79 Michiel de Ruyter and the Church of Saint Jacob

I’ve read it many times: when somebody in history becomes something like a ‘saviour’ or ‘hero’, people will find ‘signs’ of the later greatness in earlier life. The same happened with Michiel de Ruyter. Even though quite a bit is known about his youth that didn’t prevent myths to be spun. A few had to do with the Great or Saint Jacob’s Church. It is said, he climbed the tower to better see the ships on Vlissingen’s roadstead and the North Sea beyond. When he came down he chose to come via the façade: as if the tower was the main mast of a ship. De Ruyter was baptized in the church and was married there, but he is interred in the ‘Nieuwe Kerk’ (New Church) in Amsterdam. After having made a drawing of the church tower the day before, I wanted to ‘do’ the interior. Like most old churches in the Netherlands this church became Protestant during the 80year liberation war with Spain. That meant that the church was stripped of all altars, statues, confession boxes and little sanctuaries. What was left was a rather naked, open space. The inside of churches like this one I find extremely difficult to draw. It is just too big and there is little to take hold of. The only focus point is the pulpit and that structure is usually an over ornate and rather pompous affair. I always admire the perfect acoustics those churches have. That’s why the Saint Jacobs church is also used for concerts nowadays, the churchwarden in charge of ‘events’ told me. The day I sat down to sketch, the ‘evangelical’ broadcasting corporation (EO) was preparing the space for a televised recording of public church singing: ‘Nederland Zingt’ (The Netherlands Sings). In the drawing the lads have just finished hanging the lights and putting up the recording system. While drawing the pulpit the musical instruments were tried out. I was invited to stay on for the rehearsal, but I declined and hastened from the place of worship to head for the nautical venues.

77 Introduction to Vlissingen

Nowadays Vlissingen can be reached easily by train. But till the sixties of the last century Vlissingen was on an island: Walcheren. After the devastating effects of the Flood Disaster of 1953 the islands that made up the Province of Zeeland were connected to each other and the mainland by dykes, bridges and flood defences. Walcheren is no longer an island and if you didn’t know you would never notice it had been. The train ride took just over three hours. Because of recent rescheduling it took half an hour longer than during the time I visited the town for work. I had always enjoyed visiting the province. Work for the National Bureau of Water Management had taken me many times to Zeeland. In 2001 while recovering from cancer treatment I had been kindly taken in by a couple living on Walcheren. In the nineties my aunt Taat had taken Bert and me for a Whitsun holiday to Vlissingen. We had stayed in the Grand Hotel Brittannia or ‘De Brit’. All rooms in the hotel had balconies looking out over the Roadstead of Vlissingen. That view I wanted to have this time too. But ‘De Brit’ had been demolished. Fortunately there are more hotels on the ‘Boulevard’. I chose the Hotel Truida and was given a room with the desired view. Better still: when I sat on the loo I could draw this sketch. Martina, a Dutch friend from Achill Island has a ‘pied d’à terre’ in Vlissingen. She welcomed me and gave me a thorough introduction to the town. She took me and her dog for a circular tour around the old city. Starting on Wall Street she took me to the Saint Jacob’s or Great Church and on to the yacht harbour and the Lampsins House, past the Pilot’s port and Bellamypark or the old dock harbour to the statue of Michiel de Ruyter and to the harbour inlet and on to the Prisoners’ Tower and the boulevards. Turned out her home was just behind the hotel in the 19th century part of the town. In the evening we watched the movie ‘Admiral’ on Netflix. I couldn’t have gotten a better introduction to Vlissinge the town of Michiel de Ruyter.

76 In search of Michiel de Ruyter

The first chapter of the Graphic Story about Iligh will be about the Michiel de Ruyter connection. Michiel de Ruyter was born in 1607 and died in 1676 during a sea battle against the French. He hailed from the town of Vlissingen on the island of Walcheren in the Province of Zeeland. Zeeland was in the 17th century an independent region of small but rich and powerful islands within the Dutch Republic of Seven Provinces. Michiel de Ruyter is an iconic hero of the seas. His sailors gave him the honorary title of ‘Bestevaer’ (grandfather). The latest biography about him by Ronald Prudhomme van Reine was called ‘De rechter hand van Nederland’ (The right hand of the Netherlands) and a movie about his exploits during the wars with England was titled ‘Admiral’. At primary school I learned the song ‘In een blauwgeruite kiel’ (In a blue tartan shirt) about him as a youth dreaming about going to sea while working on a ropewalk. Lately his heroic status has been questioned and to have an interest in him is considered dubious and ‘not done’. He is accused of facilitating the slave trade. The Dutch had taken over the cross-ocean trade from the Portuguese and made it more ‘efficient’ and thus more vicious and dehumanizing. As with all iconic figures a lot of myths were attached to him and he had become more like an institution than a human being. Time to get a ‘feel’ for this man and to make drawings ‘in situ’ for the graphic story. I took the train to Vlissingen. It was a beautiful sunny day when I set out to the railway station only to find out that the scheduled direct train to Vlissingen had been cancelled. Time enough to sit down and do some serious sketching of the monumental Amsterdam Central Station.