Nicholas van Hoorn

Jan Willems, also known as Janke or Yankey Willems, a buccaneer, based in Petit Goave, participates in a number of expeditions against the Spanish during the early to-mid 1680s with other well-known privateers including the American Thomas Paine, the Dutchmen Michiel Andrieszoon, Laurens de Graaf, Nicholas van Hoorn, and the Frenchman Michel de Grammont.

Willem, although he is a Dutchman, works with English privateers during the first years of his buccaneering career, raiding Rio de la Hacha with American privateer Thomas Paine in 1680.

Nicholas Van Hoorn had been engaged in the Dutch merchant service from about 1655 until 1659, and then bought a vessel with his savings.

With a band of reckless men whom he had enlisted, he became a terror to the commerce of the Netherlands.

Later he had several ships in his employment and obtained such notoriety that some governments were willing to employ him against their enemies.

A French minister had sent van Hoorn a commission in 1666, empowering him to pursue and capture Spanish vessels.

As he was uniformly successful, he had amassed enormous sums.

After the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1668), it had been expected that he would cease ravaging the American coast—but the French government, while openly disowning their champion, had secretly connived at his misdeeds.

He had made the mistake of pillaging a French ship, but after an unsuccessful attempt to take him was made in 1663, he no longer attacked the French flag.

Learning that several Spanish galleons were waiting in the harbor of Puerto Rico for a convoy, he had entered the harbor and offered his services to the governor, putting forward his recent quarrel with the French, and declaring that his only chance of safety was in the protection of the King of Spain.

The governor had allowed the galleons to leave port under the protection of van Hoorn, but, as soon as they were outside of the Antilles, they were attacked by the flotilla of the buccaneer, who gained over two million livres by the adventure.

The Saint Nicholas's Day, a curious vessel ordered by Nicolas van Hoorn, had made its appearance in the Caribbean at the very end of 1682.

This vessel, in the armament of which the commander of the Dover Castle had taken part, had left England the previous year, intending to trade with the Spaniards in Cadiz then in America.

Nicolas Porcio, who was one of the holders of Asiento—a royal license granting the monopoly of the draft of the slaves in the Spanish colonies—had apparently promised to obtain for van Hoorn the permission to sell him Africans in Spanish America.

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

Indeed, before the arrival of van Hoorn in America, the English colonial authorities had been informed of his piracies in Africa, and—more serious—the fact that the Saint Nicholas's Day had openly broken with its British ship-owners to act on van Hoorn's own account.

Thus, cruising against the forbans of the Antilles on order of the Governor Lynch, Jamaican captain George Johnson falls on van Hoorn, in December 1682, but can demand no account nor explanation.

The president of the royal Audiencia of Santo Domingo had indeed prohibited Johnson from any contact with van Hoorn.

The reason is simple: the president retains the Saint Nicholas's Day for a flight made from Cadiz by his captain, for whom what remains in African slaves is confiscated.

All this makes van Hoorn determined to gain the French part of Hispaniola, to take a commission from its governor, the Sieur de Pouançay, and to assemble the famous pirate assault on Vera Cruz.

De Graaf’s next foray had been a trip to Cartagena, Colombia with privateer Michiel Andrieszoon.

Finding little in the way of shipping, they had departed for the Gulf of Honduras.

Finding two empty galleons, de Graaf has decided to wait for them to be loaded with cargo.

The buccaneers retire to Bonaco Island to careen.

Their plans are ruined when Nicholas van Hoorn attacks the ships and captures them empty.

When Van Hoorn reaches Bonaco Island and tries to join forces with de Graaf, he is turned away.

Later de Graaf relents and joins forces with van Hoorn for an attack on Vera Cruz.

The Dutch buccaneer Jan Willems, along with his compatriots Laurens de Graaf, Nicholas van Hoorn and the French pirate Michel de Grammont, on May 17, 1683, successfully raids Veracruz.

Using two captured Spanish galleons in the vanguard, he and Laurens de Graaf are able to sneak into the Spanish harbor during the early morning hours and land a small force on shore.

Van Hoorn, marching overland, joins with de Graaf and attacks the town.

The buccaneers catch the garrison off guard, many of the soldiers still sleeping, and take out the city's defenses, allowing the rest of the fleet to enter the harbor.

On the second day of plundering, the Spanish "Plate" fleet, composed of numerous warships, appears on the horizon.

Retreating with hostages to the nearby island of Los Sacrificios (the sacrificed), the pirates wait for ransoms.

Either the division of the spoils or the treatment of the hostages leads to a duel between Hoorn and de Graaf, which is fought on the shore of the island.

Van Hoorn is seriously wounded with a slash across his wrist.

Finally, giving up on further plunder, the pirates depart past the Spanish ships without hindrance.

Van Hoorn’s wound turns gangrenous after he returns to his ship, and the extreme heat, combined with the absence of surgical aid and his passion for drink, soon ends his life: he is buried on June 24, 1683, at Isla Mujeres.