Jan Hendrik van Kinsbergen
| Jan Hendrik van Kinsbergen | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
May 1, 1735 Doesburg, Dutch Republic |
| Died | May 24, 1819 (aged 84) Apeldoorn, Kingdom of the Netherlands |
| Allegiance |
 Dutch Republic Russian Empire
|
| Service/branch |
 Royal Netherlands Navy Imperial Russian Navy
|
| Rank | Lieutenant-admiral |
Jan Hendrik van Kinsbergen (1 May 1735 – 24 May 1819), or Count of Doggersbank, was a Dutch naval officer. Having had a good scientific education, Van Kinsbergen was a proponent of fleet modernization and wrote many books about naval organization, discipline and tactics.
In 1773, he twice defeated an Ottoman fleet while in Russian service. Returning to the Dutch Republic in 1775, he became a Dutch naval hero in 1781, fighting the Royal Navy, and gradually attained the position of commander-in-chief as a lieutenant-admiral. When France conquered the Republic in 1795 he was fired by the new revolutionary regime and prevented from becoming Danish commander-in-chief, but the Kingdom of Holland reinstated him in 1806, in the rank of fleet marshal, and made him a count. He was again degraded by the French Empire in 1810; after the liberation the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1814 honoured him with his old rank of lieutenant-admiral.
Van Kinsbergen, in his later life a very wealthy man, was also noted for his philanthropy, supporting poor relief, naval education, the arts and the sciences.
Van Kinsbergen was born in Doesburg as the eldest son of the non-commissioned officer Johann Henrich van Kinsbergen, who had been born in Netphen, Germany, in 1706, started his military career in Austrian service, and originally spelled his family name as "Ginsberg". When he was six, he moved with his parents in 1741 to Elburg. Three years later he left with his father for the Southern Netherlands and at the age of nine enlisted as a soldier of the Dutch field army during the War of the Austrian Succession, returning in 1748. Reading the biography of Gerard Brandt about the life of Admiral Michiel de Ruyter, he decided to become a naval hero as well and went to the naval academy of Groningen, where he was trained as an engineer between 1751 and 1755. In 1756, he became a midshipman on the Weststellingerwerf and on 16 March 1758 a lieutenant, in the Admiralty of Amsterdam, on the Maarssen.
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