Pieter de Bitter

Who was Pieter de Bitter?

Pieter de Bitter was a 17th-century Dutch officer of the Dutch East India Company. On 12 August 1665 he won the Battle of Vågen against an English flotilla commanded by Thomas Teddiman.

Of Pieter de Bitter's early life and career nothing is known. His name first emerges in 1653, when during the First Anglo-Dutch War he is mentioned as the captain of the Mercurius, a vessel of forty cannon of the Dutch East India Company, that has been allocated to the squadron of Commodore Michiel de Ruyter, just prior to the Battle of Scheveningen. In that fight De Bitter distinguished himself by disabling the Triumph of 62 cannon, the flagship of Vice-Admiral James Peacock who was killed. An hour later the Mercurius sank after having been penetrated below the waterline; De Bitter was saved with most of his crew.

In August 1655, during the Dutch-Portuguese War, De Bitter was flagcaptain on the Ter Goes of Director-General Gerard Pietersz. Hulft, who commanded a fleet attacking the Portuguese colony of Ceylon from Batavia, the main stronghold of the Dutch East Indies. After Colombo had been taken, De Bitter was in July 1656 sent on a galiot back to Batavia to inform the Council of the Indies of the good news — and bring the sad tidings that Hulft had been killed in action.