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About Captain Diana...
An excerpt from the entry on Captain Diana in Wild and
Strange Women of New York by Terese Harrington and Drusilla
Howe, Comari Press, May 1998.
"Diana Elsbeth Verhulst was born in New Amsterdam in
1634. She was the eldest of the seven daughters of Peter and Lina
Verhulst. Peter Verhulst worked for the Dutch West India Company as
a trader and fur merchant. He often traveled through the
territories and provinces that now overlie New York and
Pennsylvania trading for furs with the indigenous Native American
peoples. Following the wild call of her heart, Diana more than not
accompanied her father on these trading expeditions. As such, she
garned a list of uncommon skills: hunting and wilderness survival,
herbal medicine and lore, conversant in several Native American
languages, and a stunning knowledge of every waterway, lake, and
river in New York and Pennsylvania.
Diana, like her mother and sisters, had a deep and
unabiding love for all botanical pursuits. While traveling with her
father, she collected not only seeds and roots to bring back to her
mother and sisters but also collected plant and medicinal knowledge
from the people she and her father traded with. Diana's mother and
sisters used the plant material and knowledge Diana brought back to
grow plants and prepare medicines for the other Dutch colonists as
western-styled medicines and preparations were expensive and half a
world away. Lina and her daughters were highly valued members of
the community."
An exerpt from Roger Pickman's Buccaneers of Western New
York, Golden Goblin Press, 2001.
"Captain Diana Elsbeth Verhulst was Western New York's
Grande Damme buccaneer. Her unconvential upbringing gave her an
intimate knowledge of the waterways in New York. Her pirating
career began as a privateer during the Anglo-Dutch Wars. She
commanded numerous different vessels that attacked English military
and merchant vessels throughout the New York and Pennsylvania
waterways.
Captain Diana one was of the most feared of the Western
New York pirates. What struck fear in the hearts of the European
captains most was that she crewed her ships with mainly the angered
and ill-treated First Nations peoples of the New England, Central
Atlantic, and Great Lakes regions. Her crew was fiercely loyal and
attacked with seemingly no fear. She and her crew were well-liked
and supported by the other First Nations peoples of the areas in
which she sailed -- often sharing the booty and goods from the
ships they attacked with these people.
Diana was noted for striking without warning and
disappearing back into the mists without a trace. Her most famous
attack was when she was captaining the ship White Hawk on the
waters of Canandaigua Lake. In the early hours of a misty October
morning she attacked the English ship Resolute near Squaw Island.
The survivors remember a mist-choked fall morning and an eerie
drumming sound rising up from the lake depths. On the heels of the
lake drums the White Hawk burst forth from the mists, cannons
blazing. On the third volley the powder magazine of the Resolute
was hit. The burned hulk of the Resolute is still visible on calm
mornings at the bottom of Canandaigua Lake."