"Bluefields": Captain Willem Albertsen Blauvelt

“Bluefields,” the story of Captain Willem Albertsen Blauvelt, is a documentary biography with a summary account of the world he lived in. It is about a seventeenth century adventurer, a Dutchman who sailed a French ship and was listed among the English buccaneers, who called him Blewfield or Bluefield. He lived most of his life in the West Indies, where his name, “Bluefields,” identifies geographic localities in both Nicaragua and Jamaica. However, most of the documents regarding him are found in the Dutch colonial records of New Netherland. Willem Albertsen Blauvelt came from Monickendam, a small port city north of Amsterdam, in the province of North Holland. He most likely descended from Pieter Blaeuvelt of Enkhuysen (ca. 1480 – after 1542), the founder of the singular Blauvelt family in the Netherlands. The New Netherland records document Captain Willem Blauvelt’s privateering cruises to the West Indies and the prizes he captured. Related records include his recruitment of investors and crew members for his ship, La Garce, and attendant business, such as powers of attorney, wills, etc... The records that link Willem Albertsen Blauvelt to Bluefields in Nicaragua are limited to a few mentions in the records of the Providence Island Company in London (beginning in 1637) and the diary of Nathaniel Butler, Governor of Providence Island (1639-40). Willem’s link to Bluefields in Nicaragua must be shared with his father, Albertus Blauvelt, who was the first to explore the area. There is only one contemporary document, a 1663 list of English buccaneers, that associates Willem Blauvelt, as “Captain Blewfield,” with Jamaica. Yet, he was the namesake of Bluefields Bay, the community of Bluefields, and the Parish of Bluefields in the island country of Jamaica. Read more