Witte Corneliszoon de With
| Witte de With | |
|---|---|
,_by_Abraham_van_Westerveldt.jpg)
De With by Abraham van Westerveld
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| Birth name | Witte Corneliszoon de With |
| Nickname(s) | Dubbelwit |
| Born | 28 March 1599 Hoogendijk, Holland, Dutch Republic |
| Died | 8 November 1658 (aged 59) Øresund (the Sound), Denmark |
| Buried at | Grote of Sint-Laurenskerk, Rotterdam |
| Allegiance |
 Dutch Republic
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| Years of service | 1616–1658 |
| Battles/wars |
Eighty Years' War Battle in the Bay of Matanzas Battle of the Downs First Anglo-Dutch War Battle of the Kentish Knock Battle of the Gabbard Battle of Scheveningen Second Northern War Siege of Danzig Battle of the Sound (DOW) |
Witte Corneliszoon de With (28 March 1599 – 8 November 1658) was a famous Dutch naval officer of the 17th century.
De With was born on a farmstead in the hamlet of Hoogendijk near Brielle or Brill, the very town in which Maarten Tromp had been born a year earlier. According to legend, they were friends or even already rivals in their youth, but there is no proof of this. His father died in 1602, leaving behind three sons, besides Witte also Abraham and Andries, and a daughter Catharina. The De With family were Mennonites and strict pacifists; in 1610, Witte, as an anabaptist not yet baptised, obtained a baptism by a Calvinist preacher so that he would no longer feel constrained in using violence, as he was by nature not a peace-seeking boy.
After some failed minor jobs, he went on his first sea voyage to the Dutch East Indies on 21 January 1616 when he was sixteen, as a cabin boy on Captain Geen Huygen Schapenham's ship the Gouden Leeuw, part of a Dutch East India Company (VOC) fleet of five vessels. He arrived at Bantam on 13 November 1616.
Until October 1617, he participated in two trade voyages to Coromandel in India. Afterwards, he became manservant of governor Jan Pieterszoon Coen. He served as a corporal during the siege of Jakarta in 1618. On 8 October 1618, he sailed home on the Gouden Leeuw, returning to Brill on 23 May 1619. On 20 August 1620, he took service with the Admiralty of the Maze as a schipper (then the highest NCO rank), still under Schapenham on the Gelderland. From December 1620, the Gelderland participated in an expedition by Admiral Willem Haultain de Zoete against the Barbary Corsairs, returning in August 1621.
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