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Saturday, July 14, 2007

I am still not sure about Abraham van der Hulst's ship in the April to August 1652 period

Yes, we learn from a letter from Johan Evertsen that Abraham van der Hulst commanded an Amsterdam ship named Overijssel. From Hendrick de Raedt's pamphlet, we conclude that this was 's-Landsschip, not hired. Hendrick de Raedt says that Abraham van der Hulst's ship carried 26 guns and had a crew of 100 men. There are two candidate ships, one of which may not even have been in service past early 1652, if not earlier. One possibility is the "old Overijssel", with 28 guns and perhaps of 120ft length. The other is the new ship built in 1651. The obvious conclusion is that the ship that Jan van Campen was fitting out in August 1652 was the ship built in 1651 that might never have been in service. The ship commanded by Abraham van der Hulst, then, would be the old Overijssel, which was discarded by September 1652. Abraham van der Hulst was given command of the 40-gun ship Groningen, which had been commanded by Joris van der Zaan. He moved to the newly built Campen in September. The one concern that I have is that we have dimensions and gun lists for all other Landsschepen and hired ships for Amsterdam in 1652. If the old Overijssel was in service, then there was one ship for which we do not have dimensions and guns lists. We even have dimensions and gun lists for two Landsschepen ships lost by August 1652. These are Jeroen Adelaer's ship, the Middelburg, taken by the English in June and Barent Pietersz Dorrevelt's ship Amsterdam, which foundered in the storm off the Shetlands in early August. If we know about these, why don't we know about some other Overijssel?

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