Jan Janszoon van Hoorn's expedition of 1633

In 1633, during the colonial theatre of the Eighty Years' War, admiral Jan Janszoon van Hoorn embarked on a privateering expedition against the Spanish in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, under a late 1632 commission from the Dutch West India Company. With a fleet of ten vessels and a little over 900 men, van Hoorn successfully commandeered some two dozen laden Spanish merchantmen; captured, sacked, ransomed and torched Trugillo in Spanish Honduras; and captured and sacked Campeche in Spanish Yucatan. In addition, from late 1633 to early 1634, vice-admiral Cornelis Jol led a detached squadron on a cruise for further Spanish prize ships in the Greater and Lesser Antilles. The undertaking did not net as much profit as projected, but was nonetheless deemed a success for having exacted punishing losses on the Spanish, including scores of fatal casualties and the effective disarmament of Fort Santa Barbara in Trugillo.

The operation may have partly led to punitive measures against the Maya of Yucatan (a couple of whom worked with van Hoorn), or against the Spanish province's governor (who failed to safeguard Campeche). Alongside similar voyages by the said company's privateers in the early 1630s, van Hoorn's trip is thought to have helped the Dutch to establish a forward presence and oppose Spanish sea control in the region.

Background

The West India Company (WIC) was chartered by the Dutch Republic in 1621, and spent the early and middle years of the 1620s building a privateering fleet to match Spanish naval power in the West Indies, which they arguably achieved by the decade's end, when WIC admiral Piet Heyn captured the Spanish silver fleet in 1628, during the Battle in the Bay of Matanzas, off northeastern Cuba. At some point after his victory, Heyn advised the board of directors to extend company reach farther west, into the Bay of Honduras, by commissioning a raid of Trugillo, a port and town in Spanish Honduras.

Apparently convinced of the wisdom of Heyn's counsel, on 4 June 1630, the WIC instructed privateers Jan Booneter and Adriaen Pater to surprise the silver fleet in Trugillo, one of their ports of call, if feasible. Booneter and Pater were unable to attempt an ambush though, so the company next, on 14 June 1632, directed privateer Galeyn von Stapels to chart the shores of the Yucatan peninsula and the waters of the Honduran and Campeche bays.