Jacob van Heemskerk

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Jacob van Heemskerk

Jacob van Heemskerk , also written "Hemskerck", (born March 1, 1567 in Amsterdam ; † April 25, 1607 near Gibraltar ) was a Dutch admiral and seafarer , vice admiral of the Admiralty of Amsterdam and captain of the Dutch East India Company .

Life

Jacob van Heemskerk was the son of Hendrick Cornelis van Beest van Heemskerck from the Van Heemskerck family . He was probably a descendant of Gerrit van Heemskerck , the feudal lord of the island of Terschelling from 1417. Heemskerk was married to Maria Houtman and had a son.

Van Heemskerk took part in two expeditions to the Arctic and spent the winter of 1596/1597 during his third expedition with Willem Barents in search of the Northeast Passage in a hut made of driftwood on Novaya Zemlya . With Barents, who died after a week, and the other members of the rest of the team of the expedition, he left the northern tip of the double island in self-made boats in June 1597. These last reached the Kola peninsula in northwestern Russia. He returned to Amsterdam in 1597 on a Dutch merchant ship led by Jan Corneliszoon Rijp .

In 1603 van Heemskerck was sent to the South Asian seas as an admiral , where he achieved military success in the dispute with the Portuguese fleet. On April 25, 1607, as admiral, he led a fleet of 27 ships into the sea ​​battle near Gibraltar and completely destroyed the Spanish Armada , but found his own death in the process.

Jacob van Heemskerk is buried in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam. He received the first state-funded praalgraf for a seaman.

A frigate of the Dutch Navy was named after Jacob-van-Heemskerck .

literature

  • Gerrit de Veer : Description of the three new voyages to get to Cathay and China: Willem Barents' voyages across the North Sea in 1594, 1595 and 1596. Transferred by Klaus Stiedenrod. Facsimile of the Nuremberg 1598 edition. German Maritime Museum - Edition Stiedenrod, Oceanum Verlag, Wiefelstede 2010, ISBN 978-3-86927-106-4 .
  • Michael Recke: Willem Barents and the search for the Northeast Passage. Commentary on: Willem Barents' voyages across the North Sea in 1594, 1595 and 1598. ISBN 978-3-86927-110-1 .
  • Gerrit de Veer: Barentz et Heemskerck, voyageurs hollandais , Paris 1857.
  • Friedrich Ratzel:  Heemskerk, Jakob van . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1880, p. 234.

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