Engelbertus Lucas (c. 5 March 1747 in Schiedam – 21 June 1797 in Schiedam) was a Dutch naval officer, who as a rear-admiral, commanding a squadron of the Batavian Navy, was forced to surrender that squadron on 17 August 1796 at Saldanha Bay (Cape Colony) to a Royal Navy squadron under Vice-Admiral George Elphinstone.
Personal life
Lucas was the son of Abraham Lucas and Elizabeth Bogaert. He was born before 5 March 1747, but baptized on that date. On 4 February 1774 he married Catharina Prins. They had two children, among whom their son, also named Engelbertus, born in 1785, who would become a lieutenant-admiral in the Royal Dutch Navy and Minister for the Dutch Navy from 1849 to 1851. His wife was a business woman in Schiedam who earned a good living as a distiller of Dutch gin. Her annual income in 1798 was 2,000 guilders according to a tax dispute, settled in 1801.
Career
Lucas from early youth was employed on Dutch merchant ships, but was commissioned as a naval lieutenant by the Admiralty of Rotterdam of the Dutch Republic in 1772. Despite this navy commission he was employed as commodore of a fleet of private whalers, sent out to the Greenland waters by Thomas Pigeaud, a Rotterdam ship owner, from 1777 to 1780. In 1781 (during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War) he received the same commission (though not rank) at the Admiralty. As such he made a final whaling voyage in 1784 for a Schiedam shipowner. On five voyages under his command the Dutch whalers caught a total of 35 whales.
On 20 August 1781, as master of the frigate Waakzaamheid, now Commander (cdr.) Lucas helped save the crew of the ship Embdens Welvaren that had foundered on the Maasvlakte, then a dangerous area of the sea before the Maas river estuary, for which he received an award in silver.
On 18 December 1785 cdr. Lucas, now in command of the frigate Scipio (20), left the Maas roadstead to take part in the expedition of Commodore Willem Silvester to the Dutch East Indies. He only joined Silvester's squadron at the Cape of Good Hope, however, completing the voyage to the Cape alone. Because of an accident with Silvester's ship of the line Holland at the Cape, which necessitated the reorganisation of the expedition, Lucas was again sent alone on Scipio to Ceylon, where he awaited the other ships. This shows that despite having no experience with the route to the East Indies, Lucas was an accomplished navigator.
After arrival at Batavia on 30 December 1786 the squadron was divided in two divisions, and the division that contained Scipio was sent on 4 February 1787 under captain Anastasius van Halm to the Moluccas, where it cruised and showed the flag for about eight months. After its return to Batavia the Dutch Indies government sent it to Malacca to reinforce the other division under Commodore Silvester, who was already lying there, in connection with a punitive expedition for the VOC against Riouw. Next Lucas, together with captain Abraham Kuvel of Valk, helped prevent a dangerous insurrection, in connection with a succession crisis in the sultanate of Solo in the latter part of 1788. The Scipio returned to the Netherlands in the Spring of 1789.
Because of this three-and-a-half year absence from the Dutch Republic, Lucas missed the Patriot revolution of 1785 and its suppression in 1787, with its subsequent purge of the officer corps of the navy of Patriot sympathizers. This may have saved his commission, as he later became known as an ardent supporter of the Patriot cause, which helped advance his career after the Batavian Revolution of 1795. In February 1795 he was appointed by the States General of the Batavian Republic in a commission, chaired by Henricus Aeneae, to report on the state of the fleet. The commission soon reported that the state was dire, and that many ships needed extensive repairs to become operational again. The report formed the basis for an extensive program of naval construction in 1795–96.
Saldanha-Bay surrender
Subsequently, Lucas, now a kapitein ter zee (ktz) was given command of the ship of the line Dordrecht. This ship became, end of 1795, part of a squadron, further composed of the ships of the line Revolutie (ktz. Rynbende) and Tromp (cdr. Valkenburg), and the frigates Castor (cdr. Claris), Brave (cdr. Zoetemans), Sirene (cdr. de Cerf), Bellona (cdr. de Falck), Havik (cdr. Besemer), and the armed VOC ship Vrouwe Maria (lt. Barbier), that was destined for the Dutch East Indies. Lucas was given overall command of the squadron, apparently because he was the only senior officer available at the time (after many "old-navy officers hab been let go after the revolution) who had experience on a voyage to the Indies