Maarten Tromp

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Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (April 23, 1598–August 10, 1653) was an officer and later admiral in the Dutch navy.

Born in Den Briel, Tromp was the son of an officer of an early Dutch man-of-war;his mother washed sailor's shirts to supplement the family income. At the age of nine, Tromp went to sea with his father and was present at the Battle of Gibraltar. Three years later they sailed together on a merchant ship to Africa, when they were attacked by the English pirate Peter Easton and Tromp's father was slain. According to legend the 12-year old boy rallied the crew of the ship with the cry "Won't you avenge my father's death?" But the pirates seized him and sold him on the slave market of Salé. Two years later however, Easton, moved by pity, ordered to redeem him. Set free, he supported his mother and three sisters by working in a Rotterdam shipyard, went to sea again at 19, and three years later was captured once more — this time by Barbary corsairs off Tunis. He was kept as a slave until 24, and by then had impressed the bey of Tunis with his skills in gunnery and navigation that he was again set free. He joined the Dutch navy as a lieutenant in 1621. His first distinction was being Piet Hein's flag captain during the fight with Ostend privateers in 1629 in which Hein was killed. His ship, at that time, was the Vliegende Groene Draeck.

Tromp, having left the naval service for a few years, was promoted from captain to Lieutenant-Admiral of Holland and West Frisia in 1637, when Lieutenant-Admiral Philips van Dorp and other flag officers were removed because of incompetence. Although formally under the Admiral-General Frederick Henry of Orange this meant he was in fact supreme commander of the confederate Dutch fleet, as the stadtholders never fought in naval combat. Tromp was mostly busy blockading the privateer port of Dunkirk.

In 1639, in the Dutch struggle for independence from Spain, Tromp defeated a large Spanish fleet bound for Flanders towards the end of the Eighty Years' War at the Battle of the Downs, marking the end of Spanish naval power. In a preliminary battle, the Action of 18 September 1639, Tromp was the first fleet commander known to deliberately use the line of battle tactic. His flagship in this period was the Aemilia.

In the First Anglo-Dutch War of 1652–1653 Tromp commanded the Dutch fleet in the battles of Dungeness, Portland, the Gabbard and Scheveningen, in which he was killed by a sharpshooter in the rigging of William Penn's ship. His acting flagcaptain Egbert Bartholomeusz Kortenaer on the Brederode kept up morale by not lowering Tromp's standard, pretending the commander of the fleet was still alive.

The death of Maarten Tromp was not only a severe blow to the Dutch navy, but also to the Orangists who sought the defeat of the Commonwealth of England and restoration of the Stuart monarchy; the Republican influence strengthened after the Battle of Scheveningen and the peace negotiations with the Commonwealth, culminating in the Treaty of Westminster, began in earnest.

During his career, his main rival was Vice-Admiral Witte de With, who also served the Admiralty of Rotterdam (the Maas) from 1637. De With temporarily replaced him as supreme commander for the Battle of Kentish Knock. Tromp's successor however was Lieutenant-Admiral Jacob van Wassenaer Obdam.

Tromp, a "sea hero", was immensely popular with the common people, a sentiment expressed by the greatest of Dutch poets, Joost van den Vondel in a famous poem describing his marble grave monument in Delft showing the admiral on his moment of death with a burning British fleet on the foreground:

Here rests the hero Tromp, the brave protector

of shipping and free sea, serving free land

his memory alive in artful spectre

as if he had just died at his last stand

His knell the cries of death, guns' thunderous call

a burning Brittany too Great for sea alone

He's carved himself an image in the hearts of all

more lasting than grave's splendour and its marble stone

One of Tromp's sons, Cornelis Tromp later also became commander of the Dutch navy, as Lieutenant-Admiral-General, and even earlier commanded the Danish navy.

[edit] References

Roger Hainsworth and Christine Churches, The Anglo Dutch Naval Wars 1652-1674, Sutton Pub Ltd, 1998
Oliver Warner, Great Sea Battles, Spring Books London, 1973
R. Prud’homme van Reine, Schittering en Schandaal. Dubbelbiografie van Maerten en Cornelis Tromp, Arbeidspers, 2001
Warnsinck, JCM, Twaalf doorluchtige zeehelden, PN van Kampen & Zoon NV, 1941
Warnsinck, JCM, Van Vlootvoogden en Zeeslagen, PN van Kampen & Zoon, 1940de:Maarten Tromp