Maarten Tromp
Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (
April 23,
1598–
August 10,
1653) was an officer and later
admiral in the
Dutch navy.
Born in
Den Briel, Tromp was the son of an officer of an early Dutch man-of-war;his mother washed sailor's shirts to supplement the family income. At the age of nine, Tromp went to sea with his father and was present at the
Battle of Gibraltar. Three years later they sailed together on a merchant ship to Africa, when they were attacked by English pirates and Tromp's father was slain. According to legend the 12-year old boy rallied the crew of the ship with the cry "Won't you avenge my father's death?" But the pirates seized him and and forced him to serve as a cabin boy for the next two years. Set free, he supported his mother and three sisters by working in a
Rotterdam shipyard, went to sea again at 19, and three yaers later was captured once more, -this time by
Barbary corsairs off
Tunis. He was kept as a slave until 24, and by then had impressed the bey of Tunis with his skills in gunnery and navigation that he was again set free. He joined the Dutch navy as a lieutenant in
1621. His first distinction was being
Piet Hein's flag captain during the fight with
Ostend privateers in
1629 in which Hein was killed. His ship, at that time, was the
Vliegende Groene Draeck.
Tromp, having left the naval service for a few years, was promoted from captain to Lieutenant-Admiral of Holland and West Frisia in
1637, when Lieutenant-Admiral
Philips van Dorp and other flag officers were removed because of incompetence. Although formally under the Admiral-General
Frederick Henry of Orange this meant he was in fact supreme commander of the confederate Dutch fleet, as the
stadtholders never fought in naval combat. Tromp was mostly busy blockading the privateer port of
Dunkirk.
In
1639, in the Dutch struggle for independence from Spain, Tromp defeated a large
Spanish fleet bound for
Flanders towards the end of the
Eighty Years' War at the
Battle of the Downs, marking the end of Spanish naval power. In a preliminary battle, the
Action of 18 September 1639, Tromp was the first fleet commander known to deliberately use the
line of battle tactic. His flagship in this period was the
Aemilia.
In the
First Anglo-Dutch War of
1652–
1653 Tromp commanded the Dutch fleet in the battles of
Dungeness,
Portland,
the Gabbard and
Scheveningen, in which he was killed by a sharpshooter in the rigging of
William Penn's ship. His acting flagcaptain
Egbert Bartholomeusz Kortenaer on the
Brederode kept up morale by not lowering Tromp's standard, pretending the commander of the fleet was still alive.
The death of Maarten Tromp was not only a severe blow to the
Dutch navy, but also to the Orangists who sought the defeat of the
Commonwealth of England and restoration of the
Stuart monarchy; the Republican influence strengthened after the
Battle of Scheveningen and the peace negotiations with the Commonwealth, culminating in the
Treaty of Westminster, began in earnest.
During his career, his main rival was Vice-Admiral
Witte de With, who also served the Admiralty of Rotterdam (the Maas) from 1637. De With temporarily replaced him as supreme commander for the
Battle of Kentish Knock. Tromp's successor however was Lieutenant-Admiral
Jacob van Wassenaer Obdam.
Tromp, a "sea hero", was immensely popular with the common people, a sentiment expressed by the greatest of Dutch poets,
Joost van den Vondel in a famous poem describing his marble grave monument in
Delft showing the admiral on his moment of death with a burning British fleet on the foreground:
Here rests the hero Tromp, the brave protector:
of shipping and free sea, serving free land:
his memory alive in artful spectre:
as if he had just died at his last stand:
His knell the cries of death, guns' thunderous call:
a burning Brittany too Great for sea alone:
He's carved himself an image in the hearts of all:
more lasting than grave's splendour and its marble stoneOne of Tromp's sons,
Cornelis Tromp later also became commander of the Dutch navy, as Lieutenant-Admiral-General, and even earlier commanded the Danish navy.
*Roger Hainsworth and Christine Churches,
The Anglo Dutch Naval Wars 1652-1674, Sutton Pub Ltd, 1998
*Oliver Warner,
Great Sea Battles, Spring Books London, 1973
*R. Prud'homme van Reine,
Schittering en Schandaal. Dubbelbiografie van Maerten en Cornelis Tromp, Arbeidspers, 2001
*
Warnsinck, JCM,
Twaalf doorluchtige zeehelden, PN van Kampen & Zoon NV, 1941
*
Warnsinck, JCM,
Van Vlootvoogden en Zeeslagen, PN van Kampen & Zoon, 1940
