Piet Heyn and the Silver Fleet
C.R. Boxer portrays a key moment in the Thirty Years War. Dutch fortunes were not prospering when Piet Heyn revived his compatriots’ spirits by the daring capture of a Spanish treasure fleet.
Anyone who frequents parties held by Dutch people in festive mood from The Hague to Hong Kong knows that sooner or later the participants are liable to break into the tuneful strains of “the Triumphal Song of the Silver-Fleet,”—a ditty otherwise known as “Piet Heyn,” and which might be described as the unofficial Dutch national anthem.
Although this song in its present form is less than a century old, the capture of the Mexican silver-fleet in the Cuban harbour of Matanzas by Piet Heyn on September 8th, 1628, was enthusiastically celebrated by a great outpouring of song, poetry, and prose in the United Provinces of the Free Netherlands in the following year. Ever since that date, Piet Heyn has occupied a place in the Dutch national pantheon comparable to that held by Francis Drake in the English one.
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