Willem Janszoon

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Willem Janszoon
Bornc. 1570
colonial governor
Known forEuropean discovery of Australia

Willem Janszoon (Dutch:

his voyage of 1605–1606, he became the first European known to have seen the coast of Australia
.

Early life

Willem Janszoon (Willem Jansz) was born around 1570 as the son of Jan (c. 1540), but nothing more is known of his early life or of his parents.

Janszoon is first recorded as having entered into the service of the Oude compagnie, one of the predecessors of the

second fleet under Jacob Corneliszoon van Neck, dispatched by the Dutch to the Dutch East Indies.[3] Around 1600 he became the father of Jan Willemsz before setting sail again on 5 May 1601, for the East Indies as master of the Lam, one of three ships in the fleet of Joris van Spilbergen.[4]

Janszoon sailed from the Netherlands for the East Indies for the third time on 18 December 1603, as captain of the

Java
, Janszoon was sent to search for other outlets of trade, particularly in "the great land of New Guinea and other East and Southlands".

Exploration and discovery

First voyage to Australia

19th-century artist impression of the ship Duyfken in the Gulf of Carpentaria

On 18 November 1605, the

Weipa
. This is the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent. Janszoon proceeded to chart some 320 km (200 mi) of the coastline, which he thought was a southerly extension of New Guinea.

Finding the land swampy and the people inhospitable (ten of his men were killed on various shore expeditions), Janszoon decided to return at a place he named Cape Keerweer ("Turnabout"), south of Albatross Bay, and arrived back at Bantam in June 1606. He called the land he had discovered Nieu Zelant, or Nieu Zeelandt,[6] after the Dutch province of Zeeland, but the name was not adopted, and was later used by Dutch cartographers for New Zealand.

In 1607, Admiral

Cornelis Matelieff de Jonge sent Janszoon to Ambon and Banda.[7] In 1611, Janszoon returned to the Netherlands, believing that the south coast of New Guinea was joined to the land along which he had sailed, and Dutch maps reproduced that error for many years. Though there have been suggestions that earlier navigators from China, France, or Portugal
may have discovered parts of Australia earlier, the Duyfken is the first Eurasian vessel definitely known to have done so.

Second voyage to Australia

Janszoon reported that on 31 July 1618, he had landed on an island at 22° South with a length of 22 miles and 240 miles[vague] SSE of the Sunda Strait.[8] This is generally interpreted as a description of the peninsula from Point Cloates (22°43′S 113°40′E / 22.717°S 113.667°E / -22.717; 113.667) to North West Cape (21°47′S 114°09′E / 21.783°S 114.150°E / -21.783; 114.150) on the Western Australian coast, which Janszoon presumed was an island, without fully circumnavigating it.[9]

Political life

Hessel Gerritszoon
’s map of the Pacific Ocean, 1622.

Around 1617–1618, he was back in the Netherlands and was appointed as a member of the

British East India Company near Tiku on West Sumatra, which had aided the Javanese in their defence of the town of Jakarta against the Dutch.[11] In 1620, he was one of the negotiators with the English. In a combined fleet, they sailed to Manila to prevent Chinese merchants dealing with the Spanish. Janszoon became vice-admiral, and the year later admiral. Near the end of his life, Janszoon served as governor of Banda (1623–1627).[12] He returned to Batavia in June 1627 and soon afterwards, as admiral of a fleet of eight vessels, went on a diplomatic mission to India.[13] On 4 December 1628, he sailed for Holland and on 16 July 1629, reported on the state of the Indies at The Hague.[13]
He was now probably about sixty years old and ready to retire from his strenuous and successful career in the service of his country. Nothing is known of his last days, but he is thought to have died in 1630.

Records

The original journal and log made during Janszoon’s 1606 voyage have been lost. The Duyfken chart,

Notes

References