Not too long after the spectacularly successful raid on the Canary Islands, Mustaffa Reis replaced de Veenboer as head of the Taifa, and de Veenboer decided to give up active corsairing and retire to his villa in Algiers. The idea seems to have been that he would promote some of his lieutenants, set them up as Captains in the own right with their own ships, and send them off corsairing—while he stayed home in his sumptuous villa in Algiers and reaped a large share of the profits.
This arrangement did not last. It is not entirely clear why, though it’s easy enough to imagine the sorts of things that could have gone wrong. In any case, by 1620—two years after the Canary Islands raid—de Veenboer was back at sea.
To be successful, a corsair captain needed to be skilled in his trade, ruthless, daring—and lucky.
At this point in his career, de Veenboer began to run out of luck.
The summer season of 1620 started well enough, and he took a couple of prizes. But in July, the small fleet of four ships he commanded was caught by a trio of Dutch warships. One ship was lost, and de Veenboer’s and the other two ships only just managed to escape and limp back to Algiers. It took a month of repairs before de Veenboer’s ship was properly seaworthy again. He was apparently undaunted by this setback, however, and, by September, he set out once more, this time with a fleet of eight ships.
They cruised for several weeks, taking nothing but small prizes. Then, near Cartagena, they encountered a mixed fleet of seven ships—Dutch Portuguese, and French—returning from Newfoundland with a load of dried salt cod. Early on the morning of October 10, the two fleets engaged in battle (see the illustration above for a depiction of that battle). It should not have been a long conflict. De Veenboer’s ships outnumbered the incoming fleet eight to seven. More importantly, the corsair ships were larger, better armed, and with bigger crews. The Newfoundland fleet fought doggedly, though, and the struggle went on well into the afternoon, with casualties on both sides.
By then, it was doubtful which side might prevail.
De Veenboer’s lost luck decided the day.
We don’t have any sources from North Africa about this sea fight between the Newfoundland ships and de Veenboer’s fleet, but we do have an account written by a Dutchman aboard one of the Newfoundland ships—David Pieterszoon de Vries, a globe-trotting seaman who wrote a narrative of his varied experiences: Korte Historiael ende Journaels Aenteyckeninge van verscheyden voyagiens in & vier deelen des Werelts-ronde, als Europa, Africa, Asia, ende Amerika gedaen (Short Historical and Journal Notes of Several Voyages Made in the Four Parts of the World, namely, Europe, Africa, Asia, and America).
Here is his description of the battle (slightly abridged):
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On the 10th of October, in the morning at sunrise, we saw eight ships along the coast, who approached us where we drifted along with no wind. I ordered the steersman to recite the Lord’s prayer, and we sang Psalm 140. Having done that, I gave my men wine, and said everyone should know himself and that now was the time to show they were men, and that I on my part would lead them as a soldier and good captain. There were two who had sailed to war before, and they started to complain loudly. They had been always brawlers and quarrelers against their crewmates and were so ready to pull knives against them that it seem they could cut off seven arms from three men. But now they behaved like cowardly good-for-nothings. I called out to them, took up a sword, and smacked the rogues in the ribs with the flat of the blade.
When the Turks came upon us, they cut off our Admiral [the lead ship of the Newfoundland flotilla] and surrounded him with three of their ships, their Admiral’s and two others. When I, as Vice Admiral, raised the Flag of the Dutch Prince, their Vice Admiral sailed towards me in a ship that had 28 canons and 250 Turks aboard. After him came a large ship with 33 canons and 300 men.
One Turkish ship was windward behind us, and the other leeward, and we gave them as much as we could. In the afternoon, around 4 o’clock, our Admiral caught fire, and only seven men came off it. Our little ship, which was in front of our bow, fired a shot at the stern of the Admiral of Algiers, which killed one man and took off the leg of the Admiral. This Admiral was a Dutch renegade, as we learned later, and was called de Veenboer. After that, the Turks turned away from us, as they understood from some Frenchmen they had captured that we had no cargo aboard our ships but fish. They said that if they had known that, they would have left us alone because they had lost that day more than 200 men.
This encounter and battle happened off the Spanish coast near Barcelona. *
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And that was the end of Ivan de Veenboer/Sulieman Reis.
The corsair fleet returned to Algiers, bringing back one of the Newfoundland ships as booty—and de Veenboer’s corpse.
One minute, de Veenboer was a justly dreaded corsair Captain in command of a fleet of ships; the next, he was so much inert meat. Being smart, ruthless, and successful was not, in the end, enough to preserve him.
Such was the life of a Barbary corsair.
* This description of the final battle of de Veenboer is taken from de Vries, Korte Historiael (originally published in 1665), pp 28-31.
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