When one proceeds from the Cape Verde region to the Gold Coast one finds that Dutch influence was especially strong. From Elmina and other forts the Dutch commanded the largest portion of the trade along this coast. However, the Danes, Swedes and English had long maintained a commerce on the Gold Coast where they also had established a number of factories. In 1658, Hendrik Carloff, an adventurer carrying a Danish commission, attacked and made himself master of Cape Corse which had been in the possession of the Swedes since 1651. After entering into friendly relations with the Dutch at Elmina,[30] Carloff returned to Europe, leaving his lieutenant, Samuel Smits, in charge of the fort. Fearing that the Swedes and the English, who had entered into an alliance, might endeavor to regain Cape Corse, Carloff advised Smits to surrender the fort to Jasper van Heusden, director general of the West India Company on the Gold Coast. The instructions were unnecessary, as Smits had surrendered Cape Corse to the Dutch on April 15, 1659. In return for this fort Smits and one of his compatriots received 5,000 and 4,000 gulden respectively.[31] At the time when Hendrik Carloff seized Cape Corse the English had there[32] a factory to which they traded from their main fort at Kormentine.[33] On May 1, 1659, very soon after the Dutch obtained possession of the place, the English factory with all its goods was burned by the natives, perhaps at the instigation of the Dutch. The Hollanders, however, were not without misfortunes of their own, for after disavowing Smits' contract, the Danes sent a new expedition to Guinea which seized a hill commanding Cape Corse, on which they built the fort of Fredericksburg. Furthermore, the Swedes who had been dispossessed of Cape Corse by the Danes with the assistance of natives, toward the end of 1660, drove the Dutch out of Cape Corse. Since the Swedes were insignificant in number the fort very shortly fell into the control of the vacillating Negro inhabitants. As soon as the natives obtained possession of Cape Corse they permitted the English to rebuild their factory at that place. An agreement was also made by which, upon the payment of a certain sum of money, the fort was to be surrendered to the English.[34] Since the Dutch maintained that Cape Corse belonged exclusively to them by reason of their contract with the Danes, they determined to prevent the English from obtaining possession of it. Furthermore, in order to exclude other Europeans from trading to any part of the Gold Coast, the Dutch declared a blockade on the whole coast, in which Komenda and other villages as well as Cape Corse were situated. To carry out this policy they kept several ships plying up and down the coast.