[3] Colve was involved in the recapture of Suriname from the English by a Zeeland squadron led by Abraham Crijnssen in March 1667 during the Second Anglo-Dutch War.

He was eventually exonerated on the exact day prince William III of Orange was inaugurated as "First Noble"[a]in the States of Zeeland in 1668, in defiance of the Perpetual Edict.

[e] In Virginia Evertsen and Jacob Binckes, the commander of another Dutch squadron, from the Admiralty of Amsterdam, that had joined the Zeeland squadron in the Caribbean, learned that governor Lovelace of colonial New York, which only recently had been New Netherland, before the English had captured it in 1664, was absent in Hartford, Connecticut, conferring with the governor of that colony, John Winthrop the Younger.

Arriving before Fort James, which had been severely bombarded by the Dutch squadron (now 19 ships, including prizes) he demanded its surrender.

They were made prisoners of war and housed for the night in the Dutch Reformed Church within the wall of the fort.The next day they were brought aboard the ships.

[14][15] After the city was thus taken over, Evertsen and Binckes formed a krijgsraad (council of war) in which Colve also took a seat, that provisionally governed the colony.

The communities were to this end to elect commissions that would nominate dubbeltallen (double lists of nominees) for the krijgsraad to select from.

[j] Most communities, intimidated by the Dutch military presence at New Orange, at least promised compliance, though in some cases with evident misgivings.

He ostensibly restored the laws as they had been under the regime of the Dutch West India Company (WIC), but in reality he assumed more powers than previous Directors had done.

He met resistance in especially the eastern part of Long Island, an area that was also of interest to governor Winthrop of the Connecticut Colony.

The proprietor of the Maryland Colony, Lord Baltimore had even in 1672, while the area was in English hands, claimed the Delaware part of the proprietorship of New Jersey.

This changed, however, after an English privateer took the buss Expectation, a prize that Colve had sent to the Netherlands with important correspondence, in November 1673.

Colve sent the snauw, called Zeehond, on a privateering mission on the Long Island Sound, which captured four Massachusetts ketches in retaliation.

Travelers were enjoined to surrender letters they brought with them to the authorities on entering the colony on pain of a fine, payable in beaver skins at the Wampum exchange rate.

The garrison had grown to 800 men and the wall was bristling with 180 great guns, while the warship Suriname, anchored before the fort, added its own fire power.

To make sure that a sufficient number of boats would be available for the evacuation, Colve ordered that small craft would be concentrated behind a defensive float outside the harbor, under the protection of the guns of the warship and the roundel of the fort.

Consequently, the States General in April 1674 ordered the Amsterdam and Zeeland admiralties to make preparations for the peaceful transfer of power in New Orange to the English.

[r] The Dutch colonists reacted with rage to the news at the time, because they felt betrayed by the States General and threatened to take out their anger on Colve.