Admiralty of Amsterdam
The territory for which Amsterdam was responsible was limited to the city itself, the Gooi region, the islands of Texel, Vlieland and Terschelling, the province of Utrecht and the Gelderland quarters of Arnhem and of the Graafschap (county) of Zutphen.
When the "Committee for Naval Affairs" (Comité tot de Zaken der Marine) replaced the Admiralty Colleges on 27 February 1795 during the reforms by the Batavian Republic, the lower civil servants were kept on, but the officers were dismissed.
The region's West Frisian towns played a wayward role, and this was aggravated when they engaged with Amsterdam in a dispute over the Republic's admiralty administration.
That there was a need for reorganisation was not contested, Leicester having placed naval and maritime affairs under a single college designed to curb Holland's influence.
[2] Hoorn, Enkhuizen and Medemblik rejected the idea that commissioned officers should be appointed by the States of Holland instead of the cities themselves.
In the end, the West Frisian cities gave up their resistance to external appointments, and in 1589 Hoorn instituted its own admiralty college.
On the site of the new 1924 development stood a number of fine houses built by Philips Vingboons, previously used by high officials of the Admiralty.
Supervision of the fleet blockading the Dunkirkers was no longer placed in the hands of the five admiralty colleges but given to a central organization, which was to operate from a single base at Hellevoetsluis by directors specially appointed for the purpose.
The object was to increase efficiency, but the system did not work well and Holland, notably Amsterdam unser burgomaster Andries Bicker, put up effective resistance, causing it to be abandoned.
The Rhine customs officer, however, whose jurisdiction extended as far as Lobith on the border with the Holy Roman Empire (since 1648), was under the authority of the Admiralty of Rotterdam.
The 's Lands Zeemagazijn was the arsenal of the Amsterdam Admiralty, built in nine months and containing enormous supplies for the building and equipping of warships.
Johann Jakob Wilhelm Heinse saw, when he was travelling in Holland: "wood, coils of rope of 150 fathoms in length and as thick as a woman's leg, all sorts of sails, bullets, anchors, cannon, muskets and guns, lamps, compasses and hourglasses".
On 12 August 1655, the admiralty was given the entire western strip of Kattenburg island for the construction of a warehouse and timber-wharf, in exchange for so far enclosed grounds it had occupied in the area.
The admiralty's yards were initially at Uilenburg (Amsterdam), but moved around 1620 to Marken and around 1657 to the Eastern Islands (Oostelijke Eilanden), Kattenburg and Oostenburg.
