Gannascus
Gannascus was a Cananefaat, the Cananefaten were a Germanic tribe located in modern day Zuid-Holland, the Netherlands. For those who want to know more about this tribe, I have written a post about them a few months ago so you can search for it.
Back to Gannascus the Cananefaat. Gannascus served in the Roman army during the first century. He however deserted the army around 46AD and fled to the North, to Frisii territory. The Cananefaten lived in Germania Inferior, controlled by the Roman empire under Roman Governor Sanquinius Maximus.
Sanquinius died around the same time Gannascus deserted the army. His death weakened the militairy structure of Germania Inferior. Gannascus saw this weakness and decided to exploit this by becoming a pirate (or as some have claimed, the very first viking).
It took a period of time before Sanquinius' successor was announced, Corbulo. During this period of time, Gannascus gathered a group of Frisii and Chauci raiders and they provided the ships since both the Frisii and Chauci were excellent seafarers. Well I think you could hardly call it ships, Tacitus described how Gannascus used large canoes (the same type I wrote about earlier this week) to raid settlements on the coasts of Brittannia and Gallia.
Gannascus, as a Cananefaat, possessed a lot of knowledge about the coastal areas and information about Roman troops from his time in the Roman army. His raiders operated from Frisia and from there they terrorised the Roman controlled area of the North Sea.
Gannascus was a very succesfull raider until Corbulo became the new governor. Corbulo immediately sent Roman patrol ships to patrol the Frisii waters. Eventually Corbulo managed to destroy Gannascus' raiding fleet and Gannascus himself fled to Chauci territory.
Corbulo set up a trap for the raider by trying to negotiate with the Chauci. Gannascus was murdered by Roman envoys shortly later. This sparked great anger amongst the Frisii and Chauci and it threatened to escalate into an armed conflit. Rome did not want another war with the Germanic tribes and ordered Corbulo to stop all military actions in Germania. This came as a surprise to Corbulo since the Roman emperor, Claudius, who gave this order, was the brother of the famous Germanicus who led several succesfull expeditions into Germania.
Emperor Claudius rather wanted to focus on conquering Britannia instead of battling the Germanics. Claudius pretty much viewed the Northern Netherlands as a miserable piece of land not worth all the trouble. After Claudius' orders, all Roman camps, forts and strogholds above the Rhine, including the fort Flevum which I wrote about last week, were abandoned permanently and contact between the Romans and the Frisii decreased considerably. The Romans never made another expedition into Germania.
In short, Gannascus can be viewed as the very first viking, raiding settlements in modern day England and France. His raids were so succesfull that the Roman emperor eventually decided to withdrawl completely from the Northern Netherlands resulting in the Frisii tribe to become completely free again. Gannascus is also the first recorded Dutch pirate.
Here are photos of: A Roman ship used during that time era, A map showing the tribes in modern day Netherlands, A map that shows the location of the Cananafaten, Depiction of viking sea raiders since there are no images of raiding Chauci or Frisii, Statue of Corbulo, An old photo of people in a canoe, this is how the raiders would have looked like according to Tacitus.