Luc Panhuysen came across a damn good story. And he knows what to do with it ★★★★☆

Strange perhaps, but while reading The Monster Ship by Luc Panhuysen, a scene from a documentary suddenly came across The New York Times up with me. In it, editor-in-chief Dean Baquet watches the inauguration of Donald Trump on television and murmurs eagerly, as probably only a journalist can do at such a moment: ‘What a story. What a fucking story.’

Panhuysen’s recently published work evokes a similar sensation. In the book, the historian and ex-journalist barely explains why he wrote more than three hundred pages about the battle of Duins in 1639, even though that seems a justified question. To illustrate: in the standard work The Republic by the British historian Jonathan Israel, the episode at Duins (The Downs) is assigned one paragraph. In the more recent book by Maarten Prak, Dutch Golden Age, nothing can be found about it.

The naval battle at Duins will certainly deserve a place of honor in maritime history, but I suspect that old journalistic instincts also played a role in Panhuysen’s choice of this subject. To paraphrase Baquet, the battle of Duins is a good story, a damn good story. And Panhuysen knows what to do with it.

Colorful characters

It starts with the colorful characters, with main character Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp in the lead. The sailor from Den Briel (‘Brielenaren were half fish’, according to Panhuysen) in 1610, as an 11-year-old sailor, had to watch pirates kill his father at Cape Verde and then throw the body overboard. The young Tromp is kidnapped and serves for two years as a cabin slave to the British corsair responsible for the death of his father.

In his twenties, Tromp is captured for another year by Barbary pirates off North Africa and in 1629 he stands next to Piet Hein when he is killed by Dunkirk privateers. A bullet rips off Hein’s shoulder and while Tromp is covered in blood from his ‘second father figure’, he takes revenge. He overpowers about a hundred hijackers and has them all hanged. Such were the manners.

Panhuysen takes the time to work towards the apotheosis of the book: Tromp’s clash with the armada of the ambitious and overconfident Spanish admiral Don Antonio de Oquendo. He skillfully sketches the context in which the battle took place: a neutral England burdened by Scottish revolts, Spain struggling to keep its own empire together and the French eager to let the Dutch allies do the fighting at sea.

When Tromp was appointed lieutenant admiral of the Dutch naval fleet in 1637, the Republic was weighed down by ‘a two-headed plague’. First of all, there are the Dunkirk privateers, who are too fast and agile for the outdated Dutch ships. Merchant shipping and fisheries are heavily burdened by the lack of protection. In 1635, about 10 percent of Dutch fishermen were imprisoned in a Dunkirk prison. Other fishermen fare worse: they are tied back to back by the pirates and thrown into the sea.

In addition to fighting the hijacker plague, Tromp must prevent Spain from delivering fresh troops to Dunkirk. In La Coruña, work is already underway on the composition of one of the largest armadas ever.

Panhuysen describes how the new lieutenant admiral has to beg the regents in the Republic to get his fleet up to scratch. He achieves some results, but in the end Tromp has to compete with 17 ships against a 77 ships armada.

A special tactic

The Monster Ship gets off to a slow start, but gains momentum when Tromp no longer feels the sand of the Binnenhof under his feet and his ships navigate the treacherous sandbanks of the North Sea. The lieutenant admiral, informed by spies about the armada’s progress, then works on a tactic to defeat the Spaniards: the Dutch ships must work together so well that they form ‘a monster ship’. A complicating factor is the difficult relationship with star captain Witte Cornelisz. de With, alias Dubbelwit, a man who finds it difficult to accept his subordinate role and who starts to hate Tromp.

In addition to the intrigues between the captains, who stay ‘behind the mast’, Panhuysen also describes the life of the common sea people ‘in front of the mast’. The work is exhausting, the ships are cold and cramped, the wake that seeps in through the cracks smells like vomit, shit and urine, and when an enemy bullet hits, the splinters fly around.

Among the opponents – ‘the specks’ (pigs), as the Spaniards are called at the time – the morale is even worse. In Spanish cities, pedestrians have been haphazardly beaten in the irons by recruiters; everyone who can’t buy themselves free gets on board. Farm boys are rounded up, thrown into underground dens and sold on to the king’s recruiters.

That unfortunate party heads for the inevitable naval battle off the British coast. Tromp’s first surprise attack takes place at Beachy Head, followed by the nerve-wracking confrontation at Duins. No reader will then wonder why he The Monster Ship must read.

What a story.