“You mean the pirate statue?” I’m in the cruise terminal in Sint Maarten. Entering was an ordeal in itself, as I’m not a cruise ship passenger, so my meeting needed to be pre-confirmed along with a copy of my passport. This is, after all, an international port. I’m here for one thing: a statue of Peter Stuyvesant. Or, as the young port employee who picks me up at the security gate in a golf cart thinks of it, that pirate statue.

It’s simple to see why he might think so. The man is dressed in 17th century garb, and has a peg leg. So yeah, pirate makes sense. But this is no pirate. This is Peter Stuyvesant, best known in the US for being the last governor of New Netherlands and its capital New Amsterdam (now the state and city of New York) before handing it over to the British in 1664-1665. (New Amsterdam was captured in 1664 and the remainder of the colony surrendered the following year when the settlers largely refused to take up arms. There was a brief reconquest in 1673 that lasted less than a year before the 1674 Treaty of Westminster permanently ceded the colony to England, ending the Dutch presence in mainland North America.)

But while that chapter of Peter Stuyvesant’s life gets most of the publicity – indeed, my father, upon hearing I was writing this story, referred to Stuyvesant as “that guy from New York, right?” – his famed career took a spin through the Dutch Caribbean, and to this island. In fact, if not for Sint Maarten, Peg Leg Pete, as he would come to be called, wouldn’t have existed in legend or reality. Because it was here, in 1644, that Peter Stuyvesant lost his leg.

Peter Stuyvesant’s birthdate is not known – I’ve seen as early as 1592 and as late as 1610, which is a ridiculously large range – and neither is his place of birth, although the consensus is that it’s some town within the Friesland region of the Netherlands. So his age at his first real known event, a 1630 stationing by the Dutch West India Company to Brazil, is also subject to debate. But it was at that point that his career would begin.

In 1638, the Company transferred him to Curacao, which had been established as a Dutch colony four years prior, and in 1642 he became that colony’s governor. (He may have been as young as 32.)

It’s worth taking a moment to talk about the Dutch West India Company and its role in Dutch colonization. Established in 1621 as a trade monopoly for Dutch New World possessions, the company basically ran affairs in said jurisdictions. So Peter Stuyvesant was appointed governor of Curacao (and nearby Bonaire and Aruba) by the Company, not by the Dutch Republic government. It also explains some of why Dutch colonies were sparsely populated and defended, as they were run as trading colonies rather than full population centers, as English colonies tended to be. (The Dutch Republic also had a much smaller population than England, France, or Spain to draw from.) The Dutch West India Company shuttered in 1792.

It was also that same year as his arrival in Curacao, 1638, that Spain conquered Dutch-French held Sint Maarten/Saint-Martin. Six years later, in the midst of the Thirty Years’ War, Peter Stuyvesant was sent to retake the island. With five ships and about 700 men, Stuyvesant landed on the island, and called on the Spanish garrison of what is now Fort Amsterdam just outside Philipsburg (click here to read a more detailed colonial history of the island) to surrender. They did not, so on March 22, 1644, Stuyvesant instructed his guns to open fire.

Well, the Spanish returned fire, and Peter Stuyvesant was hit either by a cannonball or shrapnel from it. His wounded right leg (or totally missing; again, the stories vary) was amputated, hence the missing leg in our pirate statue. (Side note: after this, the Dutch attack stalled, and they sailed away the following month not having conquered the island, although the Spanish would just leave at the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648, allowing the Dutch and French to come back. So yes, the attack was largely pointless, and a mere historic blip made interesting simply due to Stuyvesant’s unfortunate injury.)

Thus injured, Peter Stuyvesant returned to the Netherlands to convalesce, ending his Caribbean tenure and making way for his return to the New World as governor of New Netherlands and New Amsterdam in 1645.

While this period might just be a footnote in the career of Peter Stuyvesant, his fame and place in American history makes it a relevant one. And for those who believe him – as I do – to be one of the more interesting characters in that history (after all, how many surrendering governors just stay in a place following that surrender while under the rule of a new country), the story of Stuyvesant in the Caribbean might be a cool one.

(Also, if you are a student of history and fascinated by Peter Stuyvesant, pop into Seaview Beach Hotel’s Double Dutch Cafe in Philipsburg. Owner John Leone has an awesome collection of books about Stuyvesant, the perfect compliment to your morning coffee there.)

So whether it is with a visit to Fort Amsterdam to see the location of the 1644 battle, or to the “pirate statue” inside the Sint Maarten cruise port, following Peter Stuyvesant here is easy, and it is fun.

As always, thank you to Visit Sint Maarten for hosting my amazing trip!

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