Joachim Wilhelm Brockes

Joachim Wilhelm Brockes (born March 13, 1723 in Hamburg , † February 4, 1795 at Gut Rozenburg in Slochteren near Groningen ) was a captain and commander of various warships.

family

Coat of arms of the (von) Brockes family

Joachim Wilhelm Brockes' ancestors came from Lübeck , where the family had produced some well-known personalities, including the mayor and admiral Johann Brokes and his sons Heinrich and Otto , who were also mayors of Lübeck.

Joachim Wilhelm was the eighth of twelve children of the Hamburg senator and poet Barthold Heinrich Brockes and his wife Anna Ilsabe, b. Lehmann. Both parents took care of his upbringing, receiving extensive French lessons from his mother and later corresponding extensively in this language.

In 1757 he married Henriette Wilhelmine Muys, widowed Terwen. This marriage resulted in only one son, who was born in Stade in 1759 and later worked as a lawyer in Groningen.

Military and nautical career

British service training

Brockes left home when he was young and went to sea on an English merchant ship . He then attended a naval school in London , trained as a naval officer and served as a midshipman in the squadron of Admiral John Norris . After his appointment as lieutenant , he served from 1743 on an armed merchant ship that made five prizes in a battle with French ships near Martinique . Brockes returned to Europe as leader of one of these prizes.

Hamburg and Dutch services

When two Hamburg ships were hijacked by pirates in the spring of 1746 , a convoy trip was decided under the protection of the convoy ship Wapen von Hamburg , which had been inactive as a guard ship against pirates in Cuxhaven for several years . For this voyage Brockes was appointed commander of the convoy ship and leader of the convoy in 1746 . Besides the Wapen von Hamburg, the convoy consisted of an unknown number of merchant ships.

Since his ship proved too sluggish for the task, Brockes looked for allies to fulfill his anti-piracy mission. The Navy of the Sovereign Order of Malta recommended to him for this purpose classified Brockes as unreliable, and the Danish government refused to cooperate with three of their ships in the Mediterranean. At the end of 1746, on a visit to Lisbon, he was able to win support from the Portuguese government, which was ready for a joint venture with three Portuguese warships.

Because of the poor sailing characteristics of the ship, it was temporarily considered that Brockes should sell the ship in Cádiz in order to buy a better one. This idea was not realized and Brockes led his convoy back to Hamburg, where it was disbanded on September 1, 1747.

Brockes received an honorable farewell and entered the service of the Dutch Admiralty of Rotterdam ( Admiralty de Maeze ). He was initially given the rank of sea ​​captain , later the higher rank of colonel . However, he failed to take command of a ship.

Because of his low military rank, he refused in the first half of the 1750s the elevation brought to him into the German imperial nobility . Overall, dissatisfied with his situation, he returned to Germany in 1757.

Electoral Braunschweig-Lüneburg services

The Elbe customs frigate Weißes Ross and its commander Joachim Wilhelm Brockes

Brockes had already been recommended to the electoral Braunschweig-Lüneburg and thus to the English court as commander of the Elbe customs frigate in Stade as early as 1754 , when the commander Hans-Heinrich von Engel was on leave for three years to serve in the British Royal Navy . When he finally resigned his command in early 1757, it was offered to Brockes, presumably on the advice of his patron at court, Field Marshal Friedrich August von Spörcken . On February 11, 1757 Brockes was appointed ship's captain with the rank of lieutenant colonel . He then took command of the frigate Weißes Ross and the Elbe customs station in Brunshausen near Stade. In these functions he was also the highest officer in the electorate's naval forces , which consisted only of the Elbe customs frigate and its dinghies.

Although this ship was primarily used for customs services on the Elbe, it was used under Brocke's leadership at the end of 1757 in an operation during the Seven Years' War and took part in the bombardment of Harburg , which was under French occupation. The French troops withdrew from the city on December 31, 1757, under the impression of siege and fire.

Shortly afterwards, the White Horse was decommissioned for reasons of age. Instead, a French privateer , stranded near Juist, was prepared for the Elbe customs station , the name of which has not been passed down. In addition, an armed hunt and two sloops were maintained under Brocke's leadership . Brocke's wish to lead a warship that was deployed across the Elbe did not come true. However, it is said that he used the hunt to visit his wife who lives in the Netherlands.

Because the authority of the electoral government in Hanover and the provincial government in Stade to issue instructions to the Brunshausen customs station and to its commanders in his function as military naval commander were not clearly delimited, there was an ongoing conflict between Brockes and the district president Bodo von Bodenhausen . After various disputes, Bodenhausen prevailed in 1767 and used Brockes' vacation to enforce his dismissal on the basis of accumulated incriminating documents.

Next life

Brockes retired to his family in the Netherlands, who by then lived in Franeker , Frisia , and served the States General again as Colonel until around 1780 . He spent his last years with his wife on the Rozenburg estate near Groningen, where he died on February 4, 1795.

literature

• Richard Graewe: The two hundred year history of the Elbe customs frigate in Brunshausen and its commanders 1650-1850 (= individual writings of the Stader Geschichts- und Heimatverein eV No. 17, ISSN  0585-0037 ). Self-published by the Stader Geschichts- und Heimatverein, Stade 1963.