Thomas Alders

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Thomas Alders (also Aldersen) was a Dutch naval officer from Vlissingen who served in the last quarter of the 17th century as a captain and then as a squadron commodore in the Brandenburg Navy of the Great Elector Friedrich Wilhelm .

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1680

In 1680 Alders was the captain of the frigate Dorothea (32 cannons, 100 men crew , 40 marines), which with the squadron Claus von Beverns ambushed Spanish ships in the English Channel for the purpose of hijacking ( Brandenburg pirate war ) and on September 18 the Carolus Secundus off Ostend (28 cannons) surprised and conquered. He then led the Carolus Secundus back to Pillau , together with Bevern and his frigate Friedrich Wilhelm , where the cargo of the prize was auctioned and the ship was incorporated into the Brandenburg fleet under the new name of Margrave of Brandenburg . The Margrave of Brandenburg was equipped with 50 cannons, 50 marines and 150 seamen and was the first Kurbrandenburg ship to be armed and equipped by the Elector himself and not by Benjamin Raule .

1681

Encouraged by this success, the elector ordered in autumn 1680 to send more privateers out as soon as the ice on the Baltic Sea had thawed in spring 1681 . As a result, the three comparatively small ships Prinzess Marie (16 cannons, 70 men), Eichhorn (16/70) and Wasserhund (10/30) left Pillau on April 20, 1681 under the command of Johann Lacher, to move in the English Channel and then in the sea area to wage pirate war against the Spaniards at Madeira .

When, at the end of May, the four remaining ships - Churprinz , Rother Löwe , Fuchs and Berlin - of the squadron sent the previous year under Claus von Bevern returned to Pillau, which after the capture of the Carolus Secundus under Bevern's deputy Cornelis Reers in the Gulf of Mexico and in the The Caribbean had been looking for Spanish ships with little success, on June 25, Alders received the order to set sail with the Margrave of Brandenburg , now the strongest ship in the Brandenburg fleet, in a pirate war against Spain. To do this, he was supposed to pull together his squadron in the English Channel from the ships that were sailing there separately for reasons of secrecy and then ambush the Spanish silver fleet expected from America near Cadiz . In addition to his flagship , the two frigates Rother Löwe (Kpt. Jakob Raule, 20 cannons, 75 seamen, 25 marines) and Fuchs (Kpt. Martin Ferdinand Fors, 20 cannons, 75 seamen, 25 marines) were subordinate to him after crossing the Danish waters. In Dunkirk to Alders' three ships, of which he took 140 sailors and 45 soldiers to complete his own teams met little squadron with Johann Lachers. Then he sailed south with all six ships to wait for booty off the Spanish coast.

On September 30, 1681, Alders sighted a large number of sails near Cape St. Vincent . Assuming that it was the hoped-for convoy of the silver fleet, Alders attacked. Instead of clumsy and heavily loaded cargo ships, however, he encountered a combat squadron of 12 galleons and three fires under the command of the Marquis of Villafiel, the captain general of Galicia . He and his squadron, which had left Ferrol and Vigo , were looking for the Brandenburgers in order to eliminate this threat to Spanish shipping. There was a two-hour battle , which Alders finally broke off in view of the superior strength of the enemy. He sought refuge in the Portuguese port of Lagos , where his ships repaired the damage they had suffered under the protection of the Portuguese cannons, while the Spanish silver fleet entered Cádiz unmolested. The Brandenburg squadron had ten dead and thirty wounded. The losses on the Spanish side are unknown. It was the first naval battle of a German squadron on the high seas.

Since the hoped-for element of surprise and the prospect of easy pirating successes were no longer there, Alders returned to Pillau with his squadron. Since the Brandenburg Navy was not a permanent institution in those years, but was simply put together and manned again and again on the basis of temporary contracts between Elector Friedrich Wilhelm and his Navy Commissioner Benjamin Raule , Alders does not seem to have been in the Brandenburg service afterwards .

Honor

In May 1943, the German Navy named the former minesweeper M 126 after him, which had been converted into the Alders clearing boat .

Remarks

  1. ↑ In the 17th and first half of the 18th century, the term "frigate" was used for a number of different types of ships, so that many ships from very small "single decks" to relatively large "double deckers" could be described as such.
  2. ↑ 10 eight, 6 six, 6 four, 4 three and 6 two pounders.
  3. ↑ Spain owed the Elector Friedrich Wilhelm from the time of the Dutch War (1672–79) a subsidy payment of around 1.8 million thalers, and since diplomatic efforts had been unsuccessful, the Elector sought to collect this amount by capturing ships.
  4. ↑ In some reports the armament of the two larger ships is given with only twelve cannons each.
  5. ↑ The Friedrich Wilhelm (43 cannons, 120 sailors, 40 marines) should probably join the Center later what it was but no more.
  6. ↑ Marqués von Villafiel was a Spanish nobility title donated on August 7, 1665 by King Philip IV in favor of Fernando Carrillo Muñiz de Godoy, 1st Viscount de Alba de Tajo (1629-1683), governor of Málaga . The Marqués was from 1679 to 1681 Captain General of Galicia (Capitan General del Reino y Ejército de Galicia).

literature

personal data
SURNAME Alders, Thomas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Thomas Aldersen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch captain and squadron commodore from Brandenburg
DATE OF BIRTH 17th century
DATE OF DEATH 17th century or 18th century