Cornelis Jol - Biography

Biography

Cornelis Jol came from a simple family in the fishing village of Scheveningen, now part of The Hague. He joined the Dutch West India Company in 1626 and quickly climbed the ranks to become admiral. He was renowned for his courage, his skill as a navigator and his humane treatment of prisoners of war.

Jol crossed the Atlantic Ocean nine times to attack the Spanish and Portuguese along the coast of Brazil and in the Caribbean. During one of his earliest voyages, he captured the island of Fernando de Noronha off the coast of Brazil. However, he was soon expelled by Portuguese forces.

In 1633, he and another corsair attacked Campeche in the Yucatán Peninsula, then held by Spain, with a fleet of ten ships. In 1635 he was captured near Dunkirk by Dunkirk privateers but released. He defeated the Spanish at a battle near Cabañas, Cuba in 1638, capturing all five enemy vessels. While attempting to capture the Spanish treasure fleet, he and Jan Lichthart engaged in a naval battle with Spanish admiral Don Carlos Ibarra off the coast of Cuba. In Spain, he was falsely reported to have been killed in the confrontation. He also commanded a squadron of seven ships at the Battle of the Downs, a decisive defeat of the Spanish, in 1639.

In 1640, while awaiting the Spanish treasure fleet off Havana, Cuba, his fleet was caught in a hurricane and four of the ships were wrecked on the shore.

In 1640, Jol set out from Brazil for the coast of Africa, where he took the city of Luanda (in Angola) and the island of São Tomé from the Portuguese. While on São Tomé, he was struck by malaria and died on October 31, 1641.