Piet Hein

Piet Hein was a Dutch admiral (1577-1629).
As a director of the Dutch West India Company, in 1628 he captured 22 Portuguese ships off Brazil and a Spanish bullion fleet off Cuba. De Dutch call this the "Zilver vloot". A famous song was written about this event (click on the header). It is being played by a Orchestra in Japan today, and one of the members works for Yokogawa, he asked me to find out more about this event, and the background of Piet.

Piet Hein in the Dutch Sugar trade:
Since the Portugese owned half of the world, and the Spanish the other half, they set up Sugar plants in Brazil, by 1570 they had 60 plants operated by using slaves in place called Pernambuco. That was until Piet Hein landed and took over most of the plants. In the 17th century the Dutch became the center of European sugar trading with over 1000 refineries.