Builder:
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Koninklijke Maatschappij De
Schelde (KMS), Vlissingen –
(Royal Schelde
Shipbuilding, Vlissingen, The Netherlands)
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STATUS:
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Laid down: July 25, 1963
Launched: June 19, 1965
Commissioned: March 1, 1967
Decommissioned:
February 1987
Fate: transferred to Indonesia in 1987;
renamed KRI
Yos Sudarso / F 353
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Johan van Galen (born: 1604
in Essen (Germany) / died: March 23, 1653 at sea off Livorno (Italy)) was an
Admiral of the Republic of the Seven United Provinces of the Netherlands.
He fought in the Eighty Years' War against Spain, becoming a captain in 1630
and a regular captain in 1635, mostly fighting the Dunkirkers. In 1639 he
fought in the Battle of the Downs under the command of Joris van Cats. In
1645, as a Rear-Admiral, he was part of Vice-Admiral Witte de With's convoy
breaking the blockade of The Sound by Denmark. Both men were very
hot-tempered and proud. Emotions ran so high that Van Galen at one point in
his anger lowered his command flag and trampled it with his feet. De With put
him in chains and delivered him to the capital of the adversary, Copenhagen.
The embarrassed Danish court released Van Galen after an intervention by the
French envoy. A peculiarity of Van Galen is that he never served in the navy
proper, an institution he disliked, but was employed by the Amsterdam
Direction Chamber, a private organisation supporting the official navy. After
the Republic had made peace with Spain in 1648, Van Galen was sent out three
times to fight with Spanish assistance the corsairs of the Barbary Coast. In
1649 he was badly wounded when a gang of Spanish criminals intercepted him
when he was returning in a sloop with prize money. Van Galen retired late in
1650, but when the First Anglo-Dutch War between the Republic and the
Commonwealth of England broke out, he was asked by the States-General, on 13
July 1652, to assume command of a Dutch fleet in the Mediterranean, as a
commodore and replacing commandeur Joris van Cats. He departed on 3 August,
reaching Livorno on 1 September. He was mortally wounded during the Battle of
Leghorn, where his fleet destroyed part of the English Mediterranean Fleet. A
cannonball smashed his right lower leg; it was amputated below deck and Van
Galen afterwards continued to direct the battle. He died from wound fever ten
days later in Livorno. Cornelis Tromp was then a young captain under his
command. Van Galen was given a state burial in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam
and a marble grave memorial was erected in 1656 on which this poem is
inscribed:
Hier leit in t'Graf van Eer den dapperen Van
Galen,
Die eerst ging buit op buit Kastiliën afhalen,
En, met een Leeuwenhert, nabij 't Toskaensche strant,
De Britten heeft verjaegt, verovert en verbrandt.
Translation:
In this honourable grave, brave Van Galen is lain
Who first so many prizes won from the King of Spain
Then with a Lion's Heart, near to the Toscan beach
The British ships there chased, captured or burnt them each.
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