Sea heroes of the Dutch and Maltese fleets

Abstract

During the seventeenth century, Dutch sea heroes were popular folk heroes and played a role comparable to those in sports or music in today’s world, in stark contrast to the aristocratic sea heroes of the Order of St John. In this article, the qualities of these two kinds of heroes and their respective fleets will be reviewed. Both in the Order’s and the Dutch navy it was hard to become a sea hero. One had not only to survive but also live through many sea battles, preferably successfully. Since Antiquity, all sea heroes await eternal fame; lesser achievers are condemned to oblivion. Victories were remembered and still celebrated years later. Glorious defeats could be useful when one was killed in action, but soonest forgotten when one survived! But more often than not, the shame of failure outlasted the failed sea hero for many generations.