Hello Stouts, I traveled today to Amsterdam and went to the Scheepsvaart (maritime or Ship Navigation, esp. Atlantic) Museum. It is a splendid old granite building on the water a fifteen minute walk from Amsterdam Central Station. I was looking for Penelope's name on a passenger list. I had to find the ship upon which she sailed. The library cost nothing to use. I could not take my purse in, but I got the guilder back from locker storage afterwards. There were two librarians and one serious scholar there. The serious scholar was tapping away into his laptop from books without looking at his keyboard, pouring information in from the books from the shelf. I could tell he was American from his clothes and the copy of the New Yorker under his stack of books. The librarians were helpful but not hopeful. The young woman took me to the books that listed the sailings. It was all in Dutch. The older man straightened me out about how the information was presented. They left me with a dictionary. My eager eyes started to scan for the ships sailing around 1640. Not too many and I knew Penelope's ship did not return so I only copied those. I wrote the name of the ship, the owner, the skipper, the date of sailing and the date of landing. I was only interested in the ones going to Nieuw Amsterdam. I was excited by the Aker, but then I found that it had sailed again. Not Penelope, since hers shipwrecked. It wasn't long until I found this: 107.1 Kath Hans Jelisz. (owner) Jacht (yacht or sailboat) WIC (West Indies Company) 1647 Nieuw Amsterdam voor 06-06-1647 Kreeg in Juni 1647 de opdracht tot kaapveren. November 1648 bij Sandy Hook gestrand. Did not return This has to be Penelope's ship. I scanned the doctoral thesis (in Dutch) of a J.A. Jacobs from Leiden University on the ships sailing to the new world from Holland between 1609-1675. The average was 3.75 ships per year, about five ships per year in the period 1639-1648. It is very unlikely that a ship other than the Kath was beached at Sandy Hook. The librarians shared my excitement and the young woman called her colleague at the KB in the Hague to see if a passenger list was available. The colleague in the Hague was very skeptical and said that almost all of the West Indie Company archives are lost. Nonetheless, there was a small possibility. The older man explained that the verb kaapvaren meant to privateer. This ship had entered into an agreement with the king to allow it to attack a Spanish ship and bring it back to port (sold and money made by all, especially the king). This is opposed to pirating which has no authorization. In 1648 the Peace of Westphalia happened and Holland was no longer at war with Spain. So our Penelope had some possible excitement on her ship. And it was later than we thought. Penelope's ship sailed with 106.1 Swol, owned by Jan Claesen Bol, also the West Indies Company. Amsterdam 1647. Nieuw Amsterdam voor 27-5-1647 (the Europeans do date, month, year) and this was noted about that ship voer samen met de "Kath" (no 107) vanaf Curacao. Werd aan de vice-governor van New Haven verkocht. (This boat went by way of Curacao and then was sold to the vice-governor of New Haven) The young woman librarian told me that she thought Kath might also be Kat, or Cat, in English. She thought that the Charles Gehring project might respond to us now that we had the name of the ship. Maybe I should ask Jeremy Bangs to contact him, scholar to scholar. I will contact Jeremy this weekend. Before I left, I felt emboldened to make a query of the scholar in the library. I did not want to let a golden possibility pass me by. "Excuse me, sir. I am sorry to intrude. Are you perchance with the Charles Gehring project?" "Who is Charles Goring?" I wondered if he was making fun of my woeful Dutch pronunciation. He did not come forward with any more information, in spite of my hopeful and expectant face looking at him. Oh well. I was very happy. This was a very good beginning. The 84 guilder ticket on my car for overstaying my paid parking when I returned to Leiden on the train from Amsterdam only bothered me for a moment. I have stretched my luck in that parking lot many times and I should have been more heads up when I drove in and noticed so many fewer cars, that they had become stricter. It was a slight slap to my triumphant psyche. But, I do not need money. That was a sweet offer. I appreciate the support from all of you. I felt it. Your cousin, Linda Stout Deak --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.236 / Virus Database: 114 - Release Date: 3/5/01