Page 150 - Kennemerland VOC ship, 1664 - Published Reports

NAUTICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, 20.1
goods of the captain, officers or passengersP1, then it indicates that the game of colf, known to have been widely and enthusiastically played in the Netherlands at the time, was played also wherever Dutch enthusiasts happened to travel ortobelivingasexpatriates.Iconographyshows that it was played in their own country, out- doors, by Dutch men, women and children of all classes, mostly in the winter and then both on land and on the ice (Fig. 5b,c). There is also abundant evidence for its popularity in countless official records, mostly in the form of retrictive laws and decrees to prevent accidents such as broken windows, traffic problems, rows due to trespassing and injury to passers-by. Because it then required only easily carried equipment and because it was adaptable to almost any terrain, the pastime was indeed ideally suited for travel- ling. It certainly was as addictive also to 17th- century colf-speelers as it is to the 20th-century golfers.
Twodrawingsshowthat 17th-centuryDutch travellers did play golf abroad together, having presumably brought their own implements. One was made by Cornelis Poelenburgh, signed and marked: ‘In Roomen 1622’14]. The drawing (Fig. 7) shows two men playing golf in the countryside near some ruins. The other by Gerrit Berckheijde[’’ofc. 1660shows two Dutch corers playing on the market at Cleve in Germany.
European products. Law was administered by two courts of law, the fort and village bench and the Manor Court of Rensselaerswijck. In these records of the courts the first mentions of kolfare found. The earliest entry dates from December 1650andrelatestoabrawlandafist-fightand kolfclub fight about the non-payment of a glass of brandy by the loser of a game.
A further entry is dated December 1659. It issues an ordinance prohibiting colf within the fort and along the streets of the village on com- plaints of the inhabitants (Van Hengel, 1982). American references of the 18th century are to the export of goffrom Scotland at a time when colf had disappeared from the Netherlands where it had been replaced by kolf(Henderson & Stirk, 1979).
History of the game
The four Lastdrager heads are the only examples known, or reported in the literature that are made of brass and their remaining wooden parts known to be made of Robinia Pseudoacacia are similarly unique. However, bronze or brass heads are clearly shown in iconographical sources where they have not previously been recognized. The vast majority of trade stones on houses, coats of arms, and artistic products, show colf-players in action using bluntly shaped heads that are obviously made of lead, (or of a lead-tinalloy),inthe17thcentury.Therearealso some representations which in the light of the Lastdrager discoveries are unmistakably recog- nizable as brass by their sharp angles in contrast to lead or pewter irons which would not remain sharp after use.
Overseastherearevariousreferencestokolf,
not colf, being played around some taverns in
and near Batavia in the 18thcentury (Puije, J. P.,
pers. comm.). Kolf, of which more will be said
later, is similar to a modern mini-golf game
played with the rules of billiards and involving
the ball ricochetting off poles. It was played on
fenced courts or indoors. After 17OG1720it had
apparently all but replaced the outdoor game of
colfintheNetherlands.Itwasplayedintaverns
‘where one could eat for free but had to pay
one’s drinks very dearly, coffee and tea were not
served...’(DeHaan,1935:332)referringhereto
the East Indies. It is known from official court
recordsthatcolfwaspartoftheleisureactivities
of Dutch citizens residing in North America in
the 17th century. At that time, the Dutch West
IndischeCompaniehadestablishedasettlement
in the New Netherlands and built Fort Orange,
around which grew a village named Beverwijck.
The main business there consisted in buying
beaverskinsfromtheIndiansandinsellingthem onthehistoryofgolf...’(VanHengel,1982:11)
18
Even Steven van Hengel, the master of the experts in early golf and the initiator of serious, scholarly research on the topic in the Netherlands,hadnoknowledgeofanybrassgolf club heads and he once mistakenly described the ‘head’ of the Romeijn de Hooghe print golf player’sclub(Fig.3)asaLodencogorleadclub head, whereas its peculiar triangular form and verysharpedgesundoubtedlyidentifyitasbeing made of harder metal.
As Van Hengel has remarked, after having devotedsome7000hoursofimpeccablescholarly research to the subject over a period of 30 years: ‘Rarely in the course of human history has so much been written by so many on so few facts as