The Golden Book of the Dutch Navigators

by Hendrik Willem Van Loon

If there were any such land still to be discovered by any European people, the Dutch East India Company decided that they ought to benefit by it. Therefore their directors studied the question with great care and deliberation.

A number of expeditions were sent out one after the other. In the year 1636 two small vessels were ordered to make a careful examination of the island of New Guinea, which was supposed to be the peninsula part of the unknown Southern continent. But New Guinea itself is so large that the two vessels, after spending a very long time along the coast, were obliged to return without any definite information.

Anthony van Diemen, the governor-general of the Dutch East Indies, however, was a man of stubborn purpose, and he refused to discontinue his search until he should have positive knowledge upon this puzzling subject. Six years after this first attempt he appointed a certain Franz Jacobsz Visscher to study the question theoretically from every possible angle and to write him a detailed report. Visscher had crossed the Pacific Ocean a few years after the discovery of Strait Le Maire, and he had visited Japan and China, and was familiar with all the better known parts of the Asiatic seas. He set to work, and he gave the following advice. The ships of the company must take the island of Mauritius as their starting-point. They must follow a southeastern course until they should reach the 54 degree of latitude. If, in the meantime, they had not found any land, they must turn toward the east until they should reach New Guinea, and from there, using this peninsula or island or whatever it was as a starting-point, they should establish its correct relation to the continent of which it was supposed to be a solid part. If it should prove to be an island, then the ships must chart the strait which separated it from the continent, and they must find out whether these did not offer a short route from India to Strait Le Maire and the Atlantic Ocean.

Van Diemen studied those plans carefully. He approved of them, and ordered two ships to be made ready for the voyage. They were small ships. There was the Heemskerk, with sixty men, and the Zeehaen, with only forty. Visscher was engaged to act as pilot and general adviser of the expedition. The command was given to one Abel Tasman. Like most of the great men of the republic, he had made his own career. Born in an insignificant village in the northern part of the republic somewhere in the province of Groningen,—the name of the village was Lutjegat,—he had started life as a sailor, had worked his way up through ability and force of character, and in the early thirties of the seventeenth century he had gone to India. Thereafter he had spent most of his life as captain or mate of different ships of the company. He had been commander of an expedition sent out to discover a new gold-land, which, according to rumor, must be situated somewhere off the coast of Japan, and although he did not find it,—since it did not exist,—he had added many new islands to the map of the company. Since he was a man of very independent character, he was specially fitted to be in command of an expedition which might meet with many unforeseen difficulties.

His instructions gave him absolute freedom of action. The chief purpose of this expedition was a scientific one. Professional draughtsmen were appointed to accompany the Heemskerk and make careful maps of everything that should be discovered. Special attention must be paid to the currents of the ocean and to the prevailing direction of the wind. Furthermore, a careful study of the natives must be made. Their mode of life, their customs, and their habits must be investigated, and they must be treated with kindness. If the natives should come on board and should steal things, the Hollanders must not mind such trifles. The chief aim of the expedition was to establish relations with whatever races were to be discovered. Of course there was little hope of finding anything except long-haired Papuans, but if by any chance Tasman should discover the unknown southland and find that this continent contained the rumored riches, he must not show himself desirous of getting gold and silver. On the contrary, he must show the inhabitants lead and brass, and tell them that these two metals were the most valuable commodities in the country which had sent him upon his voyage. Finally, whatever land was found must be annexed officially for the benefit of the Estates General of the Dutch Republic, and of this fact some lasting memorial must be left upon the coast in the form of a written document, well hidden below a stone or a board planted in such a way that the natives could not destroy it.

On the nineteenth of August, Tasman and his two ships went to Mauritius, where the tanks were filled with fresh water and all the men got a holiday. They were given plenty of food to strengthen them for the voyage which they were about to undertake through the unknown seas. After a month of leisure the two ships left on the sixth of October of the year 1642 and started out to discover whatever they might find. The farther southward they got the colder the climate began to be. Snow and hail and fog were the order of the day. Seals appeared, and everything indicated that they were reaching the Arctic Ocean of the Southern Hemisphere. Day and night they kept a man in the crow's-nest to look for land. Tasman offered a reward of money and rum for the sailor who should first see a light upon the horizon, but they found nothing except salt water and a cloudy sky.

Tasman consulted Visscher, and asked him whether it would not be better to follow the 44 degree of latitude than to go farther into this stormy region. Since they had been sailing in a southern direction for almost a month without finding anything at all, Visscher agreed to this change in his original plans. Once more there followed a couple of weeks of dreary travel without the sight of anything hopeful. At last on the twenty-ninth of November of the year 1642, at four o'clock of the afternoon, land was seen. Tasman thought that it was part of his continent and called it Van Diemen's Land, after the governor-general who had sent him out. We know that it was an island to the south of the Australian continent, and we now call it Tasmania.

On the second of December Tasman tried to go on shore with all his officers, but the weather was bad and the surf was too dangerous for the small boat of the Heemskerk. The ship's carpenter then jumped overboard with the flag of the Dutch Republic and a flagpole under his arm. He reached the shore, planted his pole, and with Tasman and his staff floating on the high waves of the Australian surf and applauding him the carpenter hoisted the orange, white, and blue colors which were to show to all the world that the white man had taken possession of a new part of the world. The carpenter once more swam through the waves, was pulled back into the boat, and the first ceremony connected with the Southern continent was over.