On 8 October 1608 a small fleet under command of Vice Admiral Simon Jansz Hoen left Makian and sailed to Ternate. The Dutch landed at Takome and started with the construction of a fort on the ruins of an older, probably Portuguese, fort on a 20 meter high Hill. On 16 October, the defenders managed to defeat an attack of 80 Spaniards and 300 to 400 mardijkers. The new fort, named Willemstad , had five bastions. It had a garrison of 100 men under the command of a captain and a lieutenant. The local people, who had fled because of the war, returned to Takome. The town was according to contemporary sources “a beautiful place with neat streets”. It was surrounded by a stone wall with a bastion on the landward side. There were about 1000 people there. Takome was an important place as collecting point of cloves. With the decline of the harvest of cloves the importance of the place also declined. In 1633 there were only 18 soldiers left in the fort. Johan Ottens (Governor of the Moluccas, 1633-1635) proposed to further reduce the number of soldiers. In 1651 the last soldiers were withdrawn on orders of Governor Caspar van Boogaarde (1633-1635). The fort fell into disrepair. In 1690 an official order was given to demolish fort Willemstad. The survey of the site by PDA in 2007 discovered some overgrown ruins.