Compagnie van Verre

Cornelis de Houtman had been sent by Dutch merchants to Lisbon to gather as much information as he could about the Spice Islands in the same year the capture of the Madre de Deus had galvanized English interest in the Far East.

The Compagnie van Verre (meaning "the long-distance company"), a forerunner of the Dutch East India Company, is set up in 1594 by nine citizens of Amsterdam to break Portugal's monopoly on the pepper trade.

To do this, it plans an expedition of three heavily armed ships and a pinnace under the leadership of de Houtman, with orders to break into the trade. (Cornelis's brother Frederick also works for the Company.)

Petrus Plancius, born as Pieter Platevoet in Dranouter, now in Heuvelland, West Flanders, had studied theology in Germany and England and at the age of tgwenty-four had become a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church.

Fearing religious prosecution by the Inquisition, he had fled from Brussels to Amsterdam after the city fell to Spanish hands in 1585.

Here he has become interested in navigation and cartography and, being fortunate enough to have access to nautical charts recently brought from Portugal, he had soon been recognized as an expert on the shipping routes to India.

He had collaborated in 1589 with the Amsterdam cartographer Jacob Floris van Langren on a 32.5-centimeter celestial globe, which, using the sparse information available about southern celestial features, for the first time depicts: Crux, the southern cross; Triangulum Australe, the southern triangle; and the Magellanic Clouds, Nubecula Major and Minor.

He had in 1592 published his best known world map titled Nova et exacta Terrarum Tabula geographica et hydrographica.

Apart from maps, he publishes journals and navigational guides and is developing a new method for determining longitude.

He has also introduced the Mercator projection for navigational maps.

In 1595, he asks Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser, the chief pilot on the Hollandia, to make observations to fill in the blank area around the south celestial pole on European maps of the southern sky.

Linschoten had returned from India at the same time that Cornelis de Houtman had returned to Amsterdam from his mission to Lisbon.

Having traveled widely in the Indian Ocean at the service of the Portuguese, Linschoten publishes a travel report in Amsterdam, the "Reys-gheschrift vande navigatien der Portugaloysers in Orienten" ("Report of a journey through the navigations of the Portuguese in the East").

This includes extensive directions on how to navigate between Portugal and the East Indies and to Japan.

The merchants have determined that Bantam (Banten) provides the best opportunity to buy spices.

Four ships set off from Texel on April 2, 1595, with 248 officers and men on board.

The ships of the expedition (which becomes known as the First Schipvaart), Amsterdam, Hollandia, Mauritius and Duyfken, follow the routes described by Linschoten.

Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser, after several trips to Brazil, participates as a first mate on the Hollandia and the chief navigator of the "Eerste Schipvaart” commanded by de Houtman; he has been specifically trained by Petrus Plancius to map the southern stars.

The voyage is beset with trouble from the beginning.

Scurvy had broken out after only a few weeks due to insufficient provisions.

Due to quarrels among the captains and traders, several have been killed or imprisoned on board.

When the fleet finally is able to obtain fresh supplies at Madagascar on September 13, seventy-one of the two hundred and forty-eight sailors have died, most of scurvy.

Although only a brief stop in Madagascar had been planned, the ships are to remain here for six months on a deathwatch (The Bay of Ampalaza, the Madagascan bay where they were anchored, is now known as the "Dutch Cemetery") while the surviving crew recovers and makes repairs, at which point Keyser probably makes most of his celestial observations.

He is aided in this by de Houtman’s older brother Frederick and by Vechter Willemsz.

Cornelis de Houtman’s ships had left Madagascar in February; it has taken another four months for them to reach Sumatra.

When on June 27, 1596, the expedition finally arrives in northwestern Java at Banten, the island’s most important pepper port, only around a hundred of the original two hundred and forty-nine men have survived the voyage.

The local Portuguese traders introduce de Houtman to the Banten sultan, who promptly enters into an optimistic treaty with the Dutch, writing "We are well content to have a permanent league of alliance and friendship with His Highness the Prince Maurice of Nassau, of the Netherlands and with you, gentlemen."

Unfortunately, trade negotiations turn sour, perhaps caused by Portuguese instigators, perhaps by inexperience: de Houtman is undiplomatic and insulting to the sultan, and is turned away for "rude behavior" without being able to buy any spices at all.

The crew is forced to find drinking water and other supplies on Sumatra across the Sunda Strait, at which crossing Keyser apparently dies.

The Dutch expedition now sails east to Madura, but suffers attack by pirates on the way.

The Netherlanders are received peacefully in Madura, but de Houtman, in revenge for the unrelated earlier piracy, orders his men to brutally attack and rape the civilian population.

The Amsterdam, badly damaged on January 11, 1597 during the return trip, has to be left behind at the island of Bawean.

The Dutch expedition, having sailed from Madura for Bali, and met with the region's king, finally manages on February 26, 1597, to obtain a few pots of peppercorns.

Portuguese ships prevent Cornelis de Houtman’s expedition from taking in water and supplies at St. Helena.

Only eighty-seven of Cornelis de Houtman’s two hundred and forty-nine man crew return on August 14, 1597, too weak to moor their ships themselves.

The survivors include Frederick de Houtman, who probably delivers Keyser's observations to Plancius.

The voyage has not been not a success commercially, but it has proved that not only the Portuguese have the potential to trade in pepper.

Though the trip had been a humanitarian disaster and financially probably just broke even, it is a symbolic victory.

It may be regarded as the start of the Dutch colonization of Indonesia.

Sixty-five more Dutch ships will go East to trade within five years.

The Dutch will soon fully take over the spice trade in and around the Indian Ocean.