Admiralty of Friesland - Destruction of The Admiralty Archives

Destruction of The Admiralty Archives

Few sources on the Frisian Admiralty survived. The entire archive on the Admiralty was destroyed in the large fire of 12 and 13 February 1771 in Harlingen, and many maps and documents relating to the history of Friesland were also lost. What little archive material remained was held in the Department of Navy at The Hague, until that too was destroyed by fire on 8 January 1844. Little is known on the great men of the Admiralty, due to a lack of surviving archival material. One example of such loss is described by historian Beucker Andreae, who studied the life of Admiral Auke Stellingwerf. About his search on the latter's baptismal records in what might have been the man's birthplace, Workum, he wrote:

A box had been kept, however, by the church guardians, holding old books and manuscripts, among which, according to an elderly inhabitant of the town, the baptismal records should have been present. But that box had some years ago been given to the deacons for safe-keeping, and there — since there was no lock on the lid — the female supervisor of the old people's home had cut up the books she discovered in the box for domestic use, as sewing patterns! And so it came about that, although the box is still there, the papers can no longer be found in them.