The Dutch East India Company in Bantam dispatches Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon, or Jansz, to investigate New Guinea’s potential in gold and spices in 1605.
Janszoon, of whose early life nothing is known, 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 dispatched by the Dutch to the Dutch East Indies in 1598.
On May 5, 1601, he had again sailed for the East Indies as master of the Lam, one of three ships in the fleet of Joris van Spilbergen.
Janszoon had sailed from the Netherlands for the East Indies for the third time on December 18, 1603, as captain of the Duyfken (or Duijfken, meaning “Little Dove”), one of twelve ships of the great fleet of Steven van der Hagen.
Once in the Indies, Janszoon had been sent to search for other outlets of trade, particularly in “the great land of New Guinea and other East and Southlands.”
