- First name
- David
- Last name
- Vries, de
- Date of Birth
- -
- Date of Death
- -
- Born in
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- Died in
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David de Vries (fl.1650–62) came to Salé as a captive from Brazil in 1650. He was a Dutch consul in Salé and Tétouan (1651–62). See: Schutte, 1976, p. 383, no. 281.
On 20 September 1654, De Vries produced list of vessels that were captured and sold with their complete cargo. One of the ships included in the list is De Witte Valck (‘The White Falcon’) which had been seized and plundered from its cargo by a privateer vessel (a flyboat with twenty canons), named het Land van Beloften, ‘The Promised Land’). That carrier was seized on 30/31 September 1654. According to the list by De Vries, the ship (from Hoorn) had been freighted in Amsterdam by Michael d'Espinosa and by some merchants:
Another ship, called ‘De Witte Valck’. Its skipper was Lambert Diercksz Tasman. The privateer here is named Arays Corteby. And [they] encountered each other at the location of the cape St Vincent. There, the ship was not only plundered by this people of its food and shipping tools, but also of its merchandise, belonging to Michael d’Espinosa, Jewish merchant at Amsterdam, who was one of the freighters of the same vessel. In the ‘Witte Valck’ from Hoorn, which contained nothing more than ballast, they [then] found two men, who were forced by the captain of the Morish corsair to row to land in a jolly-boat, and they were surrendered to me irretrievably.
Quoted in De Castries, 1905–26, vol. 5, pp. 430–1; see also Israel, 2002, p. 134
On [14 October 1655], De Vries composed a so-called ‘notitie van de schade’ (note on the damage) comprising the total of losses of nine Dutch merchant vessels to Salé-based corsairs from the year 1652 onwards. From this document, it becomes evident that the cargo (coopmanschappen) looted from De Witte Valck should be estimated to represent a value of about 3,000 guilders (De Castries, 1905–26, vol. 6, p. 99), which is about 31.040 euro in the year 2010. De Vries estimates the total of Dutch losses as a result of Salé-based corsair activity about 191,080 guilders, which is about 2,082,927 euro in 2010.