Maarten Tromp

Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (1598 to 1653) was a Dutch naval commander who served as lieutenant admiral of Holland and West Frisia during the Eighty Years' War and the First Anglo-Dutch War. Born in Brielle, the son of a ship's captain, he went to sea as a boy, was captured twice, once by pirates and once by Barbary corsairs, and was held as a slave before regaining his freedom in 1622. After joining the Dutch navy he took command of it in 1637, and in 1639 his fleet destroyed much of a Spanish armada at the Battle of the Downs, where he is described as the first fleet commander known to use line of battle tactics deliberately. In the First Anglo-Dutch War he fought at Dover, Dungeness, Portland, the Gabbard and Scheveningen, where an English sharpshooter killed him on 31 July 1653. He received a state funeral in Delft and remained a Dutch naval hero.