History of the United Netherlands, 1607



CHAPTER XLVII.

A Dutch fleet under Heemskerk sent to the coast of Spain and
Portugal--Encounter with the Spanish war fleet under D'Avila--Death
of both commanders-in-chief--Victory of the Netherlanders--Massacre
of the Spaniards.

The States-General had not been inclined to be tranquil under the check
which Admiral Haultain had received upon the coast of Spain in the autumn
of 1606. The deed of terrible self-devotion by which Klaaszoon and his
comrades had in that crisis saved the reputation of the republic, had
proved that her fleets needed only skilful handling and determined
leaders to conquer their enemy in the Western seas as certainly as they
had done in the archipelagos of the East. And there was one pre-eminent
naval commander, still in the very prime of life, but seasoned by an
experience at the poles and in the tropics such as few mariners in that
early but expanding maritime epoch could boast. Jacob van Heemskerk,
unlike many of the navigators and ocean warriors who had made and were
destined to make the Orange flag of the United Provinces illustrious over
the world, was not of humble parentage. Sprung of an ancient, knightly
race, which had frequently distinguished itself in his native province of
Holland, he had followed the seas almost from his cradle. By turns a
commercial voyager, an explorer, a privateer's-man, or an admiral of war-
fleets, in days when sharp distinctions between the merchant service and
the public service, corsairs' work and cruisers' work, did not exist, he
had ever proved himself equal to any emergency--a man incapable of