“Strike for the Prince of Orange!”: La Garce and the Vicarious Privateers of New Amsterdam
By Julie van den Hout
During the mid-1640s, Manhattan played host to the Dutch privateer Willem Albertsen Blauvelt, with his frigate, La Garce (The Wench).[1] From New Amsterdam, New Netherland Director Willem Kieft and his council granted a commission to Captain Blauvelt to intercept Iberian ships in the Caribbean, as “the enemies of the High and Mighty Lords of the States General of the United Netherlands.”[2] Blauvelt made at least three privateering voyages from New Amsterdam to the Caribbean with La Garce and captured at least seven Spanish ships as “prizes.” With each voyage, more and more local investors signed on to help finance the expeditions in return for a fairly unique commodity — a share in a Spanish prize ship and its cargo. Documents list the names of three owners for La Garce in 1643. By the privateer’s last voyage in 1647, at least twenty-two colonists and twenty crew members recorded interest in La Garce. While it was not unusual for Atlantic colonies to ally with privateers to provide revenue and military aid, the story of La Garce and New Amsterdam offers an early example of a privateer becoming part of a colonial community involving ship’s crews, colonists, and colonial administrators. La Garce drew the residents of New Amsterdam together in shared objectives — disrupting Spanish endeavors in support of the war against Spain, speculating on New World ventures such as the trade in Caribbean sugar, exotic goods, as well as enslaved people from Africa, and, most compellingly, divvying up the proceeds from Blauvelt’s plunders.
1696 Danckerts Map of the West Indies and surrounding areas, showing Providence Island (then called Santa Catalina). Wikimedia Commons.
Blauvelt may have originally been from Monnickendam in North Holland, but he came to New Amsterdam from Providence Island near present-day Nicaragua, where he had been living. It is possible that he had established himself there even before the English colonized the island in 1630. In 1638, English administrators sent him to the Dutch Republic to purchase two pinnace ships to be used for defense, “and afterwards for prizes.”[3] From this tiny island base known for harboring privateers, Blauvelt, or “Bluefield” to the English, had made the waters of the western Caribbean his stomping grounds. After the Spanish took the island in 1641, Blauvelt likely had to find another place to liquidate his prizes. The records of New Amsterdam document La Garce’s appearance in the colony by July 1642, when crew member Frans Joosen gave colonist Teunis Cray power of attorney to collect his portion of Blauvelt’s recently acquired prize. Joosen sought to claim his share of La Garce’s Caribbean conquest, including “copper, Negroes,” and other items that had yet to be allotted.[4] Blauvelt’s initial visit to the colony may have been to gauge the potential for trade, but he came away with something even more valuable. While piracy was illegal under Dutch law, the commission he received from Kieft in the form of a letter of marque authorized him to lawfully seize enemy ships as a state-sponsored privateer.
Agreement between Blauvelt and Stoffelsen, signed Wyllem Blawfelt with partner Antoni Crol. New York State Archives Digital Collections [NYSA_A0270-78_V2_074b].
The arrival and departure of La Garce always generated a flurry of activity in the proceedings of New Amsterdam that reflected its operations. Business transactions surrounding the privateer, including investments, powers of attorney, wills, and claims for prize goods, were recorded alongside other legal matters of the colony. Records of La Garce reappear in 1643 as Blauvelt readied to depart New Amsterdam for the Caribbean. That October, Blauvelt granted power of attorney to former council member Jacob Stoffelsen, authorizing him to act on his behalf in the search for three African women who had escaped the ship. The collaboration between these two men from vastly different backgrounds went a step further, however. On the same day Blauvelt appointed Stoffelsen to represent him, he and partner Antoni Crol recorded Stoffelsen’s investment of 350 guilders, one-tenth share in their upcoming voyage, promising “good satisfaction in every respect.”[5]
Stoffelsen’s investment paid off when Blauvelt and his crew captured two Spanish barks in the Caribbean Sea. Crews seized the first bark in January 1644, as it voyaged from Santiago de Cuba to Cartagena laden with sugar, tobacco, and ebony wood. In March, La Garce captured a second Spanish bark carrying 200 jugs of wine from New Spain to Guatemala. By the end of May, Blauvelt and La Garce returned with the two prize ships to Manhattan. Director Kieft and his council celebrated their arrival with successive proclamations, allowing for any objections before declaring the barks and their cargo legal prizes. New Amsterdam merchant Isaac Allerton procured sugar from La Garce’s partners, in two separate purchases amounting to more than four thousand guilders. The community was getting a taste of La Garce’s potential.
Toward the end of 1644, Blauvelt’s agent Simon Joosten and the privateer’s crew members appear in New Amsterdam records in preparation for another voyage. Some secured powers of attorney in Manhattan while others recorded wills in the event of death, commending their souls to God, and “their bodies to a Christian burial.”[6] Still others arranged financial support for an injured comrade, Cornelis Doele, who stayed behind in New Amsterdam in the care of a surgeon. The use of the terms “co-owner” and “co-participant” interchangeably in documents points to a shared commitment to the voyage by both crews and investors. Colonists who could not afford to invest like Stoffelsen, or perhaps those seeking adventure, could opt to join as crew. Pieter Jansen signed on, leaving a will and power of attorney for his house and lot in Manhattan, and “all he shall earn on his currently planned voyage.”[7]
New Amsterdam as viewed from the harbor, ca. 1650. Wikimedia Commons.
It is unclear exactly when La Garce left New Amsterdam on its next voyage, but Blauvelt and his crew were back in the Caribbean in spring 1646, when they captured a Spanish bark, San Antonio de la Havana, as it voyaged from Havana to Campeche. By July, the San Antonio, laden with sugar and tobacco, stood as a trophy in the roadstead of Manhattan. The director and council issued proclamations to the community announcing La Garce’s latest conquest, captured “with the help of God,” before declaring the bark and its cargo legal prizes.[8] In the months that followed, colonists such as Frederick Lubbertsen and others made purchases from La Garce crew members, trading hundreds of guilders in beaver furs, sewant (or wampum), and other forms of payment, for Caribbean sugar. Colonist Govert Aertsen also benefitted from prize goods La Garce brought to the colony, partnering with Philip Jansen to purchase a certain renamed bark, surely the San Antonio, from agent Symon Joosten. The New Amsterdam community was reaping the rewards of its relationship with La Garce. Not surprisingly, interest was growing.
In late 1646, that interest expanded to include Director Willem Kieft, in the name of the Dutch West India Company, who partnered with ten others as an investor in La Garce. Jan Jansen Damen, Jacob Wolphertsen van Couwenhoven, Adriaen Dircksen Coen, Willem de Key, and Marten Crigier, joined Stoffelsen, Blauvelt, and five crew members in financing the privateer’s pending voyage, in shares ranging from one-eighth to one-thirty-second part and with sums from eleven to fifteen hundred guilders. These New Amsterdam merchants and civic leaders were people of means and status in the colony who saw La Garce as lucrative opportunity and were eager to pursue it. Blauvelt also contracted with prominent merchant Augustin Herman for a stake in the venture, promising to deliver his share of the captured goods, “if God the Lord grant him, ... one or more prizes.”[9] Willem de Key and Augustin Herman both had trade connections in New England and the Caribbean and were surely looking to expand their business opportunities after witnessing Blauvelt’s earlier returns of sugar and tobacco. The excitement of La Garce’s exploits had also spread north from Manhattan, attracting the interest of Harmen Meyndertsen van den Bogaert, commissary of Fort Orange, and Cornelis Anthonissen of Rensselaerswyck, who together purchased shares totaling fourteen hundred guilders. This literal and figurative buy-in by some of the colony’s most prominent and influential residents gave credibility to La Garce that helped anchor it to the community.
La Garce left again for the Caribbean sometime in 1647, seeking profits for its hopeful investors, who waited in Manhattan for news of the privateer’s latest plunders. In January 1648, Blauvelt captured a Spanish bark coming from the Bay of Campeche, loaded with linen, hides, and twenty-eight cases of indigo. He sent the bark to New Amsterdam with a skeleton crew, humorously naming it Hoop van Een Beter, or, “hoping for a better one.” La Garce also intercepted a Spanish bark coming from Porto Bello. Blauvelt left the ship but took the goods. In April 1649 crews captured a Spanish bark, Tobasco, laden with grains of paradise. They took yet another ship in July, filled with logwood, but became separated from that ship shortly afterward. The risk of loss at sea extended to life and limb one night when Blauvelt mistook an enemy ship for his missing prize. Upon the realization that they were approaching a Spanish ship, crews called out, “Strike for the Prince of Orange!” Instead of lowering its sails in submission, however, the other vessel responded, “Strike for the King of Spain!” and fired six cannon shots at La Garce.[10]
Two Dutch Frigates. Anonymous, 1652–1714, Rijksstudio.
While La Garce escaped the attack in the Caribbean relatively unscathed, crews returned to New Amsterdam with the Tobasco that summer to face a new, unexpected challenge. Blauvelt had taken the Tobasco in 1649, but the recently concluded Dutch peace with Spain had officially ended state-sponsored captures at the end of 1648. The relationship between La Garce and New Amsterdam suddenly became complicated. Colonial directors and councils were authorized, by way of a West India Company charter, to act as prize courts. Instead of issuing the usual celebratory proclamations for Blauvelt’s prizes, Director Stuyvesant, who had replaced Kieft in 1647, and his council denied prize status to the Tobasco, citing their “bounden duty” to abide by the articles of the peace. Crew members quickly professed their ignorance, submitting a signed declaration solemnly swearing that they had not heard of the peace while at sea. Nor, they claimed, had the Spanish crew of the Tobasco informed them of any. Nonetheless, the council elected to impound the ship’s cargo, to the dismay of La Garce’s crew and the voyage’s investors, pending further investigation and guidance from West India Company superiors. After promising to honor any Spanish claims, Blauvelt took the Tobasco to Newport, New England, much to the chagrin of English administrators there who were not equipped to mediate the dispute and feared attracting more privateers. Before leaving for Newport, however, ten additional La Garce crew members, some having joined during the last voyage, added their names to claims for the Tobasco and entrusted various community members in New Amsterdam to collect any proceeds that might be released in their absence.
As with many colonial dilemmas, the slow pace of transatlantic communication in the face of a pressing issue complicated the Tobasco affair even further. Although the West India Company directors ordered Director Stuyvesant to hold the Tobasco’s cargo in storage pending any Spanish claims, crews and colonists in Manhattan pressured the council to release the ship’s perishable goods. Administrators agreed to sell the cargo at public auction in 1650, but held the funds in West India Company accounts awaiting adjudication by a higher authority. Investors continued to seek release of the earnings in scattered claims over the next few years, as the case languished in the courts of New Amsterdam and the West India Company directors dealt with more urgent matters. Still, La Garce’s investors did not give up hope. As late as 1656, thirteen colonists and former crew members, as well as beneficiaries and representatives of investors who had died waiting, united in a petition to colonial administrators for disbursement, “for having ventured and risked, the one and other, their lives and fortunes in the capture.”[11] Despite the assertive group effort, the council denied the petition, declaring the Tobasco taken “long after the conclusion of peace,” and therefore “contrary to treaty.”[12] It appears as though investor appeals persisted, however. In 1660, Director Stuyvesant solicited official guidance from his West India Company superiors on whether to distribute the funds from the auctioned goods, which remained unchallenged by the Spanish. More than ten years after the Tobasco’s capture, the directors finally delivered an absolute and unequivocal, “no.”
Although investors did not realize profits from the Tobasco, the colony’s relationship with La Garce had constituted a special episode in the history of Manhattan that drew people together in both business and personal relationships. In addition to connecting the colony to exotic goods for local use and resale, interactions with La Garce inspired a collective of close to fifty colonists and crew members from a variety of backgrounds and social strata. A number of crew members remained a part of the community, marrying there, purchasing homes, or accepting employment. Captain Blauvelt and La Garce no longer appear in the colony’s records after the Tobasco caper and likely returned to the Caribbean. For a short period of time, however, La Garce had had become a fixture of New Amsterdam that brought a sense of excitement and optimism to the colony. The people of Manhattan had rallied around La Garce’s escapades as vicarious privateers, amid shared risk, aspiration, and community endeavor.
Julie van den Hout is a historian who works on New Netherland and the maritime Dutch Atlantic. She is the author of Adriaen van der Donck, a Dutch Rebel in Seventeenth-Century America and the creator of the ships database, “Voyages of New Netherland.”
[1] A frigate usually indicated a medium-sized, fast sailing, and well-armed vessel.
[2] A. J. F. van Laer, trans. and ed., Council Minutes, 1638–1649 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1974), 219.
[3] W. Noël Sainsbury, ed., Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, 1574–1660, Preserved in the State Paper Department of Her Majesty’s Public Record Office, 263.
[4] A. J. F. van Laer, trans. and ed., Register of the Provincial Secretary, 1642–1647 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1974), 58.
[5] Van Laer, Register of the Provincial Secretary, 1642–1647, 162.
[6] Van Laer, Register of the Provincial Secretary, 1642–1647, 271.
[7] Will of Pieter Jansen with Power of Attorney to Jan Jansen Schepmoes to manage his property during his absence, September 12, 1644. New York State Archives Digital Collections, NYSA_A0270-78_V2_122b.
[8] Van Laer, Council Minutes, 1638–1649, 335.
[9] Van Laer, Register of the Provincial Secretary, 1642–1647, 373.
[10] A. J. F. Van Laer, trans. and ed., Register of the Provincial Secretary, 1648–1660 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1974), 183.
[11] Charles T. Gehring and Janny Venema, trans. and eds., Council Minutes, 1656–1658 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2018), 18.
[12] Gehring and Venema, Council Minutes, 1656–1658, 18.