Jan Huyghen van Linschoten is the son of a public notary from the town of Haarlem in the Netherlands, but the family had moved to the town of Enkhuizen when he was young.

The addition of van Linschoten could indicate that his family came from the Utrecht village of the same name.

He had at thirteen hleft for Spain during December 1576 to be with his brother in Seville, remaining there until 1580 when he got a job working with another merchant in Lisbon.

An economic recession a few years later had led him to seek the help of his brother, Willem, who was acquainted with the newly appointed Archbishop of the Portuguese colony of Goa, Dominican Vicente da Fonseca, who appointed Jan Huyghen Secretary to the Archbishop.

He had sailed for Goa on April 8, 1583, arriving five months later via Madeira, Guinea, the Cape, Madagascar and Mozambique.

While in Goa, as a result of his position, Linschoten had access to secret information, including the nautical charts that the Portuguese have well guarded for over a century.

Misusing the trust in him, for reasons unknown, Linschoten had begun meticulously copying these maps page by page.

The death of his sponsor in 1587, while on a trip to Lisbon to report to the King of Portugal meant the end of his position, so Linschoten had sailed for Lisbon in January 1589, passing by the Portuguese supply depot at St. Helena island in May 1589.

English piracy forced a shipwreck, stranding Linschoten two years in the Azores.

He landed in Lisbon only in 1592 and thereafter returned to his home at Enkhuizen until June 1594, when ...

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.

Linschoten, in Amsterdam in 1596, publishes a travel report, Itinerario (later published as an English edition of "Reys-gheschrift vande navigatien der Portugaloysers in Orienten" ("Report of a journey through the navigations of the Portuguese in the East").

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

Graphically displayed for the first time in Europe, the report features detailed maps of voyages to the East Indies, particularly India.

Even more crucially, Linschoten has provided such nautical data as currents, deeps, islands and sandbanks, which is essential to safe navigation, along with depictions of coastlands to guide the way.

His publications will in 1602 give rise to the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie) as a unified expression of Dutch efforts at trade with Asia.

It takes the Dutch explorers seven more weeks for the boats to reach Kola where they are rescued by a Russian merchant vessel, by which time only twelve crewmen remain.

Sources differ on whether two men died on the ice floe and three in the boats, or three on the ice floe and two in the boats.

Ultimately, the survivors will not not reach Amsterdam until November 1.

Two of Barentsz' crew members will later publish their journals: Gerrit de Veer, who had acted as the ship's carpenter on the last two voyages, and Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, who had accompanied him on the first two voyages.

A British fleet had captured a large Portuguese carrack, the Madre de Deus, off the Azores in 1592, during the war with Spain.

Loaded with nine hundred tons of merchandise from India and China, estimated at half a million pounds (nearly half the size of English Treasury at the time), this foretaste of the riches of the East had galvanized interest in the region.

That same year, Cornelis de Houtman had been sent by Dutch merchants to Lisbon, to gather as much information as he could about the Spice Islands.

Merchant and explorer Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, having traveled widely in the Indian Ocean at the service of the Portuguese, had in 1595 published 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 included vast directions on how to navigate between Portugal and the East Indies and to Japan.

Dutch and British interest fed on new information had led to a movement of commercial expansion.

In 1598, an increasing number of new fleets had been sent out by competing merchant groups from around the Netherlands.

Some fleets had been lost, but most were successful, with some voyages producing high profits.

In March 1599, a fleet of eight ships under Jacob van Neck had been the first Dutch fleet to reach the ‘Spice Islands’ of Maluku.

The ships returned to Europe in 1599 and 1600; the expedition has made a 400 percent profit.

The foundation of the English East India Company, in 1600, allows the entry of chartered companies into the markets of the so-called East Indies.