RENEGADE CORSAIR CAPTAINS : THE TALE OF IVAN DE VEENBOER, AKA SULIEMAN REIS – PART 1

At the height of his success as an Algiers-based corsair, the Dutch renegade corsair Captain Simon Dancer commanded a sizeable fleet of ships. (See the two-part Renegade Corsair Captains: the Tale of Simon Dancer post in the Corsairs section of this blog, March 2019, for details of Simon Dancer’s career.) One of the officers in Dancer’s fleet was another Dutchman, a man named Ivan de Veenboer (“Veenboer” means “peat farmer”).

De Veenboer began his career as a licensed privateer employed by the Republic of the Netherlands, but he exceeded the bounds in his commission—in his case by plundering ships from countries allied with the Republic—and so became an outlaw pirate. Like others, he ended up in Algiers. There, he became connected with Dancer and served with him for some time.

In 1609, Dancer managed to arrange a pardon for himself from the French King Henry IV. Once he got word that the pardon had been officially granted, Dancer abandoned Algiers for Marseille, taking with him three ships besides his own, and a collection of repentant European renegades, slaves he had liberated, and captive Muslims.

De Veenboer did not go with him. Instead, having converted to Islam, he became a corsair captain in his own right—known by his Muslim name, Sulieman Reis (“Reis” meaning “Captain”).

Like Dancer, de Veenboer was a complicated man.

On the one hand, he was clearly a capable and ruthlessly efficient corsair captain, for he captured many European ships and brought in huge amounts of booty, enough so that he, like Dancer, lived in a sumptuous mansion in Algiers, where he entertained lavishly and, no doubt, began to collect a respectable harem—as was the habit of wealthy men in Algiers at the time. Moreover, in 1617, after close to decade of successful corsairing, he became head of the Taifa, the ruling council of Algiers corsair captains.

In Algiers, successful corsair captains were not only wealthy and important men; they were folk heroes. They walked—swaggered, rather—though the streets as lords of all they surveyed. After all, it was they who provided the constant influx of wealth that kept the city alive. The Taifa, made up of such men, was a powerful and influential organization, and its leader was one of the most prominent men in Algiers. It is not surprising that de Veenboer, a renegade, should become head of the Taifa; over half the corsair captains in Algiers at this time were renegades, and close to half of them were Dutchmen.

To officially mark de Veenboer’s rise to his position, the Ottoman Sultan himself sent de Veenboer a costly silk caftan—a sign of exceptional respect.

Throughout all this, however, de Veenboer retained positive—perhaps nostalgic—feelings towards his home country. There are, for instance, stories of him capturing Dutch ships but putting the Dutch sailors safely ashore. He apparently liked to surround himself with his fellow countrymen, and many of his crew were Dutch renegades. On one occasion, he intervened directly in the sale of two Dutch captives (a ship Captain and his young brother) and, “dressed as if he were the pasha of Algiers himself” (perhaps in the Sultan’s caftan) bought their freedom for 750 Spanish pieces of eight—a great deal of money.

Despite his success in Algiers, though, de Veenboer was apparently ambivalent about, or dissatisfied in some way with, his position there, for he made continued overtures to the States General (the ruling body of the Republic of the Netherlands) and worked to make himself useful to the new Dutch Consul in Algiers, Wynant de Keyser van Bollandt, who had arrived in the summer of 1616 and stayed for a decade.

Exactly what deVeenboer’s aim was is unclear. There are some indications that he wanted to supplant de Keyser as the Dutch Consul. There are even hints that he might have wanted to arrange a pardon for himself with the States General and return to the Netherlands—an unlikely eventuality given the fact that he had become a Muslim. Whatever his end goal might have been, though, his attempt to achieve it failed. Initially, the relationship between de Veenboer and de Keyser was friendly, but it soon soured. That and the tensions leading up to, and the outbreak of, war between the Republic of the Netherlands and Algiers in 1618 put an end to whatever hopes de Veenboer might have had.

While he was (fruitlessly) negotiating with the Republic, however, de Veenboer was not idle. In the early summer of 1618, he organized a massive raid on the Islands of Lanzarote, La Gomera, and La Palma, in the Canary Islands. He and another renegade, Tabacca Reis, were the leading Corsair captains. The Aga (leader) of the janissaries—Algerian corsair ships always carried contingents of janissaries to serve as marines—was a man named Mustaffa. This Canary Island raid was huge: 36 ships and 4,000 men, 3,000 of whom were Janissaries. In just over three weeks, the Algerian corsairs captured a total of well over 1,000 people, men women, and children—900 of whom came from Lanzarote.

The Canary island raid was clearly an ‘A-list’ operation, led by important men: Tabacca Reis was the man de Veenboer replaced as head of the Taifa, and Mustaffa Aga was the man who later replaced de Veenboer. To successfully oversee a raid of this size, de Veenboer must have been an exceptionally skilled and competent leader, as must both Tabacca Reis and Mustaffa Aga. It is no wonder that these men all rose to the rank of head of the Taifa.

Their ships stuffed with captives and booty, the Algerian corsairs left the Canary Islands and set sail for home. As they passed through the Strait of Gibraltar, however, they ran into trouble. A combined Dutch/Spanish fleet attacked the flotilla of Algerian corsair ships. A truce between the Republic of the Netherlands and Spain was in effect at that time, and the Republic had aligned itself temporarily with the Spanish in its new war against Algiers. In one of the first large-scale actions of the Dutch/Algiers war, all but 17 of the Algiers corsair ships were captured or destroyed. Even with the loss of almost half the fleet, though, this was still a profitable expedition, at least for those who returned, for they unloaded hundreds of captives.

That summer of 1618 was the height of de Veenboer’s career. He was famously successful, enormously wealthy, a man of great power and influence. In Algiers, people pointed to him in awe as he strode the narrow streets of the city.

Having achieved this dizzying success, however, he had nowhere else to go but down.

To find out what happened to him, read Renegade Corsair Captains: The Tale of Ivan De Veenboer, Aka Sulieman Reis – Part 2 here in this blog.