Maarten Gerritszoon Vries

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Cape of Aniva, Cape of Patience, Staten Island (Isola di Stati), and Strait of de Vries all seen on this Italian map from 1682. As the map shows, de Vries did not have a chance to discover either La Pérouse Strait or the Strait of Tartary, the mapmakers thus making Hokkaido and Sakhalin part of the mainland.

Maarten Gerritszoon Vries or Fries, also referred to as de Vries, (18 February 1589 in

cartographer and explorer, the first Western European to leave an account of his visit to Ezo, Sakhalin, Kuril Islands and the Sea of Okhotsk
.

Not much is known about the life of de Vries. He was probably born in

Pacific, which nobody had discovered, after a failed expedition in 1639 under command of Matthijs Quast
.

De Vries expedition

The two ships, the

Moluccas they continued their journey on April 4. On May 20 the two ships lost touch with each other in a storm, while off Hachijo Shima, an island some 290 km south of Edo
, which, due to this setback, was christened Ongeluckich, or "Unlucky", Island by the Dutch.

Tokugawa Iemitsu
Early 18 c. French map depicting the Vries Strait and the Strait of Tartary.

Breskens in Yamada

The Breskens arrived in a promising bay and was received friendly by the population of

Deshima. The crew had to wait nine months for the next ship to Taiwan
while the Breskens had left Honshu already at the end of July (without a captain) searching for the Gold and Silver Islands.

Castricum going north

In the summer of 1643, the Castricum sailed by the southern Kuril Islands, visiting Kunashir, Iturup (which they named "Staten Island", although nowadays this name is only used to refer to Staten Island, in New York City), and Urup, where they met with the Ainu, and which they named "Company Island" and claimed for the Netherlands.

The Castricum passed between the islands of Iturup and Urup, the strait between the islands being later named Vries Strait after its discoverer, and entered the Sea of Okhotsk.

The Dutch sailed north, without encountering any land, until being driven south-west toward the northern shores of

Cape Patience
east of it. At these places they met and communicated through sign language with the indigenous Ainu people of the island.

After another excursion, now east into the Pacific, the Castricum returned to Japanese waters and managed to meet with the Breskens off Kyushu. The two ships sailed to Fort Zeelandia (Taiwan) and returned to Batavia in mid-December 1643.

Battles of La Naval de Manila

Maarten Gerritsz Vries died on board from disease after leading an unsuccessful attempt to invade the Philippines.

Sources

  1. ^ "Ontstaan van de Vereniging". www.oud-harlingen.nl. Archived from the original on 24 July 2011. Retrieved 6 June 2022.
  2. ^ Prisoners from Nambu by R.H. Hesselink
  3. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2009-04-26.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)

External links

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