Hans de Decker (also De Dekker) was a Dutch sailor who, after beginning his career in the VOC and spending time as a prisoner in Atjeh alongside Frederik de Houtman, entered French service and rose to become “Generaal” of the Saint-Malo expedition of 1617–1618 whose flagship the St. Michel lay at Atjeh in 1617. His career — VOC officer, Atjeh captive, French “General,” and at last a fugitive who died on an English ship — spans the entire Dutch-French-English-Atjeh quadrilateral of the early seventeenth century.
Early VOC service: De Houtman’s second expedition (1598)
De Decker had taken part in Cornelis de Houtman’s second expedition of 1598 and was, with Frederik de Houtman, taken prisoner at Atjeh in 1599. See Death of Cornelis de Houtman at Atjeh (1599) and Frederik de Houtman.
Return to the fatherland and Zeeland service
After his release De Decker returned to the fatherland and took service with the Zeeland Company. He sailed out as Opperkommies (senior merchant) and Councillor under Vice-Admiral Sebald de Weert — eleven days after the founding of the VOC. He touched at Ceylon, stayed on in Atjeh “tot den inkoop van peper” — for the purchase of pepper — and was back in Zeeland by 1606.
French service and the Saint-Malo expedition
Grievances and unpleasantness drove him to France, where he was given the post of “General” in the Saint-Malo expedition — the same expedition that included the ships St. Michel and St. Louis, owned by Hollanders, sold to the French, fitted out by renegades including Lodewijk Heyns, Gerard Leroy, Jan Banninck Coeckebakker, Jan Jansz. Moll and presumably Lemaire — “het stel samenzweerders tegen de Nederlandsche Oost-Indische Compagnie” — the gang of conspirators against the Dutch East India Company. The two ships had been signalled already when they lay in Atjeh, where the Admiral’s ship had already taken on a full cargo of pepper.
Atjeh and the voyage to Jakatra
The two ships sailed through the Strait of Malakka, called at Malakka, and were scattered by storm and current. The Governor-General Dr. Laurens Reaal — “meer jurist dan krachtig bewindsman” (more jurist than strong administrator) — met the Vice-Admiral’s ship among the islands before Jakatra and with threats (he had two ships) lifted ten Dutchmen from it. Other Dutch ships waited for the Admiral’s ship, which was reduced to a wreck five miles below Jakatra.
The sloops and the escape
The “General” De Decker came in a sloop with the Skipper and two Hollanders to the ship Bantam to request steersmen. Reaal had promised, on handshake, that De Decker would be sent home to the fatherland — a promise that would cost the Company much trouble, hindrance and loss.
On 17 January 1618 De Decker came under escort before Bantam. He expected to be put on a seaworthy ship bound for Holland. Learning that he would be transferred to another ship, and that Reaal’s word would be overruled by the Councillors of the Indies, he fled with two of his servants to an English ship. From there he was brought to the court of Bantam, where he stayed three days without the Dutch knowing where he was hidden. The Pangeran was asked to extradite him, which he “plat uit” (flatly) refused, adding that he was not pleased that the Dutch would do in Bantam what they had done in the Moluccas. He pointed out that he had nothing to do with the jurisdiction of the States-General. “Gelijk had hij” — He was right.
The English ship and death
To force De Decker out, the Indian Government arrested his ship, the St. Michel. The heated conversations of French and English at the Bantam court about the Dutch can be imagined. They worked on the Pangeran to act strongly. Meanwhile, he let De Decker escape to the English ship Charles. On that ship De Decker died on the homeward voyage. “Het laatste bericht over hem is dat de scheepskist van den overledene wordt opgevraagd” — The last news of him is that the deceased’s sea-chest is being claimed. “Een moeitevol en mislukt leven!” — A laborious and failed life!
Significance
For Atjeh’s history, De Decker is significant as a Dutchman who knew the sultanate intimately — twice a prisoner and a pepper-trader there — and who carried that knowledge into French service. The St. Michel’s call at Atjeh in 1617 (see St. Michel affair at Atjeh (1620-1621)) and her full cargo of Atjeh pepper made De Decker the connecting figure between the VOC’s early Atjeh trade and the French intrusion of the 1610s. His subsequent flight to the English Charles and his death at sea close a career that had touched all four European powers — Dutch, French, English, and (as prisoner) Atjehnese — active in the Sumatra pepper trade.
See Also
- Frederik de Houtman
- Cornelis de Houtman
- Sebald de Weert
- Laurens Reaal
- Lodewijk Heyns
- Jan Banninck Coeckebakker
- St. Michel affair at Atjeh (1620-1621)
- 1598
- 1599
- 1606
- 1617
- 1618
- Acheh
Source
Tijdens de O.I. Compagnie, by Dr. E. C. Godee Molsbergen, Oud-Hoogleeraar, Landsarchivaris te Batavia (Amsterdam: N.V. Swets & Zeitlinger Boekhandel en Uitgevers Mij., 1932), chapter LI (“De Compagnie in Bantam. Fransche Concurrentie. Moeilijkheden met de Franschen. Hans de Decker”), pp. 184–188 of the numbered-letter sequence.