Claes Compaen
Claes Gerritszoon Compaen , also Claas or Klaas, (* 1587 in Oostzaan ; † February 25, 1660 there ) was a Dutch privateer .
Compaen came from a family of sailors. His father was a member of the Geusen commanded by Dirck Duyvel and fought under Diederik Sonoy for the relief of Alkmaar in 1573. He was also a merchant in the Baltic Sea. Compaen first drove on a salt ship from Enkhuizen then on a merchant from Hoorn in the Mediterranean. He later went into business for himself and traded with Guinea as a merchant . In 1621 he decided to go on a pirate voyage on his own account and he managed to get a letter of piracy from the States General . After the Admiralty forced him to return a Hamburg merchant and denied him the prize money, he moved his activities from the Netherlands. He went on a pirate voyage in the Caribbean, the English Channel, the Mediterranean and the African Atlantic coast. He made his booty for a while in England, Ireland (County Clare, from 1625), in Salé and other parts of North Africa.
He was particularly active in the 1620s and is said to have seized hundreds of ships. In 1626 he blocked two large ships of the Dutch East India Company , including the Hollandia , on the Cape Verde Islands for some time . Around this time he fought off Spain with the privateer in the service of the Spanish Jacob Collaert and was able to escape this despite being numerically inferior.
Finally he asked for a pardon (with the indication that he had mainly harmed the Spaniards) to return to the Netherlands and received it around 1626. He then seems to have lost his fortune and died in 1660 in poverty.
His biography appeared in Amsterdam in 1715.
In the 1930s, various soldiers of fortune searched Ostzaan for his allegedly buried treasure.
literature
- RB Prud'Homme van Reine, EW van der Oest: Kapers op de kust: Nederlandse kaapvaart en piraterij 1500 - 1800, Vlissingen 1991
- Rob Veenman: Claes Compaen: Zeerover in de Gouden Eeuw, Ostzaan 2003
- Stephen Snelders: The Devil's Anarchy: The Sea Robberies of the Most Famous Pirate Claes G. Compaen, and The Very Remarkable Travels of Jan Erasmus Reyning, Buccaneer. Autonomedia, 2005.
Web links
- Biography of M. Bruyneel (English)
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Compaen, Claes |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Compaen, Claes Gerritszoon |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Dutch privateer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1587 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Oostzaan |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 25, 1660 |
| Place of death | Oostzaan |