Episode 2 of 2

Van Speijk's Gunboat Explosion

Name: Van Speijk's Gunboat Explosion
Start: 1831-02-05
End: 1831-02-05
Location: Antwerp

When: 5 February 1831
Where: Antwerp
Part of: Austrian suppression of the 1831 Italian revolts and Gregory XVI's election

Jan van Speijk blew up his gunboat in Antwerp on 5 February 1831 rather than surrender to Belgian revolutionaries.

Van Speijk, who despised the Belgian independence movement, was ordered to inspect ship cargoes at Oosterweel. He had previously written that he would rather die than become an 'infamous Brabander'. On 5 February 1831, he fulfilled this vow by blowing up his own ship.

Sources

Jan van Speijk Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-06

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.