IN SCHOOL they don’t seem to teach kids much about it anymore, but Dutch prince Willem III of Orange was king of America for thirteen years. Remember? 1672: Holland was “desperate, despondent, disconsolate.” Nah, not really, a year later the whole country was firmly back in the saddle, and soon enough the Dutch prince became king of England, and therefore also of America.
At Castine on the coast of Maine, the ship Flying Horse docked. A French fort with thirty soldiers and one cannon stood there at the time. Captain Jurriaan Arnouts had brought one hundred men and two Dutch pirates with him. They hijacked the cannon, turned it around and crumbled the entire fort to smithereens.
The captain proclaimed that Maine was now Nova Hollandia, wrote it on a document, put it in a bottle, and buried it in the ground, right where the sign on the photo stands. “For Willem,” he added.
And that was that.
