Netherlands: Notable Explorers and Merchants

1500s - 1597 - Cornelius Wytfliet (All Facts)

• Dutch Geographer

• He is best known for having produced the first atlas of the Americas

  • He (nearly correctly) estimated (just before his death) that the undiscovered continent that was Australia covered a fifth of the world’s entire surface

1550 - 1597 - Willem Barentsz (All Facts)

• Dutch Explorer, Navigator, and Cartographer

• On his third voyage to China to search for a northeast passage,

  • He discovered Spitzbergen and Bear Island before his ship was trapped in ice-floes, forcing him and his men to spend the winter in the Arctic

  • Gerrit de Veer, the historian of his expedition, wrote a moving description of the men’s ordeal by cold and hunger

    • When it was clear that they were trapped, they built a house from tree-roots

      • He wrote about this that “it froze so hard, that as we put a nail in our mouths, there would be ice thereon when we took it out again and make the blood follow”

  • They were attacked by polar bears and forced to eat foxes as their supplies ran out

  • They were nearly suffocated by smoke when snow covered their hut

• He died while on his voyage to China around the north of Russia in the Arctic to search for a northeast passage

  • The course took him in a more northerly direction than hitherto

  • Despite his death and the intense cold, there were 16 survivors of the expedition, who managed to celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany

    • Gerrit de Veer was one of them, and he wrote that, “for several days we had not drunk and so that night we made merry and drunk to the three kings, and therewith had two pounds of meal whereof we made pancake with oil and every man a white biscuit which we soaked in wine”

1565 - 1599 - Cornelius van Houtman (All Facts)

• Dutch Merchant

  • He was from Holland but lived for a long time in Lisbon

• He commanded the first Dutch expedition to the East Indies

  • This was a two-year voyage to the Far East Spice Islands

  • This voyage left the Portuguese fearful for it threatened their monopoly of the Eastern spice trade

  • He sailed from Holland with four ships

  • He was helped on his voyage by the book “Itinerio” by Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, a fellow Dutchman

  • They sailed around the Cape of Good Hope

  • He dropped anchor at Bantam in Java after a year, where the local Portuguese made him welcome

  • However, the Portuguese became hostile when they realized what he and the Dutch were doing there

  • Nevertheless, he outwitted the Portuguese and persuaded the sultan of Bantam to sign a treaty which helped him depart with a cargo of spices

  • His return voyage home was marked by losses of ships and men, but his tailes of rich trading opportunities fired up Amsterdam’s merchants with enthusiasm

• He was a prosperous carrier of pepper, nutmeg, and other spices from Lisbon to countries of northern Europe

  • However, this came to an abrupt end when King Philip II of Spain annexed Portugal and unified the Iberian Peninsula he barred the Dutch from trading with the Portuguese because of their rebellion against his rule in the Netherlands

  • He therefore resolved to get into the eastern trade on his own account like many other Dutchmen of his day

• His voyages thus helped in the planning by the Dutch to found trading companies, described as “Van Ferne” (of the distant seas)

1563 - 1611 - Jan Huyghen van Linschoten (All Facts)

• Dutch Merchant and Writer

• His book “Itinerio” helped Cornelius van Houtman on his expedition to the East Indies

1566 - 1615 - Wybrand van Warwijck (All Facts)

• Dutch Admiral during the reign of Maurice of Nassau

• He took possession of an island which he called “Mauritius” in honor of (“Stadtholder”) Maurice of Nassau

1585 - 1616 - Jacob Le Maire (All Facts)

• Dutch Explorer, Navigator, and Mariner

• He circumnavigated the Earth

• He discovered a new route to the Pacific Ocean for Europeans, round a cape south of the Straits of Magellan which he named Cape Horn

1567 - 1625 - Willem Schouten (All Facts)

• Dutch Explorer and Navigator for the Dutch East India Company

• He discovered a new route to the Pacific Ocean for Europeans, round a cape south of the Straits of Magellan which he named Cape Horn

1567 - 1627 - Adriaen Block (All Facts)

• Dutch Private Trader and Privateer

• He returned from North America to Amsterdam after a voyage, with maps of the coastline of Manhattan (New York)