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After the expeditions of Abel Tasman
(1642 & 1644) there was little Dutch activity relating to
the South Land. This lasted until 1694 when the East Indiaman Ridderschap
van Holland was lost. It was assumed to have been shipwrecked in
the Southland since some maintained that this country lay further
to the west than indicated by the charts. Again the VOC had a reason
to explore and survey the dangerous coasts of Australia.
Willem de Vlamingh, an experienced VOC officer, was appointed
to search for signs of the wrecks and possible survivors from the Ridderschap
van Holland and the Vergulde Draeck, which was lost
in 1656. They were also to find new staging places between the
Netherlands and the Cape of Good Hope, and from the Cape to Java.
For this reason de Vlamingh’s route included the islands
of Tristan da Cunha, Amsterdam and St Paul.
For this expedition the VOC directors decided to build a new
fleet, the hooker Nijptangh, the galliot ‘t Weseltje and
the frigate Geelvinck. With its shallow draft ‘t Weseltje would
prove very useful for exploring close to the coast.
Above: Black
swans at the entrance to the Swan River with the ’t Weseltje
and Geelvinck at anchor (From François Valentijn,
Oud-en Nieuw Oost-Indièn
(The Old and New East Indies),
1726. |
On 29 December 1696 seaman Caspar Broel
on board the Geelvinck, first sighted ‘the Fog Island
dead ahead’, present-day Rottnest Island. Exploration
of the Island, Swan River and the coast to the north followed.
At Shark Bay, de Vlamingh recovered Hartog’s plate
and left one of his own for posterity.
‘…various people keep saying that the
said land would be more westerly than the charts show…’
‘…the coast in that region is not yet
well known, and is not very clean…’
On Rottnest
Island
‘found there the finest wood in the world, from which the whole land
was filled with a fine pleasant smell’. |
‘God
in heaven be thanked for our safe voyage’. Willem
de Vlamingh in Günter Schilder, Voyage to the Great
South Land …(1985)
![Gerad van Keulen maps](images/Vlam_map.jpg)
Two manuscript charts of the west coast of ’t
Land van de Eendracht
T’ Ziujd landt ontdeckt door Willem
de Vlamingh in den Maande van Jan an February 1697 met ’t
Yagt de Geelvink de Hooker de Nyptang ent Galijoot ’t Weseltje (The
South Land explored by Willem de Vlamingh in the months January
and February).
Gerard van Keulen, 1678-1726
This manuscript chart of the west coast of Australia was identified
by Günter Schilder in 1981 as the work of Gerard van Keulen.
It is based on the information gathered during the Willem de
Vlamingh expedition in 1697. Victor Victorszoon, was commissioned
by the VOC to make a manuscript map from the maps produced by
de Vlamingh. Gerard van Keulen must have copied the information
from the original manuscript map of 1697: all the details are
identical, only the layout is different. Joannes van Keulen
included a printed version of his father’s chart in his
six-volume atlas, Nieuwe Groote Lichtende Zee-Fakkel (New
Great Shining Sea Torch) of 1753.
These charts remained with the van Keulen firm until 1875 when
the firm was liquidated. The London based collector Edward Augustus
Petherick acquired the charts and displayed them in 1895. They
were acquired by the National Library of Australia as part of
the Petherick collection in 1911. It is only in the last few
years that these charts are now thought to be the original charts
drawn by Gerard van Keulen and not by Isaac de Graaff another
VOC cartographer. Only three sheets of the van Keulen manuscripts
documented are of the Australian coastline. The two held by the
Library and the third by Nationaal Archief, the Hague in The
Netherlands.
On loan courtesy of the National Library of Australia,
Canberra: RM 751 and 752. Formerly collection E.A. Petherick. |