had a small church built out of cane and with a thatched roof, from which Eberling and Dannefeld preached. There was a supposed deposit of gold at the river, so the Duke of Courland resolved to launch a full expedition to the Gambia. As few Courlanders had experience of Africa, he was forced to rely on foreigners. On 6 September 1652, he appointed the Dutchman Jacob du Moulin as his Director in the Gambia, while a Courlander, Frederick William Trotta von Treyden was appointed as his lieutenant. Three ships, the Crocodile, the Patientia, and the Chur, were placed at Moulin's disposal. There were a number of issues with the expedition, and in December 1652, Treyden wrote to the Duke of Courland describing Moulin as a "light-hearted knave". After setting sail in March 1653, the expedition shortly after ran out of supplies and was forced to return. Moulin was subsequently arrested for his various misdeeds, including embezzling the Duke's money. A second expedition was attempted in 1654, under the command of a Danish explorer, Philip von Seitz. However, Seitz abandoned the expedition in Hamburg, managing to extract 15,000 rixdollars from the Duke. After these two failed expeditions, the Duke turned to his own people. Captain Otto Stiel, a Courlander who had previously visited the Gambia, was appointed as its Governor and as Commandant of St Andrew's Island. In 1658, the Duke of Courland and his family were captured by a Swedish mercenary after becoming embroiled in the “Deluge”, the Swedish invasion of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and communication between Courland and St Andrew's Island was cut off for around two years. As a result of this, the Dutch West India Company made an agreement with the Duke's representative in Holland, Henry Momber, by which it would both resupply and take over St Andrew's Island. Momber agreed, in the absence of any instructions from the Duke. The Dutch sent a ship of soldiers to the island to seize it. Stiel objected, but on learning that the Dutch West India Company would guarantee them their pay, the garrison mutinied and returned to Holland on the ship that had brought out the new garrison. In 1660, the Dutch lost control of the island after a French privateer in Swedish service had surprised the fort at night, expelled the garrison and plundered the island. The privateer subsequently met a merchant ship of the Groningen chamber of