The Nassau van Groningen was a ship of the Dutch West India Company (WIC). It left the Netherlands on January 12th, 1636, with Brazil as destination (according to the ship list by de Laet). The addition 'van Groningen' was because this ship sailed for the chamber Stad en Lande, which was from the city of Groningen and there was another ship that was also called Nassau that sailed for the WIC, which appears in the same list.

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On January 21st, 1638, the ship left from Brazil for the return voyage to the Netherlands. According to several sources, the ship did not make it to its destination:

Notarial deed from Amsterdam:

Teunis Erasmus, from Eelst, who sailed as a musketeer to Brazil with the ship Amsterdam in 1635 and who returned here on the ship the Nassau yet the same ship sinking, he arrived in Ireland with the boat and from there to here, old around 37 years.

And he has testified on the request of Lijsbet Cameer, widow of the late Robbert du Fran van Betune, that he sailed besides him, the witness, on the ship the Nassau from Brazil until the aforementioned ship sank.

Notarial deed from Rotterdam:

Asked for verification (presenting himself to the court to do so) het states, testifies and declares that it is true, how he the presenter sailed with the ship the Nassau, on which was skipper Gerrit Cornelisz van Hulpendam, sailing from Paraíba in the West Indies to Holland and that he, the presenter, coming with the same ship around thirty miles outside of the coast, outside of Ireland, in the Spanish Sea, that the same ship sprung a leak due to bad weather and that caused the same ship to perish. See under references for the deeds.

The first deed is a statement from a musketeer who was on board mentioning the sinking of the ship around Ireland. The second deed provides more information: how the ship sprung a leak due to a storm at 30 miles from the Irish coast and sank. With this designation of miles, probably leagues of about 4.5 km were intended.

Rijksmuseum

Owner: WIC chamber Stad en Lande

Tonnage: 200 last

Armament: 6 bronze cannon, 16 iron cannon

Crew: 67 sailors, 25 soldiers

Slave voyages

According to slavevoyages.org, it is possible that the Nassau van Groningen made a slave voyage in 1638 from the Gold coast, the Bight of Benin and the Bight of Biafra to Pernambuco. Of the 260 people that were taken on board on this voyage, 229 survived the voyage. Because there was another ship with the name Nassau sailing for the WIC, it is not clear which Nassau this concerns.

• stadsarchief Rotterdam, Notarëel Archief
  ref. no. 18/416, akte 129, pp fo. 226 v, scan 120-121
• Stadsarchief Amsterdam, Notariëel Archief
  ref. no. 5057/1283
• De Laet, Johannes (1644)
  Historie ofte iaerlijck verhael van de verrichtinghen der geoctroyeerde West-Indische Compagnie, zedert haer begin, tot het eynde van 't jaer sesthien-hondert ses-en-dertich
• Slavevoyages
  Slavevoyages