Buccaneers, Zeerovers, and West India Companies

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With the Dutch Republic at war with its Spanish overlords, the WIC’s privateers fought Spain in European waters and took the fight to her colonies. During this time, the Company had engaged around 700 ships and almost 70,000 men in the conflict, and their pursuit of Spanish shipping proved highly profitable. One of their biggest coups occurred in August 1628; Piet Heyn and his fleet of thirty-one vessels (with a combined total of 689 guns and 4,000 men) snared Spain’s annual treasure flota under the command of Juan de Benavides. The Dutch kept the fifteen homebound ships from seeking the safety of Havana, Cuba; instead, they were herded into Matanzas Bay to the east, where Heyn and his men captured them with minimal exchange of gunfire. Several of the larger ships struck shoals, which kept them offshore with their guns facing the wrong direction. From the holds of the flota came treasure worth 11,500,000 ducats (or in 2019 dollars, several billion) that consisted of
pearls,
spices,
logwood,
135 pounds of gold and 177,357 of silver,
735 chests of cochineal, 235 of sugar, and 2,270 of indigo, and
37,375 hides.
He kept half of the ships, but torched those left behind. The Dutch at home rejoiced on learning of his great success. Salutes were fired. Church bells tolled. Ceremonies were held in Latin and choirs sang in his honor. When the treasure arrived in the Netherlands, the WIC’s shareholders pocketed a dividend worth fifty percent. The remainder of the proceeds from the booty funded more voyages aimed at plundering more Spanish wealth.

Spain, on the other hand, saw Heyn and his men as heretical pirates. It also considered Benavides guilty of negligence and having abandoned his duty, and he was incarcerated in a Seville prison in May 1634.

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At fifteen, Piet Pieterszoon Heyn had gone to sea with his father in 1592 as a member of the ship’s crew. Spaniards captured their vessel, and both he and his father were made galley slaves. Four years later, they were freed in a prisoner exchange, but in 1598, Piet was taken a second time and imprisoned on another galley for an additional four years. He was released in 1602, only to find himself again manning Spanish oars the following year. This time he served in the West Indies, where he acquired a host of knowledge about Spain’s treasure fleets and shipping.

In 1607, he regained his freedom at the age of thirty. He joined the VOC and served as first mate aboard one of their vessels. Stationed primarily in the Indian Ocean for the next five years, he demonstrated a talent for strategy as the ship acted as a privateer and captured numerous vessels. He also showed that he was a tough opponent to face. In 1623, he transferred to the WIC, where he was given the rank of vice-admiral. Then came his most magnificent career achievement – the capture of the treasure fleet – in 1628. The following year, on 18 June, he was killed while fighting three privateers out of Ostend (present-day Belgium).

Another Company admiral was Jacques l’Hermite, who departed Texel (Netherlands) on 29 April 1623. He possessed expertise that others lacked. He had been a resident of Madrid, Spain for seven years and spoke the language like a native. He also understood how they thought. On this voyage he intended to enter the Pacific and capture Spain’s navy. If he captured any other vessels along the way, so much the better. His first prizes were four caravels laden with sugar from Brazil. He next encountered a Flemish ship near the coast of Africa. When he offered the crew the chance to join his venture, the majority agreed. The four who remained loyal to the Spanish king, he hanged. His next port of call was a Portuguese port in Guinea. After the settlers surrendered, he delivered them to a local chieftain who promptly killed them. About the same time, l’Hermite meted out his own justice. He tried the fleet’s chief surgeon for poisoning 200 members of the West India force with his cures. The court found the surgeon guilty and he was also hanged.

At Callo, Peru, a Spanish vessel was captured and her crew tortured to divulge information about the armada. The captives informed him that these ships had set sail thirteen days before, laden with two years’ worth of emeralds, gold, and silver. In reality, they had embarked only three days before l’Hermite’s arrival, but he didn’t discover this truth until later. He contracted an illness and died on 2 June.

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In 1624, WIC privateers, aboard thirty-six ships containing 6,500 men, seized Sao Salvador (Bahia), Brazil. This was the main settlement in Portuguese Brazil, but the region was now under Spain’s control because of the union between these two Iberian countries. At the time of the capture, the WIC privateers uncovered 500,000 pesos and merchandise totaling around the same amount, as well as 200 tons of sugar. All this plunder was taken aboard ships headed for the Dutch Republic. When Philip IV heard of the capitulation, the nineteen-year-old Spanish king wept and would not speak with anyone for seven days.



When the Company established their colony in 1630, one family that moved from Groningen in the Netherlands to Mauristaad was the Gerritszoons. Gerrit Gerritszoon was the son of a merchant, adept at languages, and master of a variety of weaponry, both native and European. He eventually went to sea, sailing aboard the Griffin, which was part of Commodore Christopher Myngs’s fleet in January 1663.

While aboard, he “became very popular with the crew. A party of malcontents rallied to his side and parted company with their captain, taking a bark, of which they made [him] . . . captain.” (Marley, 148) His first big success was the capture of Sevillana from Vera Cruz, Mexico, laden with gold and silver. This prize earned him “great renown . . . and in the end [he] became so audacious he made all Jamaica tremble.” (Marley, 148)

Gerrit was a squat man with a barrel chest and covered with so much hair he resembled a bear. Once he joined the buccaneers, they “called him Rock the Brazilian” – a name that acquired a variety of spellings: Roc, Roche, Rokje, Little Rok, and Rocky – as well as Brasiliano. (Exquemelin, 80) Sober, he was polite, friendly, and showed good judgment. When drunk, he became a different person.
[H]e would roam the town like a madman. The first person he came across, he would chop off his arm or leg, without anyone daring to intervene, for he was like a maniac. He perpetrated the greatest atrocities possible against the Spaniards. Some of them he tied or spitted on wooden stakes and roasted them alive between two fires, like killing a pig . . . . (Exquemelin, 80)
He tended to spend what he plundered, which meant he had to go on the account again. This time, though, he was captured near Campeche and “was instantly brought before the governor, who had him shut up in a dark hole with little to eat.” (Exquemelin, 82)
The governor would gladly have had him hanged, but dare not, because the buccaneer had thought of a crafty ruse. He wrote a letter to the governor, as if it had come from his comrades among the other buccaneers, threatening they would show no mercy in future however many Spaniards they took, if the governor did Rock any harm. (Exquemelin, 82-3)

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Rather than risk testing the veracity of this threat, the governor put Rock aboard a ship bound for Spain. Once there, he slipped away from the authorities, acquired enough money to purchase new clothes, and returned to Jamaica, where he reneged on his pledge to the governor to never again join the buccaneers. Thereafter, his name disappeared from historical records.

In 1674, the WIC was reorganized and its official name changed to Geoctroyeerde Westindische Compagnie (GWC, or Chartered West India Company). At this point, the Company governed a number of Dutch settlements: Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Saba, Sint Eustatius (Saint Eustace), and a portion of Sint Maarten Island. The GWC also participated in the slave trade into the 1730s. After the States General failed to renew its charter in 1795, the GWC declined until it ceased to exist.

In May 1683, “French” pirates captured two Dutch WIC ships, Elisabeth and Staadt Rotterdam. The zeerovers had French letters of marque, which were actually worthless, and neither captain was French. In reality, they were Dutch and their names were Laurens de Graaf and Nicolaes van Hoorn.

De Graaf, a blond who wore a spiked mustache popular among Spaniards, was the captain of the forty-eight-gun Neptune.

He always carries violins and trumpets aboard with which to entertain himself and amuse others, who derive pleasure from this. He is further distinguished amongst filibusters by his courtesy and good taste. Overall he had won fame that when it is known he has arrived at some place, many come from all around to see with their own eyes whether ‘Lorenzo’ is made like other men. (Marley, 9

When the two Dutchmen captured Elisabeth and Staadt Rotterdam, the ships were carrying 100,000 rijksdaaler, the first coins minted by the Dutch Republic. This so infuriated WIC officials that they tried everything to arrest these men. They even went so far as to contact local French and Spanish authorities with proposals on how they might draw van Hoorn from his base on Cuba. The zeerovers, however, continued their marauding, but their partnership would soon end.

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Soon after attacking the WIC vessels, they joined forces with Michel de Grammont to sack Veracruz with thirteen ships and 800 men. This attack netted each pirate 800 pieces of eight (roughly £21,000 or $28,000 in 2019). Van Hoorn took their hostages to a nearby island to await payment of a ransom. When Spanish authorities dillydallied over paying, van Hoorn threatened to decapitate some of the hostages and send their headless bodies to the authorities. This angered de Graaf, who felt that since the hostages had surrendered, quarter should be shown. A duel erupted between the two men and de Graaf wounded van Hoorn, who contracted gangrene and died.

Three years after this, one newspaper mentioned repeated attacks on WIC ships. The pirates were doing “great harm to our Peruvian trade.” (Lunsford, Piracy, 107) Reports also surfaced about pirates operating out of the Cape Verde Islands, who were seizing ships carrying passengers between Amsterdam and Surinam (Suriname) or merchant vessels laden with gum or rubber resin. A 12 November 1686 account actually provided numbers: 150 pirates aboard three ships. The WIC provided Company captains with letters of reprisal, which allowed them to attack ships to regain what was lost, and also beefed up the armament the vessels carried. Fearing further intrusions by the pirates, the Company no longer contracted with private ventures to transport ammunition and equipment.

Aside from Dutch pirates, Spanish ones also attacked WIC ships. They stole cotton, indigo, and sugar from one vessel out of Sint Eustatius. One specific group, the Biscayer Pirates, liked to wait between Hispaniola and Puerto Rico for Company ships, as well as those of England and France, to venture close. What these Biscayer Pirates (pirates from the Basques region of Spain) sought was the coins in the WIC’s holds.

The WIC and the VOC were intricately interwoven into the commercial identity of the Dutch Republic and brought both prestige and wealth to the nation. A pamphlet appeared in 1629 that included this prayer:
Bless these [Companies] with such Success and Progress that through [them] the Enemy’s power is broken [and] the Trade and Prosperity of these provinces are increased. (Lunsford, Piracy, 180)

The primary goals of the WIC were to exploit and extract whatever the New World and Africa had to offer that would increase the Company’s bottom line and power. But its charter also included an additional reason for its creation – the Company’s enrichment through “the great adventure of piracy, extortion, and the like which takes place on such faraway voyages.” (Lunsford, Piracy, 181)

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Notes:
1. The French West India Company was neither the first nor the last trading venture to the New World. The earliest entity came about in the 1620s. Cardinal Richelieu promoted and was a director of la Compagnie des Îles de l’Amérique (Company of the American Islands), which was founded in 1635 and was focused primarily on the West Indies. Other companies would follow Louis XIV’s French West India Company. Louis XV, the great-grandson of the Sun King, reestablished la Compagnie in 1684, under the name of the Mississippi Company. Its territory extended from Louisiana into Canada. This entity lasted until 1717, at which time it was replaced by la Compagnie d’Occident, which folded in 1719. In that year, John Law combined all the French Companies under one umbrella and called this la Compagnie perpétuelle des Indes or the Everlasting India Company, which existed until 1770. Law was a Scottish banker, who became France’s General Financial Auditor. Operating costs during the War of Succession (1740-1748) and the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) virtually bankrupted the Company, and it was dissolved in 1770.

2. Among historians, there is some question as to whether le Grand did or did not truly exist. In either case, he wasn’t the only buccaneer to be considered the first to settle one of the Caribbean islands. In 1550, François le Clerc, better known as Jambe de Bois or Pegleg because of his wooden prosthesis, frequented Pigeon Island (part of St. Lucia), because it provided an ideal place from which to attack merchant ships. Eleven years later, la Compagnie purchased St. Lucia from the Caribs.

3. The Providence Island associated with the Providence Company is not the same island as would later host the pirates in the Bahamas. The one referred to in the article is one of the Moskito Islands off the coast of Nicaragua and was known as the Isla de Providencia or Old Providence; at times, it served as a base for buccaneers, such as Henry Morgan. Pirates favored it because of its nearness to the route that ships bound for Havana and Mexico from Cartagena and Porto Bello favored.