Witte Corneliszoon de With Witte Corneliszoon de With ( 28 March 1599 – 8 November 1658 ) was a famous Dutch naval officer of the 17th century . Early life and childhood . 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 for 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 de Zoete against the Barbary Corsairs , returning in August 1621 . In the Spring of 1622 De With was appointed lieutenant on Schapenham ' s vessel . When the latter became ill , De With functioned as commandeur , acting captain , of the " Gelderland " during convoy duty in the Baltic . When Schapenham recovered , De With served for a short period on the " Maurits " to protect the herring fleet . In July 1622 De With became flag captain of " Delft " of now Vice - Admiral Schapenham , who from 29 April 1623 carried out the spectacular raid organised by the Admiralty of Amsterdam , sending the so - called " Nassau fleet " against the Spanish possessions on the west coast of America ; this fleet rounded Cape Horn in March 1624 . On his first voyage as a captain , De With already showed he was the strict disciplinarian of later legend : on 13 April six of his men deserted his ship , and the constant beatings and floggings , to flee to the uninhabited island of Juan Fernández . Until October the fleet attacked Spanish shipping and settlements ; during one of the actions De With was wounded by a musket bullet . Then it crossed the Pacific , sailing via the Mariana Islands to the Indies . Reaching Ternate in the Spice Islands on 5 March 1625 , De With himself on request of the governor of Ambon in a punitive action laid waste to island , destroying by his own count 90 , 000 clove trees of the inhabitants , to increase the price of this commodity . He departed for the Republic on 6 February 1626 , after the death of Schapenham , as Vice - Admiral ( in service of the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie ) of a Spice Fleet of four ships , then worth five million guilders . He returned on 22 September 1626 , thus having circumnavigated the globe , a feat in which he took much personal pride . On his return he learned that his mother and sister had died ; he remained on shore for one and a half years . Capture of Spain ' s treasure fleet . In 1627 De With married for the first time , with his second cousin Maria de With from Nieuwenhoorn . In April 1628 their first child , Cornelis , died . The same year De With , entering the service of the WIC , became flag captain on the " Amsterdam " to Admiral Piet Heyn during an expedition from 20 May to capture the Spanish treasure fleet . In September this attack was successful near Cuba . On 10 January 1629 the fleet returned to the Republic . Out of the bounty of eleven million guilders De With was granted about 500 guilders , with which he was very dissatisfied , as he imputed to himself a crucial role in the capture by taking a barque in August , the crew of which provided essential information regarding the whereabouts of the treasure fleet . In 1629 the five Dutch admiralties refused to allow Heyn , effectively their new supreme commander , to enlarge his staff with a special tactical - operational officer , for which function Heyn had De With in mind . De With now hoped to be appointed flag captain on the " Vlieghende Groene Draeck " but Maerten Tromp was chosen instead . De With was made captain of the " Prins Hendrik " in June ; the same month Heyn was killed in action . Disappointed and despairing of ever being promoted , De With left the direct navy service in November . In September his daughter Cornelia had been born . From May 1630 until end 1633 De With was Commodore of the " Grote Visserij " , the administrative body controlling and militarily protecting the Herring Fleet . This change however , was largely a formality as regular warships were used for this task : De With remained captain of the " Prins Hendrik " and functioned as flag captain whenever admirals had to make use of this vessel . In May 1631 his first wife died . In August he remarried the eighteen - year - old Hillegonda van Goch , the daughter of a Rotterdam patrician . In 1633 his second son Cornelis was born but the boy died in July 1634 . Early 1634 De With for four months rejoined the navy when Lieutenant - Admiral Philips van Dorp used the " Prins Hendrik " as his flagship for an expedition in the Gulf of Biscay . During the voyage it became clear that Vice - Admiral Jasper Liefhebber resented the domineering attitude of De With . Tensions between the two men became unbearable and De With left his ship , and thus the navy , in the middle of the campaign . From October 1635 till October 1636 he was schepen in Brill ; in 1636 also his fourth child was born , Maria . In October 1637 he was appointed deacon in Brill . During this period De With mainly lived from what renting out the land inherited from his parents earned him . Also he had a share in a river fishing vessel . Battle of the Downs . Not only De With but also Tromp had left the navy after a conflict with Van Dorp . The fact that the two most talented Dutch navy officers had been side - tracked was caused by an attempt by stadtholder Frederick Henry to centralise the cumbersome Dutch naval administration with its five admiralties . Both Van Dorp and Liefhebber were brave men but poor managers . Overworked by the many difficulties and political strife the reorganisation brought with it , they had feared to be replaced by the younger and more competent Tromp and De With . Their removal however , only delayed the inevitable . In the summer of 1637 the fleet supply system collapsed , bringing the hungry and thirsty sailors on the brink of a general mutiny . The Dunkirkers repeatedly broke through the Dutch blockade of Dunkirk to attack Dutch shipping . Charles I of England exploited the crisis to force Dutch North Sea herring fishers to pay for fishing permits . All this caused such an outcry that when Van Dorp offered his resignation Frederick Henry was forced to accept it , also firing Liefhebber , replacing them on 29 October with Tromp and De With . However De With was again to be severely disappointed when he was refused supreme command ; as Vice - Admiral of Holland and West Frisia he was second in command under Lieutenant - Admiral Tromp . In the Eighty Years ' War against the Spanish , De With fought at the Battle of the Downs ( 1639 ) . De With became very jealous of Tromp ' s popularity after his destruction of the Spanish fleet in The Downs . In the same battle he made an enemy of Zealandic Vice - Admiral Johan Evertsen by accusing him of cowardice and avarice . Court Martial . In 1640 De With was brought to trial when , his fleet having been dispersed by a storm , he had returned to Hellevoetsluis alone . The court martial was presided by Tromp and though he was acquitted , De With had the compulsive notion that Tromp had tried to influence witnesses against him . Both in 1644 and 1645 De With , along with an enormous convoy of merchantmen — 702 on the return voyage of the latter year — forced the Sound against the Danes , who had tried to impose higher toll rates . In 1647 De With was sent with a poorly equipped fleet to assist the Dutch colony of Brazil from attack by the Portuguese . He refused to cooperate with the Council of Brazil and , after many months of conflict during which his fleet deteriorated through lack of supplies , he returned against orders with the two remaining seaworthy ships to the Netherlands in November 1649 . On his return he went to the States - General to complain about the policy of the colony of Brazil but was himself arrested , charged of insubordination and desertion on 259 points and nearly condemned to decapitation , only saved from this by the intervention of the States of Holland pointing out they had the exclusive right to condemn their admirals to death . In February 1651 he was acquitted of most charges , the punishment reduced to a loss of wages for the period involved ; in September 1651 De With was again on convoy duty . The First Anglo - Dutch War . In the First Anglo - Dutch War against the Commonwealth of England , when Lieutenant - Admiral Maarten Tromp in the autumn of 1652 fell in disgrace with the States - General , De With commanded the Dutch fleet at the Battle of the Kentish Knock but failed in his mission . Morally broken , he remained ill at home for many months , while Tromp replaced him for the Battle of Dungeness and the Battle of Portland . On 8 May Tromp officially became supreme commander again and De With fought as subcommander under Tromp in the subsequent actions : the Battle of the Gabbard and the final Battle of Scheveningen in which Tromp died . De With was temporary commander between 14 August and 22 September but was denied permanent command of the Dutch fleet because of his difficult personality in favour of Lieutenant - Admiral Jacob van Wassenaer Obdam . Between 1654 and 1656 he was inactive , only sailing again for the relief of Danzig . Death in the Battle of the Sound . He fell in November 1658 in the Battle of the Sound , during the Northern Wars , commanding the vanguard of the Dutch fleet relieving Copenhagen from the Swedish , when his ship " Brederode " was grounded and surrounded by the enemy at Oresund . He was first shot through the left thigh by a musket ball and hours later through the breast . When Swedish soldiers boarded the ship he refused to surrender his sword , wrestling with two of them on his knees and exclaiming : " I have faithfully wielded this sword so many years for Holland , so I won ' t give it up now to some common soldiers ! " . He collapsed , was brought to his cabin to recover , insisted on walking by himself over the gangplank to the Swedish ship , there collapsed again and died . His body was balmed on orders of Charles X of Sweden and displayed as a war trophy in the town hall of Elsinore by the Swedes , who January 1659 delivered his body to the Danish court in Copenhagen ; after the Danes had paid their homage , it was transported to the Netherlands and buried with great pomp in Rotterdam on 7 October , in the church of St Lawrence , where the marble grave memorial , restored after being damaged by the German bombardment of 14 May 1940 , can still be seen . The arch - rivalry with Tromp . He had a lifelong rivalry with Admiral Maarten Tromp . De With was feared and hated by his inferiors – on several occasions crews refused to let him on board to use their ship as flagship – shunned by his equals and always full of insubordination against his superiors . He was also seen as courageous , competent and an excellent sailor . He was embittered by the neglect of the fleet between 1639 and 1650 . Pamphleteer . One of the more remarkable aspects of De With ' s personality was his being a notorious pamphleteer , publishing many booklets , anonymously or under the name of friends , in which he sometimes praised but more often ridiculed or even insulted his fellow officers . Tromp was a favourite subject for all three categories .