page_title: Samuel Blommaert
section_title: Early career
hierarchical_section_title: Samuel Blommaert / Early career
context_page_description: Samuel Blommaert was a Flemish/Dutch merchant and director of the Dutch West India Company from 1622 to 1629 and again from 1636 to 1642. In the latter period he was a paid commissioner of Sweden in the Netherlands and he played a dubious but key role in Peter Minuit's expedition that led to the Swedish colonizing of New Sweden. In 1645 he was appointed for a third time as a manager of the WIC, being one of the main investors from the beginning.
context_section_description: Blommaert was involved in a company which traded on Angola, together with Frans Jacobsz. Hinlopen, and Lucas van der Venne. In 1615 Jacob le Maire carried a letter from his father to be presented to Governor Reynst, with an offer to carry (smuggle) goods to his son-in-law Samuel Blommaert in Amsterdam. Blommaert was investigated in Amsterdam by the board of the East-India Company on January 30, 1616  about a  vessel, named Mauritius de Nassau, sailed from a Dutch port, under the command of Jan Remmetszoon, of Purmerend. The ship was ostensibly destined for Angola, but from there she was ordered to direct her course for "Terra Australe, called Terra del Fuego." The plan, therefore, was, from the west coast of Africa to sail southward, until the supposed South-land should have been reached, and then "to explore the whole of the coast of Terra Australi as far as the Straits of Magellanes, on the chance of finding an opening that might allow a passage to the South-sea; and on such opening being found, to run into and through the same, in order to discover whether they could in such manner get into the South-sea; should such passage to the South-sea have been found, they had orders to return home forthwith, but in case adverse circumstances should prevent them from doing so, they were to run on for the East Indies."
  After November 1620 he settled  on Keizersgracht with a view on Westerkerk. He told one of his neighbors, professor Nicolaes Tulp, stories on bestiality he heard on Borneo.
caption: Portrait of Gerard Reynst, Blommaert's father-in-law
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