Willem Huyssen van Kattendijke

van Kattendijke was born in Princenhage, Netherlands, as the son of Jan Willem Huyssen van Kattendijke, foreign minister of the Netherlands from 1841 to 1843. He entered the Royal Dutch Navy, becoming a midshipman in 1831, and attended the KIM (Royal Naval Institute) in Medemblik from 1831 to 1839. He became a lieutenant 2nd class in 1839 and served on various vessels until 1842. From 1842 to 1846, he was adjutant to the Director-General of the Navy, and aide to the Minister of the Navy from 1846 to 1849, and as an aide to King William III of the Netherlands from 1846 to 1851. He was promoted to lieutenant-commander 1st class in January 1851.

In 1859, van Kattendijke replaced Pels Rijcken as commandant of the Nagasaki Naval Training Center, teaching the principles of a modern naval science (navigation, cannonry, ship-handling) to samurai including Katsu Kaishu. He arrived as captain of the Kanrin Maru, a steam warship that had been purchased by the ruling Tokugawa shogunate of Japan.[1]

He was promoted to commander on May 1, 1858. On the closure of Nagasaki Naval Training Center in 1859, he returned to the Netherlands. From 14 March 1861 until 6 February 1866 he was Navy Minister for the Netherlands, first in the cabinet of Jacob van Zuylen van Nijevelt and then in the second cabinet of Prime Minister Johan Rudolph Thorbecke. In the latter he also served as interim Foreign Minister from 2 January 1864 to 15 March 1864. He died in The Hague as Navy Minister at the age of 50.

• - Commander of the Order of the Netherlands Lion

• Parliamentarian Documentation Center, University of Leiden (in Dutch)