Piet Heyn

Piet Heyn (born Nov. 15, 1577, Delfshaven, Neth.—died June 18, 1629, near Dunkirk, France) was an admiral and director of the Dutch West India Company who captured a Spanish treasure fleet (1628) with 4,000,000 ducats of gold and silver (12,000,000 gulden, or florins). That great naval and economic victory provided the Dutch Republic with money to continue its struggle against Spain for control of the southern, or Spanish, Netherlands (now Belgium and Luxembourg).

Captured at sea in 1597, Heyn spent four years as a Spanish galley rower. After being released in an exchange of Dutch and Spanish prisoners (1602), he became a merchant skipper and amassed a sizable fortune. He became a director (1621) of the Dutch West India Company, formed to promote and protect the Dutch contraband trade with Spanish and Portuguese colonies.

Three years after his appointment (1624) as a vice admiral of the fleet, Heyn captured 22 Portuguese ships at San Salvador, Brazil. In September 1628, at Matanzas Bay, Cuba, he captured part of a fleet that was carrying an annual shipment of precious metals mined in Mexico and Peru to Spain. He had planned to retire with his share of the booty but was recalled to active duty with the rank of lieutenant admiral of Holland in 1629. He was then given command of the republic’s entire fleet and ordered to clear the North Sea of the Dunkirk pirates, who were in the pay of King Philip IV of Spain. Although his fleet destroyed the pirates (June 1629), Heyn was killed in the battle.