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Witte
Corneliszoon de With (born: March 28, 1599 in Den Briel / died: November 8,
1658 in Oresund) was a famous Dutch naval officer of the 17th century. He
became legendary in many great victories, some supporting the fleet, and
others in a leading role.
Early life and childhood
De With was born on a farmstead near Brielle, the very town in which Maarten
Tromp had been born a year earlier. According to legend they were friends or
even already rivals in their youth, but there is no proof for this. His father
died in 1602. The De With family were Mennonites and strict pacifists; in
1610 Witte, as an anabaptist not yet baptised, obtained a baptism by a
calvinist preacher so that he would no longer feel constrained in using
violence as he was by nature not a peace-seeking boy. After some failed minor
jobs he went on his first sea voyage to the Dutch East Indies when he was
seventeen, as a cabin boy on Captain Geen Huygen Schapenham's ship, part of
the fleet of Jan Pieterszoon Coen. He was a corporal during the siege of
Jakarta in 1619. May 1620 he returned to the Netherlands. He then took
service with the Admiralty of the Maze as a schipper (then the highest NCO
rank), still under Schapenham, seeing action in the Baltic and the
Mediterranean. In July 1622 he became flag captain of Delft of now
Vice-Admiral Schapenham, who in 1623 carried out the spectacular raid
organised by the Admiralty of Amsterdam, sending the "Nassau fleet"
against the Spanish possessions on the west coast of America; this fleet then
crossed the Pacific to reach the Indies. In the summer of 1625, in a punitive
action, he laid waste Ternate in the Spice Islands. He returned in September
1626, after the death of Schapenham, as Vice-Admiral (in service of the
Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie) of the Spice Fleet, then worth five million
guilders, thus having circumnavigated the globe.
Capturing of Spains' treasure-fleet
In 1628 he was flag captain to Admiral Piet Heyn when the latter captured the
Spanish treasure fleet near Cuba. Out of the bounty De With was granted about
500 guilders, with which he was very dissatisfied, as he imputed to himself a
crucial role in the capture. In 1629 the five Dutch admiralties refused Heyn,
their new factual supreme commander, to enlarge his staff with a special
tactical officer, for which function Heyn had De With in mind. Disappointed,
De With left the direct navy service to become Commodore of the Grote
Visserij, the administrative body controlling and militarily protecting the
herring fleet. Maarten Tromp became Heyn's new flag captain. In 1635 for a
short time De With rejoined the navy, but soon left the service again after a
quarrel with Lieutenant-Admiral Philips van Dorp.
Battle of the Downs
In the Eighty Years' War against the Spanish, De With fought at the Battle of
the Downs (1639), having become Vice-Admiral of Holland and West Frisia in
1637, when the highest ranking navy officers, among them Van Dorp, were
replaced because of incompetence. However De With was again severely
disappointed not to have become supreme commander; he now was second in
command under Tromp. De With became very jealous of Tromp's popularity after
his destruction of the Spanish fleet at Downs. In the same battle he made an
enemy of Zealandic Vice-Admiral Johan Evertsen by accusing him of cowardice
and avarice.
Court Martial
In 1640 De With was brought to trial when, his fleet having been dispersed by
a storm, he had returned to Hellevoetsluis alone. The court martial was presided
by Tromp and though he was acquitted, De With had the compulsive notion that
Tromp had tried to influence witnesses against him. Both in 1644 and 1645 De
With with an enormous convoy of merchantmen - 702 on the return voyage of the
latter year - forced the Sound against the Danes, who had tried to impose
higher toll rates. In 1647 De With was sent with a poorly equipped fleet to
assist the Dutch colony of Brazil from attack by the Portuguese. He refused
to cooperate with the Council of Brazil and, after many months of conflict
during which his fleet deteriorated through lack of supplies, he returned
against orders with the two remaining seaworthy ships to the Netherlands in
November 1649. On his return he went to the States-General to complain about
the policy of the colony of Brazil but was himself arrested, charged for
insubordination and desertion on 259 points and nearly condemned to
decapitation, only saved from this by the intervention of the States of
Holland pointing out they had the exclusive right to condemn their admirals
to death. In February 1651 he was acquitted of most charges, the punishment
reduced to a loss of wages for the period involved; in September 1651 De With
was again on convoy duty.
The first Anglo-Dutch War
In the First Anglo-Dutch War against the Commonwealth of England, when
Lieutenant-Admiral Maarten Tromp fell in disgrace with the States-General, De
With commanded the Dutch fleet at the Battle of the Kentish Knock but failed.
Morally broken, he remained ill at home for many months, while Tromp replaced
him for the Battle of Dungeness and the Battle of Plymouth. On 8 May Tromp
officially became supreme commander again and De With fought as subcommander
under Tromp in the subsequent actions: the Battle of the Gabbard and the
final Battle of Scheveningen in which Tromp died. De With was temporary
commander between 14 August and 22 September but was denied permanent command
of the Dutch fleet because of his difficult personality in favour of
Lieutenant-Admiral Jacob van Wassenaer Obdam. Between 1654 and 1656 he was
inactive, only sailing again for the relief of Danzig.
Death in the Battle of the Sound
He fell in the Battle of the Sound, during the Northern Wars, commanding the
vanguard of the Dutch fleet relieving Copenhagen from the Swedish, when his
ship Brederode was grounded and surrounded by the enemy. He was first shot
through the left thigh by a musket ball and hours later through the breast.
When Swedish soldiers boarded the ship he refused to surrender his sword, wrestling
with two of them on his knees and exclaiming: "I have faithfully wielded
this sword so many years for Holland, so I won't give it up now to some
common soldiers!". He collapsed, was brought to his cabin to recover,
insisted on walking by himself over the gangplank to the Swedish ship, there
collapsed again and died. He body was balmed on orders of Charles X of Sweden
and displayed as a war trophy in the town hall of Elsinore by the Swedes, who
January 1659 delivered his body to the Danish court in Copenhagen; after the
Danes had paid their homage, it was transported to the Netherlands and buried
with great pomp in Rotterdam on 7 October, in the church of St Lawrence,
where the marble grave memorial, restored after being damaged by the German
bombardment of 14 May 1940, can still be seen.
The arch-rivalry with Tromp
He had a lifelong rivalry with Admiral Maarten Tromp. De With was feared and
hated by his inferiors - on several occasions crews refused to let him on
board to use their ship as flagship - shunned by his equals and always full
of insubordination against his superiors. He was also seen as courageous,
competent and an excellent sailor. He was embittered by the neglect of the
fleet between 1639 and 1650.
Pamphleteer
One of the more remarkable aspects of De With's personality was his being a
notorious pamphleteer, publishing many booklets, anonymous or under the name
of friends, in which he sometimes praised but more often ridiculed or even
insulted his fellow officers. Tromp was a favourite subject for all three
categories.
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