On the return journey across the channel their ship was captured by Dunkirk pirates, who plundered the ship but eventually released them to return to England.
This incident was comparable to English admiral Sir Richard Grenville and the Revenge and created a mystique around the Dunkirkers, and the figure of Jacobsen in particular, at the very beginning of the second phase (1621–1648) of the Eighty Years' War.
His greatest successes were in 1628 preventing the interception by the Dunkirkers of the captured treasure fleet of Piet Heyn and in 1636 the capture of the famous corsair Jacob Collaert.