Not to be confused with Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571–1638), a contemporary Dutch cartographer

Willem Janszoon (c. 1570–1630), Dutch navigator and colonial governor, is the first European known to have seen the coast of Australia. His name is sometimes abbreviated to Willem Jansz. (with or without the full stop).^[1] Janszoon served in the Netherlands East Indies for several periods (1603–11, 1612–16, including a period as governor of Fort Henricus on Solor.^[2]

Early life[link]

Nothing is known of Willem Janszoon's early life. He is first recorded as entering into the service of the Oude compagnie, one of the predecessors of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), as a mate aboard the Hollandia, part of the second fleet under Jacob Cornelisz. van Neck, dispatched by the Dutch to the Dutch East Indies in 1598.^[3] On 5 May 1601, he again sailed 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 Duyfken (or Duijfken, meaning “Little Dove”), one of twelve ships of the great fleet of Steven van der Hagen.^[5] When the other ships left 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[link]

On 18 November 1605, the Duyfken sailed from Bantam to the coast of western New Guinea. Janszoon then crossed the eastern end of the Arafura Sea, without seeing the Torres Strait, into the Gulf of Carpentaria. On 26 February 1606, he made landfall at the Pennefather River on the western shore of Cape York in Queensland, near the modern town of Weipa. This is the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent. Janszoon proceeded to chart some 320 km 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), at Cape Keerweer (“Turnabout”), south of Albatross Bay, Willem Janszoon decided to return and arrived at Bantam in June 1606. He called the land he had discovered “Nieu Zeland” after the Dutch province of Zeeland, but the name was not adopted and was later used by Abel Tasman for New Zealand.

The Duyfken was actually in Torres Strait in March 1606, a few weeks before Luís Vaz de Torres sailed through it. In 1607 Cornelis Matelieff de Jonge sent him to Ambon and Banda.^[6] In 1611 Janszoon returned to the Netherlands believing that the south coast of New Guinea was joined to the land along which he sailed, and Dutch maps reproduced this error for many years. Though there have been suggestions that earlier navigators from China, France, or Portugal may have discovered parts of Australia, the Duyfken is the first European vessel definitely known to have done so.

Second voyage to Australia[link]

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.^[7] 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 114.15°E / -21.783; 114.15) on the Western Australian coast, which Janszoon presumed was an island, without fully circumnavigating it.^[8]

Political life[link]

Around 1617/18 he was back in the Netherlands and appointed as a Council of India. He served as admiral of the Dutch Defense fleet^[9] He was awarded a gold chain worth 1,000 guilders in 1619 for his part in capturing four ships of the British East India Company near Tiku on West Sumatra, which had aided the Javanese in their defense of the town of Jakarta against the Dutch.^[10] In 1620 he was one of the negotiators with the English. In a combined fleet they sailed to Manilla to prevent Chinese merchants dealing with the Spanish. Jansz. became vice-admiral; in the year after admiral. At the end of his life Jansz. served as governor of Banda (1623–27).^[11]

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.^[12] On 4 December 1628, he sailed for Holland and on 16 July 1629, reported on the state of the Indies at The Hague.^[12] He was probably now about sixty years of age and willing to retire from his strenuous and successful life in the service of his country. Nothing is known of his last days, though he is thought to have died in 1630.

Records[link]

The original journal and log made during Janszoon’s 1606 voyage have been lost. The Duyfken chart,^[13] which shows the location of the first landfall in Australia by the Duyfken, had a better fate. It was still in existence in Amsterdam when Hessel Gerritsz made his Map of the Pacific in 1622, and placed the Duyfken geography upon it, thus providing us with the first map to contain any part of Australia. The chart was still in existence about 1670, when a copy was made, which eventually went to the Imperial Library in Vienna and remained forgotten there for two hundred years. The map is part of the Atlas Blaeu Van der Hem, brought to Vienna in 1730 by Prince Eugene of Savoy. The information from his charts was included in the marble and copper maps of the hemispheres on the floor of The Citizens’ Hall of the Royal Palace Amsterdam^[14][15]

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Heeres, J. E. (1899). Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765. London: Royal Dutch Geographical Society, Project Gutenberg of Australia. pp. 114. http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0501231h.html. 
• Mutch, T. D. (1942). The First Discovery of Australia. Sydney: Mutch, Project Gutenberg of Australia. pp. 55. http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600631h.html. 
• Scott, Ernest (July 16, 1916). A short History of Australia. Melbourne: Project Gutenberg of Australia. http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200471h.html. 
• Serle, Percival (1949). "Janszoon, Willem". Dictionary of Australian Biography. Sydney: Angus and Robertson. http://gutenberg.net.au/dictbiog/0-dict-biogI-K.html#jansz1. 
• "Janssen, Willem (fl. 1603 - 1628)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A020013b.htm. 

External links[link]

• The Voyage of the Duyfken Replica, 1999
• Duyfken Timeline