The naval career of Michiel de Ruyter, one of the most heroic figures in Dutch history, very nearly came to nothing. The son of a seaman, De Ruyter entered the service of the Lampsins brothers while still a child, working as a rope maker at their factory in Vlissingen. His great love was the sea, however, and in 1618 his dream came true, when he began to sail on the merchantmen owned by the Lampsins. One of his first voyages was to the West Indies. De Ruyter quickly worked his way up through the ranks, and in the 1620s he was sailing regularly to Ireland, where he also acted as the Lampsins' agent. In 1633 De Ruyter became first mate on a whaling ship, in the service of the Vlissingen Chamber of the Northern Company. In 1637 he was made captain of a privateer, the first ship under his command. Entering the employ of the Lampsins again in 1640, he sailed for them in the following years to North Africa, Brazil and the Caribbean. These were lucrative times. Because it was customary for seamen to engage in private trade, De Ruyter was able to earn a great deal of money. Business was so good that in 1651 he decided to retire from seafaring. It was only under great pressure that he could be persuaded the following summer, during the First Anglo-Dutch War, to assume the rank of commodore and set out to sea with twenty men-of-war and four fireships, in an attempt to resist the superior English fleet.