Jacob Collaart or Collaert (
floruit c. 1625–1637) was a
Flemish admiral who served as
privateer and one of the
Dunkirkers in
Spanish Habsburg service during the
Dutch Revolt
The Eighty Years' War or Dutch Revolt ( nl, Nederlandse Opstand) (Historiography of the Eighty Years' War#Name and periodisation, c.1566/1568–1648) was an armed conflict in the Habsburg Netherlands between disparate groups of rebels and t ...
.
He was responsible for the capture or destruction of at least 150 fishing vessels, bringing 945 captured sailors back to his base in
Dunkirk
Dunkirk (french: Dunkerque ; vls, label=French Flemish, Duunkerke; nl, Duinkerke(n) ; , ;) is a commune in the department of Nord in northern France.[Claes Compaan
Claes Gerritszoon Compaen (1587, Oostzaan, North Holland - 25 February 1660, Oostzaan), also called Claas Compaan or Klaas Kompaan, was a 17th-century Dutch corsair and merchant. Dissatisfied as a privateer for the Dutch Republic, he turned to pi ...]
who escaped from him after sighting the corsair off the Spanish coast.
Biography
From 1633 until 1637, Collaart served as Vice Admiral with the Royal Squadron operating out of Dunkirk and, in 1635, his attacks against Dutch herring redders would cost the city of
Flushing (''Vlissingen'') over two million guilders in income.
Although the city of Dunkirk was under a Dutch blockade during early 1635, the blockade was temporarily weakened as several warships under Lieutenant-Admiral
Philips van Dorp were supporting French naval forces in the
Gulf of Biscay
The Bay of Biscay (), known in Spain as the Gulf of Biscay ( es, Golfo de Vizcaya, eu, Bizkaiko Golkoa), and in France and some border regions as the Gulf of Gascony (french: Golfe de Gascogne, oc, Golf de Gasconha, br, Pleg-mor Gwaskogn), ...
and, on 14 August, Collaert sailing out of Dunkirk successfully broke through the Dutch blockade with a fleet of twenty-one vessels.
Within three days, Collaart's fleet located a herring fleet numbering 160 under the guard of a single
man-of-war
The man-of-war (also man-o'-war, or simply man) was a Royal Navy expression for a powerful warship or frigate from the 16th to the 19th century. Although the term never acquired a specific meaning, it was usually reserved for a ship armed wi ...
, armed with 39 guns and an 85-men crew. Easily disabling the escort, 74 vessels were either sunk or set afire with the surviving vessels escaping to the
Vlie.
On 19 August, after chasing off the six men-of-war escorts, Collaart's forces destroyed around 50 herring boats near
Doggersbank
Dogger Bank (Dutch language, Dutch: ''Doggersbank'', German language, German: ''Doggerbank'', Danish language, Danish: ''Doggerbanke'') is a large shoal, sandbank in a shallow area of the North Sea about off the east coast of England.
During ...
. Of the surviving fishermen, 150 sailors including wounded as well as the young and the elderly were put on a merchant vessel from
Hamburg and returned to the
Dutch Republic while the remaining 775 were held captive for ransom.
After this latest attack, a Dutch fleet was soon raised by the
States-General of the Netherlands who ordered all available vessels to set out after the Collaart's fleet. Sailing from
Rotterdam, its commander
Willem Codde van der Burch
Willem () is a Dutch and West FrisianRienk de Haan, ''Fryske Foarnammen'', Leeuwarden, 2002 (Friese Pers Boekerij), , p. 158. masculine given name. The name is Germanic, and can be seen as the Dutch equivalent of the name William in English, Gui ...
was ordered to rendez-vous at the
Texel with
Philips van Dorp, recently returning from
La Rochelle, and Vice Admiral Quast.
Collaart soon encountered the Dutch fleet of Van der Burch and Van Dorp, consisting of a combined twenty warships, and managed to damage four before the arrival of Quast's fleet forced Collaart to abandon the fight. In part due to bad weather, Collaart was able to escape to Dunkirk, arriving with 975 captive fisherman on 8 September 1635.
The following year, while sailing with two other privateers, Collaart and
Mathieu Romboutsen
Mathieu is both a surname and a given name. Notable people with the name include:
Surname
* André Mathieu (1929–1968), Canadian pianist and composer
* Anselme Mathieu (1828–1895), French Provençal poet
* Claude-Louis Mathieu (1783–1875), ...
were captured (the third captain managing to escape to an
English port) near
Dieppe after a five-hour battle against Captain
Johan Evertsen on 29 February 1636.
Collaart died of an illness at
A Coruña in August 1637.
[R. A. Stradling, ''The Armada of Flanders: Spanish Maritime Policy and European War, 1568-1668'' (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History). Cambridge University Press, 1992. p. 101.] He had a son who was also a privateer,
Jacques Collaert the Younger, and was the father-in-law of the later English Vice-Admiral
Edward Spragge.
References
Further reading
*Van Der Hoven, Marco, ed. ''Exercise of Arms: Warfare in the Netherlands, 1568-1648''. Brill Academic Publishers, 1997.
*Roding, Juliette and Lex Heerma van Voss, ed. ''The North Sea and Culture (1550-1800)''. Larenseweg, Netherlands: Uitgeverij VerLoren, 1996.
*Stradling, R.A. ''The Armada of Flanders: Spanish Maritime Policy and European War, 1568-1668'' (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History).
Cambridge University Press, 1992. (issued in paperback 2004, )
External links
Isle of Tortuga: Jacob Collaart
{{DEFAULTSORT:Collaart, Jacob
1637 deaths
Dunkirk Privateers
Year of birth uncertain
Naval battles of the Eighty Years' War
Naval commanders of the Eighty Years' War
Eighty Years' War (1621–1648)