Johan van Galen and the Dutch Mediterranean Squadron

Johan van Galen took a Dutch squadron into the Mediterranean in 1652, blockaded Livorno, won at Leghorn in 1653 and died of the wounds he took there.

17 October 2026 · Part of Dutch Republic & VOC — a guide to 13 articles →

Johan van Galen (born around 1604) spent most of his career chasing Dunkirk privateers, quarrelled with Witte de With badly enough to be put in irons, and in 1652 was sent to the Mediterranean with a squadron the Republic could barely spare. There he blockaded an English force in Livorno, won the Battle of Leghorn on 14 March 1653 (New Style) and died of the wounds he took in it, leaving the Dutch masters of the inland sea for a season and the Republic with a hero it had half forgotten by the time the war ended.

Why the war reached the Mediterranean

The First Anglo-Dutch War (1652-1654) is usually told as a story of the Channel and the North Sea: Blake against Tromp and De With, Dungeness and the Gabbard. But the quarrel was about trade, and the trade that mattered to both sides ran south. Dutch merchantmen carried grain, cloth and Levant goods through the Straits of Gibraltar, and English ships were doing the same. Once the Commonwealth began taking Dutch prizes under the Navigation Act, both governments had reason to protect their traders in Italian and Levantine waters, and both sent a few ships to do it.

The Dutch side of that effort belonged to the admiralty system described in the five admiralties of the Dutch Republic: money, crews and ships came from separate colleges, each with its own priorities. A Mediterranean force had to be scraped together from whatever could be spared, and the commander who led it needed both seamanship and the patience to work with merchants, consuls and Italian princes who had no wish to be dragged into the war.

A career made against privateers

Van Galen was born in Essen, in the Rhineland, around 1604, and made his name in Dutch service. According to the standard summaries he rose by fighting the privateers of Dunkirk, whose raiding of Dutch shipping was a constant and expensive nuisance. By 1645 he was a rear-admiral serving in a convoy to the Sound under Witte de With, and that voyage produced the incident that sticks to his name. Reports of it say that Van Galen lowered his command flag and trampled it, and that De With had him put in chains and taken to Copenhagen. Anyone who has read Witte de With: the ablest Dutch admiral nobody liked will recognise the pattern: a navy full of able, proud men who obeyed one another reluctantly.

The story should be handled with care. It comes to us through later biographical summaries, and a quarrel between two strong-willed officers tends to be told in the version that flatters the teller's side. What is not in doubt is that Van Galen had a reputation as a fighter, and that the States-General trusted him with an independent command when the Mediterranean needed one.

Taking command, 1652

In July 1652 the States-General asked Van Galen to take over the Dutch Mediterranean fleet from Joris van Cats. Accounts say he reached Livorno on 1 September 1652. His arrival changed the balance. English ships under Captain Henry Appleton lay in Livorno, in the port of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and a relief squadron under Richard Badiley was working south to join them.

The first clash came before Van Galen had properly settled in. On 28 August 1652 (Old Style, which is the date most English-language accounts use) Van Galen's ships met Badiley's between Montecristo and Elba. Van Galen had left four of his fourteen ships to keep watch on Livorno and took ten to intercept the relief force. In the fight the English Phoenix was taken by the Dutch Jaarsveld, while the other English ships got away into Porto Longone. Dates for this action vary between sources, and some sources place it in early September, which is a good reminder that Old Style and New Style dates were in use side by side.

The English were not finished. The Phoenix was retaken about two months later in a night raid at Livorno, an act that offended the Grand Duke because it violated the neutrality of his port. The Royal Museums Greenwich note on the later battle records that the English had earned the Grand Duke's displeasure in just this way. The neutrality of a Tuscan port is the thread that runs through the whole campaign: neither side could fight inside the harbour without risking the goodwill of the man whose roadstead they depended on.

The Battle of Leghorn

By the new year Appleton's ships were still penned in Livorno by the Dutch squadron outside, and Badiley, now at Porto Longone, was trying to reach them. What happened next is told in several versions, but they agree on the main shape. Appleton sailed out too soon, before Badiley could join the action, and was badly beaten. Of the English ships only the Mary escaped; the other four were captured by the Dutch. Badiley then engaged, was heavily outnumbered, and retreated.

The Royal Museums Greenwich date the battle to 4 March 1653 Old Style, which is 14 March by the continental calendar. The Dutch gained command of the Mediterranean, at least for the time being. William Laird Clowes, writing in 1897, treated Leghorn as a clear Dutch victory, and modern reference works follow him in broad outline, though none of the accounts available to us gives a reliable ship-by-ship casualty count, and the figures should be treated as uncertain.

The wound and the death

According to the biographical accounts, a cannonball crushed Van Galen's right lower leg during the fight. The leg was amputated below deck, and he is said to have gone on directing the battle. Wound fever followed, and he died in Livorno about ten days later.

Even here the sources do not agree. One gives his death as 13 March 1653 and another as 23 March. One possibility is a calendar slip between the two systems, but the evidence we have does not settle the question, so it is safest to say he died in the second half of March 1653 at or off Livorno. The Rijksmuseum holds a portrait of him, and later generations treated the death as the death of a hero. A Dutch navy frigate named after him still carried his name in the twentieth century, which says something about how long the memory lasted.

What the squadron achieved

Leghorn did not win the war, and it did not need to. Its value was commercial. For some months Dutch shipping could move through the western Mediterranean with fewer fears of English interference, and the English trade to Italy and the Levant was exposed in turn. That mattered to a state that lived by carrying other people's goods, the same economy that produced the Dutch East India Company's global network and the fortunes behind the Dutch Golden Age's learned societies.

It also mattered less than it seemed to. The decisive actions of 1653 were fought in the Channel, and the English fleet recovered and reorganised. The Republic, having spent its best admirals, ended the war in a weaker position than the victories on the Mediterranean suggest. The long-term picture of Dutch naval strength, with its strengths and its political fragilities, is traced further in the disaster year of 1672. For an earlier contest over Atlantic sea power, see the Spanish Armada of 1588.

The fighting in Italian waters is recorded, with date, theatre, commander and a graded certainty for each action, in our record of Dutch Golden Age naval battles.

Conclusion

Van Galen is a useful corrective to a Dutch naval history that is dominated by a few famous names. He was neither the Republic's most celebrated admiral nor its most diplomatic one, but he did the specific job set for him: blockade a port, beat a relief force, and keep trade moving. He paid for it with his leg and then his life. The evidence for the details of his last weeks is thin and sometimes contradictory, and honest accounts say so; the outline, a Dutch victory at Leghorn and an admiral who did not live to enjoy it, is secure.

Frequently asked questions

Who was Johan van Galen? He was a Dutch naval officer born around 1604 in Essen who made his name fighting Dunkirk privateers. In 1652 the States-General gave him command of the Dutch Mediterranean fleet, and he died of wounds taken at the Battle of Leghorn in March 1653.

What was the Battle of Leghorn? It was a naval action off Livorno in the First Anglo-Dutch War, dated 4 March 1653 Old Style (14 March New Style). A Dutch squadron under Van Galen defeated an English force under Henry Appleton, capturing four of his five ships, and then drove off Richard Badiley's relief squadron.

When did Van Galen die? The sources disagree: dates of 13 March and 23 March 1653 both appear. He died of fever after his leg was amputated, at or near Livorno, and the exact day is best treated as uncertain.

Why was the Mediterranean part of an Anglo-Dutch war? Both states depended on trade through the Straits and into Italy and the Levant, and each wanted to protect its own merchants and raid the other's. Tuscan neutrality at Livorno made the port a place where both squadrons could be trapped or sheltered.

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