Herman van Speult (?? –

Mocha, Yemen Mokha ( ar, المُخا, al-Mukhā), also spelled Mocha, or Mukha, is a port city on the Red Sea coast of Yemen. Until Aden and al Hudaydah eclipsed it in the 19th century, Mokha was the principal port for Yemen's capital, Sanaa. Long known fo ...

, August 1626) was a merchant in service of the

Dutch East India Company The United East India Company ( nl, Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the VOC) was a chartered company established on the 20th March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies into the first joint-stock ...

. Van Speult left the island

Texel Texel (; Texels dialect: ) is a municipality and an island with a population of 13,643 in North Holland, Netherlands. It is the largest and most populated island of the West Frisian Islands in the Wadden Sea. The island is situated north of De ...

in 1613, heading for Bantam and arrived after a journey of ten months. He was formerly employed in Spain, "whence he came, if report be true, full of the pox." He was active as governor of

Ambon Ambon may refer to: Places * Ambon Island, an island in Indonesia ** Ambon, Maluku, a city on Ambon Island, the capital of Maluku province ** Governorate of Ambon, a colony of the Dutch East India Company from 1605 to 1796 * Ambon, Morbihan, a c ...

from 1618 until 1625. In 1618 he was appointed as governor of the

Governorate of Ambon Ambon was a governorate of the Dutch East India Company, consisting of Ambon Island and ten neighbouring islands. Steven van der Hagen captured Fort Victoria on 22 February 1605 from the Portuguese in the name of the Dutch East India Company. Until ...

as the successor to

Adriaen Maertensz Block Adriaen Maertensz Block (c.1582, Gouda – 7 March 1661, Lisse) was successively captain, commander, and governor of Ambon between 1614 and 1617, administrator of the '' Raad van Indië'' for the Kamer of the Dutch East India Company in Amsterd ...

and

Steven van der Hagen Steven van der Hagen (Amersfoort, 1563 – 1621) was the first admiral of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). He made three visits to the East Indies, spending six years in all there. He was appointed to the Raad van Indië. Van der Hage ...

. On 21 January 1623 had he prepared two ships for an expedition to islands near

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu Hiri Motu, also known as Police Motu, Pidgin Motu, or just Hiri, is a language of Papua New Guinea, which is spoken in surrounding areas of Port Moresby (Capital of Papua New Guinea). It is a simplified version of ...

, to map more of New Guinea, and to explore for "the South Land". The crew discovered possibly the present

Jardine River The Jardine River is the largest river of the Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland, Australia. Course The headwaters of the river rise southwest of Helby Hill in the Great Dividing Range and flow in a north westerly direction parallel ...

and most likely Speult Land and Speult Point were named after him. On 27February 1623, Van Speult ordered the beheading of Gabriel Towerson, the English

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...

's chief factor or merchant at Ambon, along with nine other Englishmen, ten Japanese and a Portuguese. The men were accused of plotting to kill Van Speult and overthrown the Dutch garrison. The incident became known as the

Amboyna massacre The Amboyna massacre was the 1623 torture and execution on Ambon Island (present-day Ambon, Maluku, Indonesia) of twenty-one men, including ten of whom were in the service of the English East India Company, and Japanese and Portuguese traders an ...

and remained a source of tension between the two nations until late in the 17th century. Harman Van Speult died in the

Red Sea The Red Sea ( ar, البحر الأحمر - بحر القلزم, translit=Modern: al-Baḥr al-ʾAḥmar, Medieval: Baḥr al-Qulzum; or ; Coptic: ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϩⲁϩ ''Phiom Enhah'' or ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϣⲁⲣⲓ ''Phiom ǹšari''; T ...

References

1626 deaths Sailors on ships of the Dutch East India Company Year of birth unknown {{netherlands-bio-stub