Admiralty of Amsterdam - Foundation

Foundation

Initially Amsterdam ranked under the Admiralty of Rotterdam, as it was located in the Southern Quarter of Holland. When the Earl of Leicester reorganised maritime affairs on 26 July 1586, however, Amsterdam and the Northern Quarter of Holland, and the provinces of Utrecht and Gelderland were all placed under one Admiralty, based in Hoorn. The region's West Frisian towns, however, played a wayward role, and this was aggravated when they engaged with Amsterdam in a dispute over the Republic's admiralty administration. The States of Holland (the government of the province of Holland) decided to back Amsterdam. That there was a need for reorganisation was not contested, Leicester having placed naval and maritime affairs under a single college designed to curb Holland's influence. But Hoorn, Enkhuizen and Medemblik rejected the idea that commissioned officers should be appointed by the States of Holland instead of by the cities themselves. As a result, the commissioned officers decided to stay in Amsterdam. On 28 August 1586, that decision formed the beginning of the Amsterdam Admiralty.

The conflict was ended by compromise. In the end, the West Frisian cities gave up their resistance to external appointments, and in 1589 Hoorn instituted its own admiralty college. On 14 June 1597, the States-General of the Netherlands sanctioned the situation as it then was, so that Amsterdam too kept its own admiralty. These measures were intended to have a temporary character, but in fact they remained in force until the end of the Republic in 1795.