Journal ou relation exacte du voyage de Guill Schouten, dans les Indes

Maker Gobert and Taveriner

Date1618

Object number00031400

NameBook

MediumPaper, ink, leather

DimensionsOverall: 175 x 115 x 15 mm, 0.25 kg

ClassificationsBooks and journals

Credit LineANMM Collection

Terms

DescriptionA book titled 'Journal ou relation exacte du voyage de Guill Schouten, dans les Indes' [Journal or exact relation of the trip by William Schouten in the Indies] published by Gobert and Tavernier. This is the account of Schouten's voyage around the world, during which Cape Horn, named after Schouten's native town, was named, and first rounded. The ship EENDRACHT, while crossing the Pacific, recorded some of the Tuamotu Islands in French Polynesia, the northern Tonga Islands, the Hoorn Islands, the Schouten Islands, and visited New Guinea, the Moluccas, and Batavia. Several of the maps are of great importance for the history of Pacific cartography. This edition is a reprint of the first edition, printed in Amsterdam in the same year, but with many alterations and improvements to the text. The plates and maps are close imitations, slightly reduced.HistoryIn June 1615, the EENDRACHT and the Hoorn left Holland under the command of Willem Schouten in search of a route to the rich Far East via the western entrance to the Pacific. On 29 January 1616 they were the first Europeans to round and name Cape Horn (they named it Cape Hoorn after Schouten's home town). Whilst Magellan and Drake had been round South America before, they had traversed the Straits of Magellan - not gone all the way round the tip of the islands. From there Schouten and the EENDRACHT headed north and west, trading along the way. When finally they reached Bantam - the eastern headquarters of the Dutch East India Company- they were arrested and the ship confiscated. No one believed that they had rounded the actual Cape; they also believed that Schouten had stolen all the goods that he had traded along the way. He was sent back to Holland in disgrace, there to plead his case. It took two years for the Dutch courts to find him innocent of all charges and to order the VOC to return the ship's papers and documents and to pay Schouten the value of the confiscated goods and the EENDRACHT.SignificanceThis is a reprint, but published in the same year of 1618, of the first edition of Schouten's account of his voyage around the world during which he named Cape Hoorn [Cape Horn]. In the EENDRACHT he crossed the Pacific and mapped New Guinea among other places.Several of his maps are of great importance in the history of Pacific
cartography.