Michiel Adriaenszoon de Ruyter (IPA: [miˈxil ˈaːdrijaːnˌsoːn də ˈrœytər]; 24 March 1607 – 29 April 1676) was a Dutch States Navy officer. His achievements with the Dutch navy during the Anglo-Dutch Wars earned him the reputation as one of the greatest naval commanders in history.
De Ruyter came from a modest background in Zeeland and began seafaring from an early age; by the age of 30 he had become a shipmaster in the Dutch merchant fleet. In 1641, De Ruyter briefly served as a rear admiral during the Portuguese Restoration War, after which he returned to a prosperous merchant career for a decade before retiring to his hometown of Vlissingen. On the outbreak of the First Anglo-Dutch War in 1652, De Ruyter accepted a command in the Dutch Navy under lieutenant admiral Maarten Tromp, distinguished himself and was promoted to vice admiral at the end of the war. In 1655, he took part in the Second Northern War on the side of Denmark-Norway against Sweden.
De Ruyter was named lieutenant admiral and commander of the Dutch fleet at the start of the Second Anglo-Dutch War in 1665, and in 1666 he won a hard-fought victory in the Four Days' Battle in the southern North Sea. In 1667, De Ruyter executed the highly successful Raid on the Medway, where he destroyed much of the English fleet and captured the English flagship HMS Royal Charles, facilitating a favourable peace for the Dutch. In the Third Anglo-Dutch War, De Ruyter's actions during the battles of Solebay (1672), Schooneveld (1673), and Texel (1673) successfully prevented an invasion of the Dutch coast by Anglo-French forces. Continuing his fight against the French, De Ruyter was fatally wounded by a cannonball at the Battle of Augusta off Sicily in 1676, and died a week later in Syracuse. His body was brought back to Amsterdam, where he was accorded a state funeral and interred in the Nieuwe Kerk.
Often dubbed a Dutch folk hero, De Ruyter was highly respected by his sailors and soldiers, and his nickname Bestevaêr (early modern Dutch for "grandfather") is still used to refer to him in Dutch media today. Several Royal Netherlands Navy vessels have been named after him and his flagship, and he is credited as a founder of the Netherlands Marine Corps.
De Ruyter was born on 24 March 1607 in Vlissingen (Flushing), in the province of Zealand, the son of a seaman who eventually became a member of the guild of beer porters, Adriaen Michielszoon, and Aagje Jansdochter. Many anecdotes were told of De Ruyter's early life, but of dubious historical value. For a time he worked at a ropewalk. He was sent to sea as a boatswain's apprentice at the age of 11, the usual age for Zeeland boys to begin seafaring.
In 1622, during the Eighty Years' War against Spain, he fought as a cannoneer in the new Dutch army under Maurice of Nassau against the Spanish during the relief of Bergen-op-Zoom. That same year he rejoined the Dutch merchant fleet and steadily worked his way up through the posts of boatswain and chief mate before becoming a merchant ship's master at the age of thirty. Although having had little formal education, he spoke tolerable French and fluent English.
Bruijn notes that an anonymous English biographer of de Ruyter claims that he was active in Dublin between 1623 and 1631 as a factor for the Vlissingen-based merchant house of the Lampsins brothers and had become fluent in English when living there. The source claimed that de Ruyter had a slight knowledge of the Irish language and at least one Irish friend who played a leading role in the capture of HMS Royal Charles in 1667.
De Ruyter occasionally travelled as supercargo to the Mediterranean or to the Barbary Coast. In those years, he usually referred to himself as "Machgyel Adriensoon", his name in the Zeelandic dialect he spoke, as he had not yet adopted the surname "De Ruyter". "De Ruyter" was most probably a nickname given to him: one explanation might be found in the older Dutch verb ruyten or ruiten, which means "to raid", something de Ruyter was known to do as a privateer with the Lampsins ship Den Graeuwen Heynst. Another suggestion is that the name "Ruyter", meaning "horseman" commemorates one of his grandfathers, who was a cavalry trooper.
On 16 March in 1631, he married Maayke Velders, a farmer's daughter. On 31 December that year, Maayke died after giving birth to a daughter; who also died just three weeks later. In 1633 and 1635, de Ruyter sailed as a navigating officer aboard the ship Groene Leeuw ("Green Lion") on whaling expeditions to Jan Mayen. Until 1637, he did not yet have a command of his own. In the summer of 1636 he remarried, this time to a daughter of a wealthy burgher named Neeltje Engels, who gave him four children – one of whom died shortly after birth. The others were named Adriaen (b. 1637), Neeltje (b. 1639) and Aelken (b. 1642).
In the midst of this, in 1637, de Ruyter became captain of a private ship meant to hunt for the Dunkirkers, raiders operating from Dunkirk who were preying on Dutch merchant shipping. He fulfilled this task until 1640. After this, he sailed for a while as skipper of a merchant vessel named De Vlissinge. In 1641, de Ruyter was nominated by the Admiralty of Zeeland to become the captain of the Haze, a merchant ship converted man-of-war carrying 26 guns, in a fleet under admiral Gijsels formed to assist the Portuguese in the Portuguese Restoration War against Philip IV of Spain, who was also Philip III of Portugal. The Dutch fleet was to join a Portuguese squadron fighting Spain at sea, and de Ruyter was appointed to be its Schout-bij-nacht or third in command. Although this expedition had little success, de Ruyter distinguished himself in combat against a Spanish fleet in the inconclusive action on 4 November 1641, off Cape St. Vincent. However, as a result of the loss of two ships and damage to others in this action, and the withdrawal of the Portuguese squadron after the action, the Dutch fleet returned home without completing its mission.
After the fleet was disbanded, de Ruyter returned to merchant service, which he undertook either as master of a Lampsins ship, or after buying his own ship, the Salamander.
Between 1642 and 1651, he made a number of profitable trading sailings to Morocco, Brazil and the West Indies, and by 1651, he had saved enough money to retire. In 1650, de Ruyter's second wife, who in 1649 had given him a second son, Engel, unexpectedly died. On 8 January 1652, he married a widow, Anna van Gelder, and bought a house in Flushing for his proposed retirement, which lasted less than a year.
During the First Anglo-Dutch War of 1652–1654, De Ruyter agreed to join the expanding Dutch fleet as a junior flag-officer or commandeur, a rank broadly comparable to that of commodore, commanding a Zeelandic squadron of "director's ships", which were privately financed warships, after he had initially refused the post on the grounds that others were better qualified for it. De Ruyter proved his worth under the supreme commander lieutenant-admiral Maarten Tromp. The rank of admiral-general was reserved for the stadtholder, but at the time, no-one held that appointment. The main function of De Ruyter's squadron was to convoy outbound or returning Dutch merchant ships through the English Channel, where they were vulnerable to attacks from English ships based at Portsmouth or Plymouth.
In August 1652, a convoy of around sixty Dutch merchant ships left the Netherlands for the Mediterranean, initially with an escort of ten warships. The convoy was joined off the coast of the Spanish Netherlands by a further escort commanded by De Ruyter of between twenty and thirty fighting ships. The exact number of Dutch fighting ships involved in the subsequent battle is unclear, but De Ruyter sailed with 21 warships from all five of the Dutch admiralties, two large Dutch East India warships and six fireships. Additional warships may have joined him on route to the convoy and at least one warship was damaged before the subsequent battle and returned to port. On 15 August 1652, the convoy and its escort were sighted by an English fleet commanded by General at Sea George Ayscue with around 45 ships. Three of these were warships more powerful than any in the Dutch fleet, but, as in De Ruyter's fleet, many of the others were small armed merchant ships rather than purpose-built warships. On the afternoon of 16 August 1652, Ayscue attempted to attack and capture the Dutch merchant ships with around nine of his strongest and fastest warships, but De Ruyter counter-attacked, leaving the convoy unprotected, and he surrounded those English warships that had attacked. The ensuing mêlée battle continued until nightfall, as the outnumbered English ships could rely on their stronger gun batteries to keep the Dutch at bay. Most of the hired English merchant ships neither attempted to aid their warships nor pursue the Dutch merchant ships. As Ayscue was defeated in his aim of capturing or destroying Dutch merchant ships, and as De Ruyter had fought off an attack by a potentially superior force by a bold attack on its strongest ships, the latter had won this Battle of Plymouth and saved the convoy, making him an instant naval hero to the Dutch population. He also fought, as squadron commander, at the Battle of Kentish Knock and the Battle of the Gabbard during this war.