Jan Hendrik van Kinsbergen

Jan Hendrik van Kinsbergen
Born(1735-05-01)1 May 1735
Doesburg, Dutch Republic
Died24 May 1819(1819-05-24) (aged 84)
Apeldoorn, Netherlands
Allegiance Dutch Republic
 Russian Empire
Service/branch Royal Netherlands Navy
 Imperial Russian Navy
RankLieutenant-admiral
Battles/warsBattle of Balaklava (1773)
Combat of Sucukkale
Battle of Dogger Bank (1781)

Jan Hendrik van Kinsbergen, Count of Doggerbank (1 May 1735 – 24 May 1819), was a Dutch naval officer. Having had a good scientific education, Van Kinsbergen was a proponent of fleet modernization and wrote many books about naval organization, discipline and tactics.

In 1773, he twice defeated an Ottoman fleet while in Russian service. Returning to the Dutch Republic in 1775, he became a Dutch naval hero in 1781, fighting the Royal Navy, and gradually attained the position of commander-in-chief as a lieutenant-admiral. When France conquered the Republic in 1795 he was fired by the new revolutionary regime and prevented from becoming Danish commander-in-chief, but the Kingdom of Holland reinstated him in 1806, in the rank of fleet marshal, and made him a count. He was again degraded by the French Empire in 1810; after the liberation the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1814 honoured him with his old rank of lieutenant-admiral.

Van Kinsbergen, in his later life a very wealthy man, was also noted for his philanthropy, supporting poor relief, naval education, the arts and the sciences.


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