IN SCHOOL they don’t tell you much about it, but Dutch prince Willem III was king of America for thirteen years. Remember the one thing that Dutch kids did learn in school? Disaster year 1672: Holland was “helpless, powerless, hopeless.” No way, a year later the entire country was firmly back in the saddle, and the Dutch prince shortly thereafter became king of England, and thus also of America.
At Castine on the coast of Maine, the ship Flying Horse anchored. At the time, a French fort with thirty soldiers and one cannon stood there. Captain Jurriaan Arnouts had brought one hundred men and two Dutch pirates. They hijacked the cannon, turned it backwards and shot the fort to smithereens.
The captain proclaimed that Maine was now Nova Hollandia, wrote it on a sheet of paper, put it in a bottle, and buried it in the ground. “For Willem,” he added.
And that was that.
