, reduced sail and rendered assistance. The Hoop and the Liefde sailed on, separated from the others by the stormy sea, and after that a thick fog descended to obscure each other though they were close. Within a day the whole fleet got back together, and carpenters were sent from other ships to the Blijde Boodschap to make repairs. The carpenters never returned to their own ships because quickly the wind shifted and the sea again became rough and stormy, certainly typical of that part of the world, causing the fleet to break up again, and no signals were passed among the ships.33 Captain de Weert in the Geloof and Balthazar de Cordes in the Trouw were troubled not to see the other ships. De Weert was especially anxious as he had too few crewmen, and they were sick and weak because of the cold and damp.34 By September 16 the unabated storm had caused damage to both ships. The quarter gallery of the Trouw was broken open to the weather, and the sea broke so violently over the Geloof that the sailors were up to their knees in water.

Pumps were manned day and night until the leaks were stopped. These conditions, combined with the need to ration the food, caused a bubbling up of mutinous thoughts amid the crews, which the captains worked hard to pacify.35 Ten days later, still with their companion ships nowhere in sight, both ships found that

42

they had been blown dangerously close to the coast of Chile, though both were able to avoid the rocks. Separation of the vessels had been anticipated, and it had been agreed that the fleet would rendezvous at forty-six degrees south off the Chilean coast, and wait for a month. If this failed they were to attempt to regroup farther north at Isla Santa Maria. This is where the Hoop anchored in early November, joining the Liefde, which had arrived a few days earlier, both ships having suffered from weather and the Spanish en route.36 Here they waited for two months for the other ships, but none joined them.

Having accepted the loss of the other ships, the question then was what to do and where to go, and could they still make their voyage profitable? They agreed that the combined strength of the ships was insufficient for them to embark on any sort of enterprise against the Spanish settlements in Peru, so the decision was made to sail for Japan and trade there. Dirck Gerritszoon Pomp, captain of the Blijde Boodschap, had been to Japan with the Portuguese. He had told them that their wintry merchandise of woolen goods would be easy to trade in that country, being too hot for their original destination in the East Indies.37 So on November 27, the Hoop and the Liefde sailed for Japan.

In the middle of the Pacific in February 1600, probably somewhere near the Hawaiian Islands, the two ships lost sight of each other and the Hoop was lost in a typhoon with all hands. In April 1600 the Liefde arrived in Japan, under captain Jacob Quaekernseck, Gerrit van Beuningen having died off Chile, along with William Adams’ brother Thomas. The ship made landfall on Usuki Bay on the island of Kyushu, with a depleted crew of twenty-three sick and dying men, including Jan Joosten van Lodenstijn and Melchior van Sandvoort.38 This is not the place to discuss the large topic of the Dutch in Japan, but the pilot of the Liefde, William Adams, was instrumental in the setting up of trade between the two countries and breaking the Portuguese 31

Harris, Navigantium, 37.

32

John Lothrop Motley, History of the United Netherlands, 4 vols. (London and New York, 1860–1867, repr.

1900), 3: 579.

33

Burney, A Chronological History, 191–92.

34

Goodrich, Man Upon the Sea, 288.

35

Harris, Navigantium, 41.

36

Ibid.

37

Gopal Kshetry, Foreigners in Japan: A Historical Perspective (Xlibris Corporation, 2008).

38

Giles, Samurai William.

de Halve Maen

monopoly. In 1609 the Dutch established a trading hub on Hirado Island. James Clavell based his best-selling 1975 novel Shogun on Adams’ life, changing the name of his anjin (pilot) protagonist to “John Blackthorne.” It was adapted as a popular television mini-series in 1980, and a Broadway musical in 1990.39 An unlikely consequence of this memorable four-century Dutch-Japanese relationship was that in 1992 a Dutch theme park called Huis Ten Bosch opened near Nagasaki, reflecting and paying homage to this historic relationship between Japan and the Netherlands. The Japanese have a serious obsession with theme parks, and this one has been described as one of the weirdest, hitting, some say, a fascinating but rather dissonant note. Here in this Japanese setting you can find a replica of the Liefde (with the erroneous Erasmus figurehead), along with a recreation of a seventeenth-century Dutch village, complete with authentic architecture, tulip fields, canals, a windmill, a hotel designed to look like the 1889 Amsterdam Centraal station, and a full-scale replica of the fourteenth century Domkerk tower in Utrecht. A roller coaster, a Ferris wheel, a haunted house, a mirror maze, and bungee jumping are included. An English visitor commented: “Imagine a quaint village from the Dutch golden age, gabled and gilded, but plonked on a Japanese harbour, then populated by robots and dinosaurs, and still you’re only half way there.”40 The Japanese went so far as to build a replica of the 1645 Huis Ten Bosch palace, official residence for the Dutch Royal Family in The Hague. The park is, for all its incongruity, an emblem of the historic importance for both countries of the arrival of the Liefde in Japan.41 As for the Blijde Boodschap, this ship too was blown off course shortly after leaving the Strait of Magellan in September 1599, and, having missed Isla Santa Maria for

Replica of De Liefde at the theme park Huis Ten Bosch in Nagasaki, Japan.

the rendezvous, ended up in Valparaiso, Chile, where the Spanish captured it and imprisoned the crew. There is a story that has been seriously questioned that Dirck Gerritszoon Pomp drifted so far to the south in this ship that he observed mountainous land at latitude sixty-four degrees, which would be the South Shetland Islands, and possibly the first sighting by Europeans.

However, there is insufficient historical evidence for this.42 It does seem a long way to drift, even in notorious Cape Horn weather.

The pinnace Postillion was never heard of again after she entered the Pacific.

It’s time to rejoin the Trouw and the Geloof. After failing to rendezvous with their companion vessels off the Chilean coast, the two captains decided that the best course of action was to find safe anchorage near the mouth of the Magellan Strait and wait for the other ships, where they arrived at the end of September. With a fierce wind coming from the west the two ships entered the strait for shelter. Here they found a good anchorage and remained there until October 18 when they moved to a better spot deeper into the strait. Life there was as hard as before, necessitating frequent trips ashore for any food they could scavenge. De Weert’s crew was muttering, concerned about the state of their supplies, but the captain reassured them by

Theodor de Bry, “ships in storm after exiting the Strait of Magellan,” from Newe Welt Und Americanische Historien, published

by Johann Ludwig Gottfriedt (Frankfurt, 1655),424.

Summer 2019

telling them that they had twice the amount of food than they actually had.43 On December 2 the wind changed to the northeast and the ships tried to head back to the Pacific but were unable to because of the eddies of wind between the steep hills and the bay, and they were being blown dangerously close to the shore. In more bad weather some days later the ships were separated, and, unbeknownst to De Weert until later, the gales forced the Trouw from her anchorage and she was driven out of the strait into the ocean. Sebald de Weert and Balthazar de Cordes never saw each other again.44 The Trouw sailed up the coast of Chile but failed to meet any other ships of their fleet. De Cordes went north as far as Peru and then headed west across the Pacific to Tidore in the Moluccas, where the Portuguese captured his ship and the surviving crew was jailed.45 By now the Geloof was determinedly homeward bound, and in mid-December arrived at the Bay of Cordes where they had moored on their westward voyage. They fully believed that the Trouw was following them, and kept a good lookout for their sister ship. On December 16 they had an 39 “Dutch-Japanese Relations” https://www.netherlandsandyou.nl/your-country-and-the-netherlands/japan/andthe-netherlands/dutch-japanese-relations; E. L. Hamilton, “An English Seaman Became the First Western Samurai

by Impressing a Japanese Warlord with his Knowledge, Centuries Later Inspiring Novel ‘Shogun’,” Vintage News, February 20, 2018, https://www.thevintagenews. com/2018/02/20/english-seaman-samurai/.

40 Mike MacEacheran, “Huis Ten Bosch: Inside the World’s Weirdest Theme Park,” Independent (UK), February 8, 2018, https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/asia/themepark-huis-ten-bosch-japan-review-dutch-guide-pricekyushu-manga-virtual-reality-rides-a8195461.html.

41

“Dutch-Japanese Relations.”

42

Burney, A Chronological History, 199; “Dirck Gerritsz Pomp,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirck_Gerritsz_Pomp.

43

Harris, Navigantium Atque Itinerarium Bibliotheca, 41.

44

Ibid.

45

Burney, A Chronological History, 199

43

amazing fortuitous encounter. Lookouts spotted a boat approaching them from the east, which caused some puzzlement for they knew it could not be from the Trouw. It turned out to be from the fleet commanded

by Olivier van Noort, who was on the voyage where he would be the first Dutchman to circumnavigate the world.46 When van Noort eventually continued on his westerly voyage with a good easterly breeze, de Weert opted to sail in his company, perhaps still optimistically hoping to find the Trouw. What De Weert’s crew thought of this turnaround is unrecorded, but their lack of eagerness is easy to presume. They needn’t have worried because the Geloof found it impossible to keep up with van Noort’s ships. Her hull was well barnacled by this point, which slowed her down a lot, and also she was too short-handed to sail efficiently, having lost two-thirds of her crew since departing the Netherlands.

Sebald de Weert and Olivier van Noort had two things in common, apart from the remarkable coincidence of their meeting in this remote place 8,600 miles from home.

They both had sailed from Rotterdam, and both would lose their whole fleet except for one ship. In August 1601, van Noort’s flagship, the Mauritius, would finally make it—alone—back to the Netherlands, leaving his other three vessels to a variety of fates around the world. Van Noort too had lost most of his men, the Mauritius returning with only forty-five of the original crew of 248.47 On January 11, 1600, alone again, the Geloof set sail eastward through the strait, heading for the Penguin Islands, where he planned to take on fresh meat. The rough sea almost ruined this mission, and their small boat was damaged but repaired sufficiently to return to the ship, along with hundreds of penguin corpses. They restocked with these birds again at another nearby island on January 15, procuring 900 birds in less than two hours, many of which they salted. Here another blow struck, as when they tried to weigh anchor during yet another violent storm the sea was too rough for them to achieve this, and they had to cut the cable and make sail.48 It was on his Atlantic crossing, the final leg of this marathon voyage, that the name of Sebald de Weert earned a firmer place in the history books. On the morning of January 24, 1600, he came across some islets that did not appear on any of his sea charts, but he was unable to land and replenish here due to unfavorable conditions. De Weert had

found what we now call the Jason Islands, lying northwest of the Falkland Islands, 300 miles east of the southern Patagonian coast.

These outlying islands had been noted in the early sixteenth century by Vespucci and Magellan, and perhaps by the English navigator John Davis, but this is widely accepted as the first authenticated sighting of the islands. De Weert named this archipelago after himself, the Sebald de Weert Eilanden, and they thereafter became widely known as the Sebald Islands, or the Sebaldines. Since 1766 the have been called the Jason Islands, named for HMS Jason, a British frigate of thirty-two guns, in which captain John McBride of the Royal Navy visited them in that year. There is another island in this group called Carcass Island, also named after one of McBride’s ships, HMS Carcass, which surveyed the islands.49 The lone surviving ship was well named.

“Faith” was what the crew needed plenty of as they limped north back across the Atlantic. The battered Geloof sailed on, crossing the equator on March 15. Their stock of wine had been reduced to one pipe, and was reserved for the sick, and no more was allowed to the crew. They passed the coast of Guinea on March 28, and the crew was discontented that De Weert would not put in, but as he had no boat and only one anchor he deemed it too much of a risk. Though they had by now eaten all the penguins, there was still food aboard. It was a meager supply of biscuits and rice, but the crew supplemented this by catching fish, which they found in abundance when they crossed the Tropic of Cancer on May 21. It took five weeks to steer along the African coast because of many periods when the ship was becalmed.

By the time they reached the Azores they found no more fish and had to eat what they had salted, which made them very thirsty and ill. One day the captain discovered that some men had stolen some biscuits, but he was reluctant to punish the guilty as they were the only healthy men in the ship.50 The Geloof entered the English Channel on July 6. On the way home De Weert chose to stop at Dover to buy an anchor and cable to help navigate the shallows of the Dutch coast, but was unable to procure what he needed. On July 13 they finally returned to where they had sailed from a little over two years before, the only ship of the expedition to do so. Two thirds of De Weert’s men had been lost. Out of the Geloof’s original crew of a hundred, only thirty-six had survived to come home.51

44

At some point following his return, thanking God for his safe return, de Weert wrote an account of his part in the expedition, which must have been an awkward task as the enterprise was in no way a success from the point of view of anyone who participated, in whatever capacity. Some considered, reasonably, the two years and sixteen days that the Geloof had been away to be “greatly misemployed.” The ship had been in the Pacific for only twenty-four days out of that period with nothing to show for it. Almost nine months were spent in the Strait of Magellan, and the remaining fourteen months were taken up sailing from the Netherlands to southern Chile and back. Moreover, of the 500-odd sailors who embarked in June 1598, only the Geloof’s depleted crew had returned, a mere seven percent of the total. The rest were dead or scattered all over the globe.

The financial failure of the expedition, along with its human cost, should not detract from the great courage and fortitude of de Weert and the sailors who survived to return. If they salvaged anything from their two-year ordeal it was a familiarity with the Strait of Magellan, their descriptions and mapping of which were to prove valuable for safer passage on future voyages. The voyage of the Geloof, like those of so many other ships and crews of all countries in the centuries past, is a remarkable tale of skill, endurance, and sheer guts. As the author John L. Motley put it, “They gathered no gold, they conquered no kingdoms, they made few discoveries, they destroyed no fleets, yet they were the first pioneers on a path on which thereafter were to be many such achievements by the republic.”52 The calamitous expedition notwithstanding, Sebald de Weert’s seafaring skills were recognized and he was promoted to vice admiral. After this he made at least one more significant voyage, and it would be his last. In 1603 he was killed in Ceylon.

But that’s another story.

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Harris, Navigantium, 33.

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Goodrich, 296–97.

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Goodrich, 289.

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Rob Yssel, “Weert, Sebald de, c 1560 –1603,” The Dictionary of Falklands Biography including South Georgia, David Tatham, ed., https://www.falklandsbiographies.org/home.

Monica de Knecht, “Sebald de Weert, A VOC Pioneer,” VOC Historical Society, Perth, Australia (October 2, 2018), https://www.facebook.com/VocHistoricalSociety/posts/ sebald-de-weert-a-voc-pioneerby-vochs-member-monicade-knechtone-of-the-dutch-ea/1895870487147457/.

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Harris, Navigantium, 33.

51

De Knecht, “Sebald de Weert, A VOC Pioneer.”

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Motley, History of the United Netherlands, 5: 128.

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Here and There in New Netherland Studies Annual Hendricks Award OYCE D. GOODFRIEND, professor of history at the University of Denver, is recipient of the 2019 Hendricks Award for her book Who Should Rule at Home? Confronting the Elite in British New York City (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2017).

According to the judges, Dr. Goodfriend, a scholar of the continuing Ducth influence in the colony and city, has written a stimulating, revisionist history that will become the standard work for understanding eighteenth-century New York City society and culture. In nicely crafted prose, frequently interspersed with contemporary quotations, she convincingly shows that ordinary Dutch colonists continued to shape society and politics in New York City well into the eighteenth century, especially in the realm of religious practice and culture. Her attention to the city’s gender and class relations as well as local political conflicts takes us beyond the usual perspective of the typical movers and shakers and introduces us to a fascinating cast of characters. A thoughtful work with flashes of brilliance, Goodfriend’s book takes on the important task of connecting the legacy of New Netherland with long-term and key issues of central importance in the history of early America.

New Netherland Institute’s Annual Hendricks Award, created by a grant by Holland Society of New York member Andrew Hendricks, is given to the best book or book-length manuscript relating to any aspect of New Netherland and the Dutch colonial experience in North America up to 1776 and its legacy. The award carries a prize of $5,000, as well as a framed print of Len Tantillo’s painting of Fort Orange and the Patroon’s House. The prizewinner, chosen by a five-member panel of scholars, is selected in May or June. The award is given at a ceremony in conjunction with the New Netherland Institute’s Annual Conference held in September.

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Leisler Institute Lecture HE JACOB LEISLER Institute for the Study of Early New York History,

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in collaboration with The Hudson Area Library and the Gotham Center for New York City History, had the final lecture in its 2019 series on September 12, when Travis Bowman discussed “Slavery and Dutch-Palatine Farmers: How did middle class farmers in Colonial New York interact with slavery?”

Slavery played a surprisingly large role in colonial and revolutionary era New York. Mr. Bowman examines how slavery evolved in New York under the Dutch, British, and American systems of government and how the institution was utilized at a local and personal level among middle class farmers in the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys. In New York State slavery existed for 200 years, and recent research, particularly focused on the Hudson Valley, exposes this reprehensible fact. Bowman’s lecture demonstrated how slave labor led to the prosperity of many families in the region and also may have eventually influenced the abolition movement.

Travis Bowman is the senior curator of the New York State Bureau of Historic Sites, where he is responsible for the research, care, and exhibition of the collections at New York State’s historic sites and parks. A question-and-answer period and refreshments followed the talk.

The Jacob Leisler Institute for the Study of Early New York History is an independent, not-for-profit research center devoted to collecting, preserving, and disseminating information relating to colonial New York under English rule. The Institute is unique in focusing on this underexamined 109-year period in American history.

Historic Huguenot Street Honors Munsee and Mohican Culture N SATURDAY, September 21, 2019, Historic Huguenot Street in New Paltz, New York, focused on the history and culture of the Munsee and Mohican peoples. The program highlighted the accomplishments of Chief Hendrick Aupaumut. Aupaumut was born at Stockbridge in a shared English-Mohican community.

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He served with the colonial forces in the Revolution, was a traditional leader, and was instrumental to the community’s reconstruction in the wake of war and displacement.

At the DuBois Fort Visitor Center guests could view a letter written by Chief Aupaumut to the New York State Legislature (circa 1790), as well as several cases of Munsee archaeological artifacts. Outside an interpreter provided information about Historic Huguenot Street’s replica Esopus Munsee wigwam, constructed in 2017, as well as the history and culture of the peoples who lived there prior to European colonization.

An outdoor tent provided sample indigenous dishes created by Chef Quentin Glabus.

Formal ceremonies began with Historic Huguenot Street Executive Director Liselle LaFrance presenting a reproduction of the Aupaumut letter to representatives of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community of Mohicans. The evening’s speaker, Dr. Lisa Brooks, recent winner of the Bancroft Award for History, spoke on “Brotherhood and Belonging: Hendrick Aupaumut’s Assertion of Indigenous Rights and Settler Responsibility.” She focused on Aupaumut’s letter and placed it in a wider context of tribal rights, relationships, and writing in the late eighteenth century.

Following the lecture participatory breakout sessions allowed attendees to discuss specific topics with cultural representatives, researchers, and scholars. In one session, Justin Wexler, cofounder of Wild Hudson Valley, and indigenous chef Quentin Glabus of the Frog Lake Cree First Nations, Alberta, Canada, and member of the I-Collective, discussed where the Munsee found the plants, herbs, and other ingredients used in their cuisine. In another session, Craig Kroening Jr., Stockbridge-Munsee Tribal Council member and descendent of Chief Aupaumut, and Bonney Hartley, tribal historic preservation officer for the Stockbridge-Munsee Community and a Historic Huguenot Street board member, led a discussion on the preservation of Munsee and Mohican culture.

Historic Huguenot Street, is located at Huguenot Street in New Paltz, New York.

For further information contact info@ huguenotstreet.org.

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Society Activities

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HE 134th ANNUAL MEETING and Dinner of The Holland Society of New York will take place on Saturday, April 4th, 2020, at the Lotos Club in Manhattan. The Society will award actors Carolyn McCormick and Byron Jennings the Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievements in the Arts during the dinner.

Carolyn McCormick grew up in Houston, Texas, where she attended The Kinkaid School. She received her BFA from Williams College in Massachusetts and her MFA from the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.

She is perhaps best known for her television role as Dr. Elizabeth Olivet on Law & Order. Her many Broadway and off-Broadway performances include Equus, The Dinner Party, Celebration, Biography, Dinner with Friends, Black Tie, Ten Chimneys, and Privilege.

Byron Jennings is a renowned stage actor with an extensive resumé. His New York theater credits include on Broadway She Loves Me, You Can’t Take It With You, Macbeth, Arcadia, and The Merchant of Venice. His Off-Broadway credits include Plenty, On the Open Road, The Twenty-Seventh Man, and Ten Chimneys. He was most recently seen on Broadway in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. His film credits include Lincoln, A Simple Twist of Fate, and The Ice Storm.

Holland Society of New York Executive Administrator Sarah Bogart Cooney sat down on October 2nd with the Society’s 2020 Medalists for the following interview.

Holland Society 2020 Gold Medalist Byron Jennings.

SBC: How did you meet?

BJ: We met for the first time in San Francisco— CM: —doing Arms and the Man (by George Bernard Shaw) at ACT (American Conservatory Theatre) in 1983. We got together in 1987, when we met again to do a play called There’s One in Every Marriage, a Feydeau farce— BJ: —at the Old Globe in San Diego.

SBC: You’ve done many plays together.

When you are doing a play together, do you get into character when you’re at home?

CM: No, but we do work out blocking stuff. We don’t work out the characters, but we do things like, “When you bring me the coffee, can you bring it later?,” or, “Can you move the chair here? ” It’s just the technical stuff that makes up the scenes, but I don’t think we ever go into character.

BJ: I would say not.

CM: But we do talk about moments. We’ll talk about what we think is working, what we think isn’t. And, “Do you have an idea of how to fix this?” “This isn’t working, this entrance, this exit, this moment isn’t reading.” We do discuss those things.

BJ: We had a particularly interesting time when we were doing a production of Macbeth at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare

Holland Society 2020 Gold Medalist Carolyn McCormick.

Festival, which we decided to do. It was close by and there were a lot of nice people there, talented people. So we decided to do Macbeth. She did Lady Macbeth to my Macbeth. We had a wonderful time. We really did end up rehearsing a lot, together, at our house.

CM: And we would be having dinner and

Right: Byron Jennings and Carolyn McCormick in “Macbeth” at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival at Boscobel, New York, in 1994.

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I’d say, “Okay, so, when I come out with the knives—” and we’d have our knives, and we’d be on our little porch and if anyone could see us, they’d probably think, “What are they doing up there?”

So I would say, “I’m going to hand you the knives, but you have to take it here, because I’ll get blood on my white dress, and I can’t get blood on it because I have to wear it in the next scene.”

BJ: The technical elements were worked on very specifically.

SBC: You’ve been married for some time now. Do you find that your personal relationship helps inform the characters you’re playing, if the characters are a couple?

BJ: I don’t know about that, because I haven’t ever found that the circumstances in a relationship that I was trying to explore for a role would have been that close to my relationship with Lynnie.

SBC: So you don’t find your personal relationship mirrors Macbeth?

[Laughter] BJ: That’s good.

CM: Except for how you deliver the knives. But yeah, it’s interesting, because I think that what I find the most comforting, because I do a lot of theater where there are different levels of talent, sometimes, but what I love when I’m working with Byron is that I know he’s going to deliver the goods. So I don’t think so much about him as my husband, just him as an actor.

He’s going to be capable of figuring out what the story is, what part of the story needs to be told here, how to play it, how to react to it, how to map that scene out as best as possible. It’s like playing tennis with an equal player. It’s really fun to see Federer and Nadal play each other. I like that aspect of it.

SBC: Have you had the chance to work with someone you admired before you became an actor?

CM: There’s some people that you admire and then get to work with and they can prove to be very all about themselves and not a generous actor or actress, and other people live up to your expectations. But it’s like anything. You do get disappointed sometimes. The selfishness that some actors display—that’s what I’ve experienced.

When it’s “this is about me, it’s not about the bigger story. It’s about my part in the story.” And that is less appealing to me because you think, “Oh, I thought you were

such an interesting actor and now I just think you’re kind of all about you.” But Byron, you’ve had similar experiences.

BJ: Well, yeah, I guess for me a lot of it has to do with if I were able to really focus on someone I felt was very talented, I felt that it was less personal than it was technical. I was very interested in trying to figure out what are they doing there. How do they do that? Do I do that? Can I do that? Is that possible? I think I was very fascinated by their talent and ability and comparing, perhaps, myself, and learning and wanting to learn from them. I started out, I remember very clearly, I went to acting school in London for three years, and I had the opportunity to be—not the opportunity, I lied my way into employment as a dresser at some of the theaters in the West End, and I think along with what I was learning from school, a lot of what I actually came away with had to do with watching really great acting being done on stage night after night after

night, and being allowed to process that, and say, “Watch, just watch them. Do it.”

And I could talk to them. So it was a great education. It’s hard to distinguish, perhaps, for actors, an attraction to somebody that is not purely personal or technical, but kind of a combination of both.

SBC: Do you have any favorite actors now who you like working with?

CM: I like working with my husband.

BJ: That is certainly true. We do love that, we take any opportunity that is presented to us to recreate that.

SBC: What has been your personal career highlight to date?

CM: I will always be grateful that I got to play Saint Joan. I will always be grateful that I got the opportunity to work on a lot of Pete Gurney plays (Black Tie, Family Furniture, What I Did Last Summer).

When you’re older, like we are, you look back and you see patterns. I’ve done a TV

Carolyn McCormick as Joanna Lyppiatt and Byron Jennings as Garry Essendine in the 1995 production of “Present Laughter” at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts.

Carolyn McCormick in the title role in the Denver Center Theatre Company’s 1989-1990 production of “Saint Joan.”

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show for a long, long time, playing this character, Dr. Olivet on Law & Order—I never imagined that defining me in any way. So I find myself thinking, how interesting that this little tiny part on a TV show that represents perhaps a fifth of me—and the commitment, and the time I’ve worked on it over the years, it’s not very much. It’s interesting. When you do a play, you dedicate so much time and energy to exploring the character and learning what the arc of it is, and the story, and the beauty of it. I just did A Man for All Seasons and I loved working on that play. I loved researching Henry VIII, I loved the whole theme of living up to your highest self, especially in this climate, and the idea that you are living by your conscience, that you have to sleep at night, and you have to behave according to what allows you to sleep at night. With plays, you spend so much time and energy researching and working, and then you play it for six weeks or six months or a year, as opposed to a television show, when you do it a few times a year. One day you go in, you shoot the scene, boom—it’s such a different animal. But then that has a much wider-based audience, so it becomes a much more defining animal.

BJ: It’s impossible to choose just one.

I do have high points. One of them was Arms and the Man. There was something

extraordinary about that production that I will never forget. There was something extraordinary about She Loves Me that I will never forget.

CM: And your Richard III? BJ: Playing Richard III, well, for the second time, that was extraordinary.

Playing Hamlet for the second time was extraordinary. There are great roles of course. You are going to have a unique experience playing roles like that. You almost can’t help it. Lynnie mentioned St. Joan. If you have the opportunity to do Shaw, and you have the guts for it, it’s pretty hard to beat.

CM: It’s great, and you’re grateful to get the opportunity to tackle these roles. It’s not always successful, because there’s always elements—there are so many things that go into a play. The cast needs to be all on the same level. The director needs to be in tune with everyone. The design needs to work. The story needs to be told. When all the stars align, so to speak, those are the moments you are very grateful for.

SBC: Byron, when you were in She Loves Me, the show was filmed for BroadwayHD (an online subscription service that allows viewers to watch theater at home). Would you like to see more plays filmed like that so that they

could reach a wider audience?

BJ: I would. Because obviously there is an enormous audience that isn’t able geographically or financially to experience those things and I think it’s a wonderful gift for those people.

CM: My father and his wife couldn’t come to see She Loves Me but they got to see it [thanks to BroadwayHD], and it was great and they were so happy to have that opportunity. And it’s not like the archives at Lincoln Center, where you go and can watch a play that’s been filmed, which is done only for archival purposes.

BroadwayHD records live theatre with multiple cameras, different angles, and close-ups so the experience is captured in a complete way. I wish BroadwayHD could film even more plays, but it is very expensive and time-consuming. It’s a great thing, though, and it’s a great opportunity for people who can’t get to New York City to see wonderful theater.

SBC: And you get the whole show, instead of just a snippet.

CM: Exactly.

SBC: Is there a historical period you feel most at home playing?

BJ: No, not for me.

CM: You’re very good though with more classical plays. You’re less inclined to be

Byron Jennings, center, in “She Loves Me” at the Roundabout Theater, Manhattan, 2016 (with Jane Krakowski, Laura Benanti, Michael McGrath, Zachary Levi, and Nicholas Barasch).

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Byron Jennings in “The Merchant of Venice” at the Broadhurst Theatre on West 44th Street, Manhattan, in 2010-2011 (with Lily Rabe and Al Pacino).

attracted to the contemporary pieces.

BJ: Okay, that is true.

CM: You tend to like your Shakespeare, your Shaw, your Ibsen, and your Chekov.

BJ: Yes, yes, that is true I am attracted to the classics and have always been, because I started off with Shakespeare, and will always find a way to go to a classical piece as opposed to a modern one.

SBC: Lynnie, what about you?

CM: I love Shaw and I love Chekov. I like Shakespeare, but I find I’m always intrigued by new playwrights. I do a lot of new plays. I love working on new plays. I love being able to contribute to the dramaturgical aspect of play writing, and I think I’m very helpful sometimes, in terms of knowing just how to structure the play and make certain things more clear, and that’s why I actually love to work on new plays.

SBC: You met in California and had been there for some time.Why did you decide to move to New York?

BJ: We kept thinking about it and talking about it— CM: He didn’t want to live in LA, so we moved to New York.

BJ: Lynnie, very graciously, unselfishly, said that she would give up her life in Los Angeles. So that was a huge thing, because we felt those were our only options. We could come to New York, because we both loved the theatre, or we could stay in Los Angeles, and I would have killed myself. [Laughter] No, but it was a very

difficult decision, and I have always been so grateful and thankful that my wife allowed us to— CM: —blow up her nascent career in film and television— BJ: She did. She blew up a lot of stuff, you can imagine. She was on her way. And yeah, we decided to come here. We were here . . . after a little more than a year of leaving San Diego together to try to figure out what we were going to do and then we were here in ’89—?

CM: We got an apartment here in ’87 or ’88, and then we kind of had a base here, but we went around to Baltimore, or New Haven, or Seattle, San Diego, Denver, and did lots of plays for about three years. And then we finally said, “Let’s just go back and stay put in New York.” And then we just started to focus on being in New York, and I got a role on Law & Order, and he started working on- and off-Broadway, and then we had kids, and we both decided not to travel any more at all and just raise our children. So we’ve been very much New York-based and not traveled. We went to LA briefly, for about a year when our first son was one and I was doing a series out there, but once our boys started school in the city we stayed in New York.

SBC: What’s the last thing you do before you step out on stage?

BJ: Frankly, the last thing I do, I will have found by then a place next to the stage and I will one hundred percent of the time find a stairway of some kind close by so that I can just go up and down and

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up and down. I get my blood up and my breathing and just get myself really, really warm, and that’s the last thing I do before I get to my place.

CM: The last thing I do before going on stage is to remind myself to just listen and let it happen. I also like to jump rope to warm up my entire body and get the circulation going throughout my extremities.

SBC: We’re a genealogical and historical society. Have you researched your genealogy?

CM: I haven’t. I think my husband has, though. I have not, and I don’t know why I haven’t. I just sort of assume I’m Scottish, Irish, German. That’s just what’s in my head. I have no idea why I think that.

SBC: Are you interested in researching your genealogy?

CM: Yeah, I am. It’s just on the back burner, there are so many things that I feel I do want to do. As an actor, sometimes you have a list of all these things that you want to do, and suddenly you get really busy, and then all those things get pushed aside. Like you start a book and then you have to read all these scripts and then you get back to the book. My kids always say, “Mom, it takes you so long to read a book,” and I have to tell them, “Because I keep getting interrupted.” I’ll work for a period of time, then have to read scripts and research and stuff like that. So genealogy is one of those things where I say, “yeah, I want to do that,” but I haven’t.

SBC: Lynnie, you’ve played Dr. Olivet

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Carolyn McCormick, right, as Dr. Elizabeth Olivet, with Mariska Hargitay, left, in the television crime drama “Law & Order.”

over the course of Law & Order. The show doesn’t go into personal backstories of the characters.

CM: That was a deliberate thing on Dick Wolf’s part. He did not want to get caught up in the mothership, the original Law & Order. I’ve done SVU, and I’ve done all the spin-offs of it, and those scripts get a little more into backstory. But the original Law & Order he did not want get into backstories, because then you kind of go down a rabbit hole of, if you put these two characters together, then at some point it’s going to get boring, so then you’re going to have to have them fight and break up, and then it goes into this soap opera realm of it—which is perfectly legit and fine, but he didn’t want to go there. And also, he was originally doing Law & Order to sell in syndication as two half-hour shows, Law and Order, cops and then the lawyers. This was back in the ’90s, so now that’s not so much an issue with selling it to cable, but I think that was really the idea behind it, originally, and he was adamant about not getting into any personal stuff.

SBC: Did you come up with a backstory for Dr. Olivet?

CM: Well, I was pregnant on the show twice, both my children, so she had to have had some kind of backstory because you can see that I’m pregnant. I look enormous. I am enormous. That’s not looking.

And they would try to hide it, in a way, but you can tell. And then when I left, after my second child was born, they made my character like, she runs a childcare in the forensic world—I don’t remember exactly, but they were following that, because now Dr. Olivet isn’t working as much because

she’s now working with children who need help. Which I thought was kind of sweet.

I spent most of my time thinking about what it is to really listen to someone, not what just what they’re saying but also all the stuff that’s implied around what they are not saying. Playing Dr. Olivet for all those years really taught me how to listen on camera and stay very objective, because if you get at all subjective, you aren’t doing your job. So being unreadable or “boring” was very important to being who she is. I have great admiration for that woman and the skill of ascertaining whether or not someone is being abused— to be able to see and understand that is an amazing skill.

SBC: There’s one episode of the show that really stuck with me—a woman whose father murdered a little boy and hid him in their apartment building. When the woman was being interviewed by Dr. Olivet, she kept saying “I’m basically a happy person,” when it was clear she was not.

CM: I think I remember that, the woman was played by Mary Joan Negro.

SBC: Yes, that’s right.

CM: Yes, I do remember that episode.

Some of them, they all blend together, but that one I do remember.

SBC: That episode really brought home to me the power of the mind and how it protects itself.

CM: And that people live in denial. I think that’s why people love that character. I get a lot of fan mail from prisoners. I think that they feel like this character would understand them, what drove them to do what they did. But that’s her job. I say to my acting students, “If you’re playing Iago, Iago doesn’t see himself as a bad guy.”

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You’d have to figure out why this person behaves this way. Because empathy, and not judging the person but really trying to understand why you are the way you are, is essential. And that is part of genealogy in a way, in a scientific way, but there’s also an emotional track that makes people behave the way they do, and it has everything to do with what their experiences have been to date and how they’ve decided to make their way in the world, be it legitimately or illegally. But Olivet, I always thought, was very good at understanding and empathizing without judgement. She just reads the facts and presents them accordingly.

SBC: If our readers would like to see more of your work, what would you recommend?

CM: Well, I have a website (www. carolynmccormick.com) and you can see everything I’ve ever done there. I’ve done a lot of audio books, which I think are very good. I did the whole Hunger Games series before the series was a phenomenon.

Plays come and go. I just finished shooting a movie in Kentucky, in Louisville, called The Overlook. It’s a Lifetime movie, and it will come out in the next year. I do a lot of Democratic political voiceovers. I never know really what’s going to be next down the pipe. I don’t have a play lined up at the moment, but they will suddenly just come along, and if it works out with my schedule and my life, I will do it. The last play I did was A Man for All Seasons, which I loved.

It was a great play. I loved working on it and I loved listening to it every night.

When you’re doing those great classics it’s so fun to just listen every night.

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In Memoriam James Lee Hoagland Holland Society of New York Member James Lee Hoagland died peacefully at home in Chicago on January 27, 2017, at the age of ninety-four. Mr. Hoagland was born on November 2, 1922, in Oak Park, Illinois, the son of Walter Prall Hoagland and Lola Florence Lee. Mr. Hoagland joined The Holland Society in 1977.

Mr. Hoagland was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. He graduated from Oak Park River Forest High School and earned a B. A. from Colgate University in 1944.

During World War II he joined the United States Naval Reserve, serving from 1942 until 1946 and seeing action in the Pacific.

Mr. Hoagland married Florence E. on January 15, 1947. The couple had four sons: James Lee Hoagland Jr., Edward Hoagland, John Walter Hoagland, born in 1956, and Peter A. Hoagland, born in 1957. His wife, Florence, predeceased him on September 6, 2001. Mr. Hoagland married for his second wife Eileen Welch.

Following wartime service, Mr. Hoagland joined the Graybar Electric Company of Chicago in 1946. He became a regional manager, 1972–1975, vice president, 1975–1978, executive vice president, in New York City, 1979–1980.

In 1980, he was appointed president and chief executive officer of Graybar Electric Company, serving in this capacity until his retirement in 1989. In 1982 the Graybar corporate office moved from Manhattan to Clayton, Missouri. He also served as a member of the executive committee of the Southern Fruit and Land Company, and on the board of directors of the LaClede Gas Company and the Boatmen’s Bank in St. Louis.

Mr. Hoagland served as the president of the board of directors for St. Luke’s Hospital in Chesterfield, Missouri, and on the board of the St. Louis Community Foundation. In addition to his membership in the Holland Society, Mr. Hoagland was a member of the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce Clubs: St. Louis, Log Cabin, Kittansett.

Mr. Hoagland is survived by his wife, Eileen, sons James Hoagland Jr., Ed-

ward Hoagland, John Walter Hoagland of Nashville, Tennessee, and Peter A. Hoagland of Lake Bluff, Illinois, and nine grandchildren. Funeral arrangements were made under the direction of Drake & Son Funeral Home of Chicago, Illinois.

John Robert Vermilya Holland Society of New York Member John Robert Vermilya, died on May 9, 2019, at UPMC Susquehanna Medical Center in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, at the age of ninety-nine. Mr. Vermilya was born on March 21, 1920, in Muncy, Pennsylvania, son of Lynn H. Vermilya and Edna Ruth Gulliver. He claimed descent from Isaac Vermilya, a Walloon from Flanders who emigrated to New Netherland from Leiden, Holland, in 1662. Mr. Vermilya joined the Holland Society in 1994.

Mr. Vermilya was a lifong resident of Muncy, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Muncy Creek High School in 1938. He then attended Penn State University’s School of Forestry for three years before enrolling in the United States Army Corp of Engineers in April 1942. He attended Engineers Officer Candidate School at Fort Belvoir,Virginia, then served with the 108th Combat Engineer Battalion in the European Theater from Normandy to Berlin. He earned four battle stars and a battlefield promotion to first lieutenant platoon commander before being honorably discharged from active service on February 2, 1946.

Mr. Vermilya married Dorothy Ellen Diggan in Hughesville, Pennsylvania, on October 12, 1947. The couple had three children born in Muncy, Pennsylvania, Linda Raye Vermilya, born on April 8, 1950, John Robert Vermilya Jr., born on August 21, 1954, and Barbara Ann Vermilya, born on August 14, 1963. Mr. Vermilya’s wife Dorothy predeceased him on October 24, 1977.

Mr. Vermilya retired in 1983 after working as an accountant for Brodart, Williamsport, Pennsylvania. He was also a member of the Muncy Water and Sewer Authority.

Mr. Vermilya loved researching and

Summer 2019

documenting his family genealogy. In addition to the Holland Society, he was a member of the Muncy Historical Society, of which organization he served as treasurer for five years. He was also a member of the Edward J. Smith Post 3428, VFW, Muncy, and the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR), Tidewater Chapter, of which he served as treasurer for many years. He was a member of Muncy Baptist Church, serving as a Sunday school teacher and church deacon. He became a Deacon Emeritus in 1991.

Mr. Vermilya is survived by his three children, John R. Vermilya Jr. of Turbotville, Pennsylvania, Barbara Ann Vermilya of Muncy, and Linda Raye VermilyaBoudreau of Fairfax, Vermont; and five grandchildren. Funeral arrangements were made by Grenoble’s of Muncy.

Services were held at the Muncy Baptist Church, Muncy. Interment followed with full military honors in the Muncy Cemetery.

Paul Wendell Truax Holland Society of New York Member Paul Wendell Truax died on April 23, 2019, at the age of eighty-three. Mr. Truax was born on November 4, 1935, at Huntington Center, Vermont, son of Albert Peter Truax and Nina Catherine LaForce.

He claimed descent from Philippe Du Trieux, born at Roubaix, Flanders (now in France), and one of the original Walloon settlers to New Netherland. He was living in Leiden, Holland when he sailed for New Netherland in 1624. Mr. Truax joined The Holland Society in 2006.

Mr. Truax studied engineering at the University of Vermont in 1953–1955 with the intent of becoming a pilot. A severe illness changed his focus to the medical field. After a short stint as an orderly at the Mary Fletcher Hospital, Paul was recruited by the Mary Fletcher Hospital School of Nursing, where he became the first man to graduate from the school in 1960.Mary Fletcher Hospital employed Mr. Truax as a charge nurse and in-service instructor. While working in the medical field, Paul was instrumental in the development of Vermont’s first Medicare

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standards for hospitals and nursing homes and licensure for nursing home administrators. In the 1970s he developed and became administrator of ITT Sheraton’s rehabilitation facilities in Burlington, Vermont, and Worcester, Massachusetts, as well as the entrepreneur of multiple businesses.

Mr. Truax married Colleen Snowdy Merrill in Chester, Vermont, on June 29, 1960. The couple had five children: Wendalyn Wiwilla Truax, born on March 19, 1961, Maureen Truax, born on April 30, 1962, Brent Paul Truax, born on December 13, 1963, Sally Colleen Truax, born on July 31, 1965, and Stephany Kathleen Truax, born on September 11, 1966.

Mr. Truax was a member of Vermont Air National Guard and U.S. Air Force Reserves. He was also an entrepreneur with boundless energy. Never inclined to have a single project in the works, he developed businesses in such diverse areas of operation including: research and development of engines with Fuel-Air and Venture-E; Truax Nursing Home; running the family dairy farm; working with Truax Associates operating restau-

rants, gas stations, laundry mats, dry cleaning plants, real estate sales, apartment facilities, and excavating company; land management, firewood operations, and ski touring facilities with Sherman Hollow, Inc.; operation of the Mountain View golf course and Spalding Inn and Club; and single family home construction with Vermont Built, Inc. Mr. Truax was a Chester village trustee, town Republican Party chair, and appointed by Gov. Dean Davis to the Vermont State Nursing Home Licensing Board.

Mr. Truax was active in the Vermont State Student Nurses’ Association, Vermont Nursing Home Association, a Boy Scout troop leader, a village trustee, town chairman for the Vermont Cancer Society, and a member of the Vermont Air National Guard and the U.S. Air Force Reserves. In addition to the Holland Society his memberships included Camels Hump Commission, Master of the Olive Branch Lodge of F&AM, Worthy Patron of Mizpah Chapter OES, and chairman of Fort at No. 4 Board of Trustees.

Following retirement, Mr. Truax undertook several new projects connected with

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genealogical research where he helping to found the Vermont French Canadian Genealogical Society and Vermont Genealogical Library. He authored a multitude of articles for genealogical publications.

Much of his research, however, went into producing LaForce Descendants in North America (Vermont Built, Inc., 2001). In 2010 he took on another project and was instrumental in the reopening of The Fort at No. 4 Open Air Museum in Charlestown, New Hampshire.

Mr. Truax is survived by his five children and their families: Wendalyn Truax Baker of Andover, Vermont, Maureen Truax Holland of Memphis, Tennessee, Brent Truax of Mammoth Lakes, California, Sally Truax Krumrie of Ferrisburgh, Vermont, and Stephany Truax Pippin of Chester, Vermont, seven grandchildren, and two great grandchildren. Masonic and Eastern Star services were conducted on April 28, 2019, and a funeral service on held on April 29 at the United Methodist Church of North Charlestown, New Hampshire. Davis Memorial Chapel of Springfield, Vermont, assisted with the arrangements.

de Halve Maen

The Holland Society Archives serve as a repository of institutional memory, serve with records, publications, photographs, audiovisual recordings, and other materials that document the history of the Society, and collections that may be useful to members in their research.

This collection contains 918 items comprising 34,767 images.

Have you registered for an account for our online archive? We have been working with Hudson Archival to digitize our extensive Society and historical archive. We have maps, deceased member �� , banquet photos, Society records, historic documents such as indenture cer����� (pictured), and much more. You can go through and transcribe documents, tag family members or friends in old banquet photos, and create lists for your own research. You can access the online archive at hsny.localarchives.net. If you do not hav������������������� info@hollandsociety.org.

Left: A page from Adriaen van der Donck's Description of New Netherland, published 1655.