Willem de Zoete

Willem de Zoete , Lord von Haultain, (* 1565 - † September 26, 1637 in Sluis ) was a Dutch admiral.

Also Willem de Zoete van Laecke. He was the son of Alexander and Margaretha van Berchem from a southern Dutch family. From 1601 to 1627 he was Lieutenant-Admiral of Zeeland (as successor to Justinus von Nassau).

In 1605 he was in command of a canal fleet that was supposed to prevent the transport of Spanish troops to Flanders. There were also entanglements with England, which under James I were again more friendly to Spain and secretly supported these transports (although they were officially neutral). In 1605/06 he led an expedition to fight the Spaniards off their coast with mixed success (the first time he had to break off the operation due to the lack of provisions, in the following year his fleet was dispersed in bad weather, with the Dutch naval hero Reinier Claeszen on 7 October 1606 before Cape St. Vincent fell). In 1611/12, 1618 and 1620/21 he fought the barbarians in the Mediterranean.

In 1625 he commanded an auxiliary fleet of 20 Dutch ships that supported the French in the siege of the Huguenots in La Rochelle and the conquest of the Île de Ré . This took place due to the Treaty of Compiègne with France of 1624, but was very unpopular in the Netherlands and was reversed in early 1626 and the fleet withdrawn (but the enclosed La Rochelle surrendered in 1628). From 1623 to 1625 he was the only Lieutenant-Admiral in the Netherlands (the Lieutenant-Admiral of Holland Jacob van Wassenaar van Obdam had died in 1623). This later led to disagreements about the distribution of command between Holland and Zeeland.

In 1626 he defended Sluis and became governor of Sluis after his dismissal in 1627.

literature

Luc Eekhout: Het Admiralenboek: De Vlagofficieren van de Nederlandse marine 1382-1991, 1992

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Zoete, Willem de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Dutch admiral
DATE OF BIRTH	1565
DATE OF DEATH	September 26, 1637
Place of death	Sluis