Sea Control - Sea Control 457 - Pirates and the Wadden Sea with Hans Faber

Episode Date: August 27, 2023

Links1. "Yet another wayward archipelago," by Hans Faber, Frisia Coast Trail, April 4, 2021.

Hello, and welcome to the Sea Control podcast. I'm Nathan Miller. Today, Jared speaks with Hans Faber of the Frisian Coast Trail blog. They discuss Hans' recent adventures along the Wadden Sea. Marie Williams edited and produced this episode. Here at Sea Control, we are approaching our 300th episode since our relaunch, and we would like to dedicate a show to answering your questions. If you would like to submit a question, please email us at seacontrol at simsec.org. I would like to pause here to highlight our local chapters. Whether you are in South Korea, Egypt, Singapore, France, New York, India, or the Caribbean, chances are there's a SimSec local chapter near you. You can find a full listing of local chapters and contact information on our website at simsec.org. So if you are interested, please reach out.

Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec podcast network, The Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of Iron Brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. And with that, Kimber's men. You're listening to Sea Control, posted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Aloha, shipmates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. My guest today is Hans Faber, who maintains the Freesia Coast Trail blog, and we're going to discuss his post on the Bond Sea. Hans, welcome aboard. Could you start by telling the listeners a little bit about your background, please? Yes, thank you, Jared. As you said, my name is Hans Faber. Normally, my day-to-day work is working for the Ministry of Justice, but I also maintain a blog, the Frisia Coast Trail, and it's a website I've made where you can see a trail that I try to walk, to finish to walk.

I've done about half of it now, 1,000 kilometers, and it's going from Belgium to Denmark, actually, and I also tried to describe the history of that coastal area. Well, thank you for coming aboard today. As a reminder to the listeners, all opinions are our own and not reflective of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated. Hans, before we get into kind of the scripted stuff, can you tell me, how did you get started hiking along the Frisia Coast Trail, and why did you decide to do that it was uh it was uh 2017 i think and i had a friend of mine from high school already so we we gone a while back um but he he went to amsterdam i went to another city in the netherlands to study um and i and but we both liked the history of of of Queensland and the coastal area, and both like hiking.

So I don't know how we came up to it, but we said, why don't we figure out a new project together? So make some common history again, a common project together, because since you're, when you go out each separate ways from high school, you don't as much experience things together. so we decided we combine hiking and we combine history and that's that's how it started so as you and I discussed previously that I used to live next to the Wannsee in Wilhelmshaven Germany

I was there as an exchange officer for three years it's pretty cold and wet most of the year there's a few you know sunny days over the course of the summer but what is the weather normally like when you you and your friend are out for a hike uh and what why did you do that that goes back to the the why question it was like why would you pick this particular stretch to walk along because it's uh from a climate perspective not the most fun to be out there so like you have you have to have some real hiking gear you need some real you know weather gear when you're out along the bonnet bonzo yeah that's true it's scotland without the hills and locks and and mountains yeah um but for the rest it's it's more or less the same uh why do i like it is um it's

walking and if you if you dive into the history and and walking it through that natural landscape of through that landscape because nothing is really natural in this this is this area makes you more feel the history and then you understand the landscape um and if you if you dive into that history then you you see that it is also a quite unique part of history uh along the nazi coast with uh quite quite quite um yeah different type of culture you could say from from origins um yeah and that's that's that's that's uh and that's the history that's not really really really known so you have to really pick the details from from scientists and articles because there are no really books about telling you this is the history of that

area because the Frisians if you take the Frisians as as as the focal point they don't really have a national history because they are scattered over a few countries so you have to to to to reconstruct in a way a bit the history of that coastline and the southern coast of the North Sea so you've given us bits and pieces of this next answer but I'm asking you to put it all together What is the Wadden Sea? Where is it located? And then what else can you tell us about the geography? The Wadden Sea is actually the world's largest intertidal area in the world. It's about the coastline that's on the southeastern shores of the North Sea. It's running from the north of the Netherlands to Germany and up to the southern point of Denmark,

the southern western point of Denmark, Jutland, and that's about 500 kilometers of coastline. It's about 22,000 square meters of an area, a little tidal area, and about 52 islands located there. So it's an archipelago, if I say that correct in English, with about 28 islands of those 52 are occupied inhabited and rest are uh still small little islands with no people living on it yeah so it's a it's a it's a fascinating area um it's drained two times a day by low tide and uh it filled again um also two times a day so it's it's the name of the valency is to wait meaning you can you can ford through that through that wet landscape by low tide even possible that you reach from the coast to the islands in a day by depends on which island you you walk to

but on low tide you can you can make it to an island and walk there so it's a fascinating fascinating area who lives alongside the ones here how do or how did those people subsist and then how have they adapted over time to that environment um it's it's in history that's that's um more or less started 2 600 years ago um and we know that from that time on people uh inhabited that the marshlands the tidal marshlands um and you must imagine those were tidal marshlands that were bordering the sea so we were flooded now maybe maybe 50 times a year sometimes some exceptional situations with heavy storms it was really rough there but normally the sea would reach about two three meters above average of the land so people build little artificial mounds

and they put their houses on these artificial mounds and that's a quite a unique culture that's about 2600 years ago so when the romans entered this area they found a wet area they disliked they were not very impressed by it but actually it was quite a unique landscape people were living themselves made hills and it had two big advantages to live there and that was you connected with sea so you had uh connections uh throughout the coast throughout the north sea um and another advantage was that the the tidal marshlands the grass that grows there and is very productive so and they were cattle breeders um and uh kettle is uh uh yeah that was a very very i mean uh how do you say that in english um prosperous thing to have um you could

prosper on on cattle and on trade so that were the the two main things and of course piracy um because that area of the baden sea was already in roman times known for its privacy and that continued that that that culture continued to flourish uh until the year thousand when they started to build dikes and then the salt marshes were cut off from the sea you could say uh but until then uh there were little islands on the marshes and you can still see them if you go to the north frisland in germany where also frisians still live and there are some little islands which that are not protected yet by high tide so you can see there in the wintertime especially or in in the in the early springs when the when the storms are there you see the islands flooded

You see the little hills with the houses on it, little villages on it. And that's like looking back 2,600 years. Well, it's a good transition. How did the Friesian coast develop into a tax haven and home of piracy? That's, how do you say, parallel with other, like the Bahamas and other islands and archipelagos in the world, which are famous for its tax haven. um and um i don't know if that's really really historical things but the netherlands is scoring high in in the the tax uh indexes where where companies can um can can how you say get their money uh earn their money without too much taxes and um uh so they we still score very high on that

and um i'd like to believe that uh that's the piracy archipelago uh mentality that we still inherited from from our ancestors but it is a bit with a bit of a smile and then how did the low countries war for independence against spain affect the region you could say turn it around the coastal area the southern uh north sea coast coastal area um also and then i go a little step back um at the end of the 14th century there were improvements in in in way of ship building and it was especially in the province salient where it started they start careful build ships but also in holland and there were um and yeah that was called shell build first techniques so they they and and uh they made of what they made lighter ships they made more maneuverable ships

they made ships that could carry more sail uh and that was all to do that had all to do with with trade and that's that's that that's that's a thing um that already existed but i said in the roman time so the trade and innovation in shipbuilding uh happened also again in in the end of the 14th century that made this area holland friesland salem you say make it make a step forward in competition um and they got wealthy so they opened lines with the baltics with scandinavia with the british isles uh their trade was was enormous 17th century um i think that the netherlands in its total republic had about 900 000 tons of of transport uh capacity whilst for for example, France, in total, had about

100,000 tons. So it was enormous. This little area was really... And that was... And that meant also that combined, the Spanish king started its inquisition, as we say,

to start to suppress the Protestants in the low countries. There was... In the Netherlands, they got... were earning money they they had the capacity to withstand the spanish dominance so uh and in the in the water and sea area there was also piracy what they did was controlling the the seaways

between the islands in the valency and it was it started with piracy more or less and they called them the sea beggars in french and they they uh they controlled the seaways of the vatican sea and they those were essential uh for for the for the trade to amsterdam as i said uh the trade was going to the baltics and to scan maven etc for the wood grain whatever but it had to pass through the vatican because that was the only connection for amsterdam so actually those pirates they were sea baggers had um had the spanish king by his uh now you know where he gets it has his hands on uh and that was that was actually uh quite a a step of uh an important factor and willy maurin of orange who led the rebellion against the spanish crown made a uh made a deal with those um

with those pirates and he sent a frisian young bass for young bassius in latin to the island of borkum in austria to negotiate a deal with three captains of the sea beggars those pirates and to say let's work together and you can you can keep a part a part of your your uh your your prices and things if you get from the spanish and then um but then you will hurt everything spanish you come across so that's what they did and then sea beggars were quite effective and it's also a thing that got stuck in the, still this day, if you talk about the seabaggers in the Netherlands, and we are proud of it.

But actually, they were quite cruel prior to the practice. One thing that's a natural transition to the next question, too, is how can you trace the development of the Royal Navy and the Dutch Navy to the Friesian coast? Piracy was started in the Wattersea area, and they had their ports in Ostfriesland, the county of also in the southern coast of of england in southampton um and in the in the eastern part of the netherlands so that were their main uh but also on the islands and that that's that's

where they were untouchable by the by the spanish king because this this currency area which we talked about was it's a title area you have to have good knowledge about going through through the title area if you don't want to shipwreck so that is um it's quite a safe area safe haven like like a tax haven, you're saved there, so you can be protected, and that's how they did it, yeah. And then I'm going to ask you to close by telling us the story of Black Rolf. Yeah, Black Rolf is a saga, I think, in Ostfriesland, so that's in Germany, the northern part of germany and it's a saga about uh black grove who was a pirate one day he heard he hears about he learns that the island of borkham um all the men have left so all the all the the

husbands are at sea and actually that's based on a historic fact in the way that most many of the men of islands of the Wadden Sea were involved in whaling in the islands. So during most of the year it was really women on their own on the islands

and so that's where the story starts and Rolf has heard about the big treasure of one former pirate, that's Klaus Stortebaker and the story goes that he had his prizes, his

his treasure, buried in dunes of that island, Borco. So Rolf thinks, okay, now I go to that island and try to get my hands on that little bit of silver. But his ship got stuck before the coast with low tide. And the women on the island are in Vibio, what to do? dune and we want one woman inside inside we must fight we must dress like men we cross dress like men we pretend to be men um and then we take a gun a big cannon to the dunes and then we shoot there's one only one one male one man on the island and there's the figure christopher christopher says no we should pray we should pray uh to god and he will help us but instance says no no no we don't have time for praying we have to act so um this is also a nice twist to the story

the women think we we have to be uh we have to be uh we have to take control in our hands and um and we and we act like men and we go into war and going to fight so um they did and they took their gun and they should get the ship and the ship caught fire and uh they started negotiating that the pirates can get off the ship one by one and they'll be locked up in a tower. So they do that and one by one they can get off the ship in safety out of the fire and they are locked up in the tower. There's also one girl on the ship and the story was that she was the daughter of Rolf. But she wasn't a daughter of Rolf, she was his lover. Insa actually used to to be also a lover of rolf and that was her history so when the daughter the so-called

daughter of rolf and insa came to talk in the night because the daughter wasn't locked up in the tower because she was a female insa told her a story that i don't believe you because i know you're his lover i used to be one too so in the meantime in the night all the women started party and they got some of the pirates young pirates attractive pirates out of the tower and they've been dancing and drinking and who knows what more um so in safar this is not going to end well so what i do is i i i discuss with with the so-called daughter that they can leave the island with the boat and i will bring them to the to the main to the to the main shore and that's the end of it

and she agrees with it and Insa has to because the Wadden Sea again is a complex area with gullies and sandbanks I will guide you through the sea to the shore but they got

a kind of quibbling during the ship they got stuck on the sandbank on low tide They couldn't get off Pirates and insects They pulled around

And that's the end of our story Well I'm sorry that that's all That we have time for today I'd like to thank my guest Hans Fabra Hans where can we find you online And what part of the trailer Are you going to explore next In the third week of May

I will go to The German city Emden And I walk to Lear From Lear I walk to New Wisconsin that's about 15 kilometers in total and that's my next piece of the fishing post rail into germany and you can find me on uh on freesiacoastrail.blog and um you can read and you can see the trailer we'll tag the blog in our post and we'll also have it in the show notes for anybody who wants to follow along on hans's adventures or read some of what's happened before but thank you again

again for joining us on. So listeners, thank you for tuning in and we'll see you next time. A porter of a porter's gin Where can I put in the alley A porter of wine, both white and red Put it on the shimbo now So help me for my bully in the alley Where can I put in the alley

Help me for my bully in the alley Put it on the shimbo now