I have written about this before, but I wanted to say that one issue that remains is to verify what ship Abraham van der Hulst commanded at least in June to August 1652. As I have written before, the list in the Hollandsche Mercurius for June 1652 and Hendrick de Raedt's pamphlet, for 4 August 1652, list Abraham van der Hulst as commanding a "landsschip" with 26 guns and a crew of 100 men. The unnamed ship is one which belonged to the Admiralty of Amsterdam. I assume that this ship was damaged in the storm in the Shetlands in early August and was paid off or discarded, rather than being repaired.
We know that by September 1652, Abraham van der Hulst commanded the 40-gun ship Groningen, did until about April 1653, when he was appointed to command the large Amsterdam ship Vrijheid. One suggestion has been that he, in fact, commanded the Groningen in June to August 1652, and that the lists are mistaken. I am less inclined to believe that, simply because the lists have proven to be almost completely correct, although the Hollandsche Mercurius list is riddled with typgraphical errors and misspellings. Until this issue is resolved, we still don't have a complete picture for this period, although we are closer than we have ever been, before.
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