Abstract
The single most controversial event in Dutch naval history was the blowing up of Gunboat no. 2 by its own commander, Lieutenant Jan van Speijk, on 5 February 1831, during the Belgian War of Independence (1830–1831). After a severe gale had blown his craft onto a quay in the harbour of Antwerp, the staunchly patriotic Van Speijk, who abominated the Belgian struggle for independence, chose to kill himself, the larger part of his crew and several of his opponents, rather than surrender his flag to a local Belgian militia. Having told the commanding officer of the militia that he would go down to his cabin to fetch his papers, he went instead to the powder magazine and either threw his cigar or fired his gun into one of the kegs. His military superiors immediately seized upon the opportunity to publicly declare Van Speijk a hero in the tradition of the famous seventeenth-century admirals Maarten Tromp and Michiel de Ruyter. Van Speijk’s dramatized patriotism, they understood, would positively reflect on themselves, the military campaign against the Belgians, and the Royal Dutch Navy as a whole. Recognizing that Dutch political and military morale would greatly benefit from the creation of a naval hero – the European Great Powers, assembled in London, had only recently rejected Dutch diplomatic efforts by declaring Belgium an independent and neutral state – government, media, artists and the public eagerly embraced this initiative of the military. Van Speijk’s sacrifice was subsequently celebrated in hagiographies, poems, paintings, medals and sculptures, while his mortal remains, and what was left of his uniform and Gunboat no. 2, were treasured as secular relics.
Ronald Prud’homme van Reine, who has previously published biographies of the naval grandees Piet Hein, De Ruyter, Maarten and Cornelis Tromp, and Jan Hendrik van Kinsbergen, has been thorough in his research into Van Speijk, his fatal act, and his posthumous glorification. He has critically assessed the nineteenth-century hagiographies and drawn from an impressive wealth of primary source material, including Van Speijk’s own correspondence. Prud’homme van Reine convincingly argues that the, in his words, ‘suicide attack’ did not spring from the stressful moment itself, but was in fact long in the making. Depressed, lonely and a consumer of significant quantities of wines and spirits, Van Speijk spent the entire winter nursing his frustration with the course of the Dutch-Belgian conflict, finding support in the noisy patriotism of the officers corps. On more than one occasion he expressed his willingness to dramatically sacrifice himself and his craft in defense of the Dutch national flag and the honour of King Willem I. Liever niet de lucht in clearly analyzes how and why Van Speijk’s suicide attack was pragmatically seized upon to create a new Dutch naval hero. It also explains why this status proved relatively short-lived; the army soon created several other heroes who competed for the public’s interest, while the deadly attack itself was increasingly perceived as a matter of controversy.
A point of criticism is the forced and altogether incoherent positioning of the book. Prud’homme van Reine, in his preface, explains that while society nowadays condemns Van Speijk’s suicide attack and no longer regards him as a hero, the Navy in fact still glorifies his dramatic self-sacrifice. He recalls how the publication, twenty-five years ago, of an article critical of Van Speijk sparked furious reactions from retired naval officers. Moreover, in 1981, a wreath was laid on behalf of the Navy at Van Speijk’s mausoleum and, as recently as 1995, a newly commissioned multipurpose-frigate was named the Hr. Ms. Van Speijk. Historians affiliated with the Ministry of Defense, he continues, have consistently shied away from too thorough analysis of Van Speijk, as if fearing that this ‘might unearth painful facts’ (p. 227). This argument is based on an article published in 2010 by Marc van Alphen, an historian employed by the Netherlands Institute of Military History. Prud’homme van Reine’s eagerness to make his point makes him seem to accuse Van Alphen of rehabilitating Van Speijk, even comparing his article to the original hagiography. In fact, however, Van Alphen simply seeks to place Van Speijk in his nineteenth-century century navy-cultural context, warning of the dangers both of anachronistic thinking and of comparisons with modern-day suicide terrorists. Even within navy circles, criticism of the glorification of Van Speijk has been building for some years, with the result that his legacy is now treated as an inconvenient relic of the past. Acknowledgement of this by the author himself, within the same analytical context, further reduces the credibility of his adopted position.
A second point of criticism is the absence of theoretical contextualization. While the book’s empirical foundation is impressive, a systematic integration into the historiography of nineteenth-century (Dutch) nationalism is sadly missing. Comparisons with similar events that took place in other contemporary European naval wars would likewise have been welcome. As such, Liever niet de lucht in is most certainly definitive in its encyclopaedic approach, but falls short of providing the innovative naval-cultural history that might have been achieved.