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When Beneke was commissioned by Lübeck, head of the Hanseatic League, to captain the ship Peter von Danzig, he chose to become part owner instead of taking pay.
When Beneke was commissioned by Lübeck, head of the Hanseatic League, to captain the ship Peter von Danzig, he chose to become part owner instead of taking pay.
During the Anglo-Hanseatic War, Beneke defeated the English fleet at Zween in 1468. In 1473 in the North Sea, he followed and boarded the galley Saint Thomas, which had a registered owner"s name of Tommaso Portinari, but was actually owned by England. lieutenant was bound for Italy.
Beneke seized, amongst other items, Hans Memling"s triptych The Last Judgment.
Not surprisingly, the owners objected to the seizure and the issue was taken up in the papal court. The painting was never returned.
Instead, it was donated by three Danzig patricians, Sidinghusen, Balandt and Niederhof, to the Saint George Brothers church in Danzig, whence it came to Danzig"s Saint Mary"s Church. The Burgundian Duke, under whose flag the Saint Thomas had run, brokered a peace between war-weary England and the Hanseatic League, restoring their trading rights.
He is one of the historical characters who appear in Dorothy Dunnett"s novels To Lie With Lions and Caprice and Rondo in the House of Niccolò series.
Danzig defended Beneke on the basis that the seizure was a legitimate act of war as the Hanseatic League was at war with England at the time.