Gerrit de Veer
Gerrit de Veer (* around 1570 in the Netherlands ; † after 1598) was a Dutch ship's carpenter and diary writer.
Life
De Veer took part in the second and third voyages of the Dutch navigators Jacob van Heemskerk and Willem Barentsz , who were looking for the Northeast Passage to the Far East . This route should be shorter than the one around Africa and the Cape of Good Hope and also avoid raids by Spanish and Portuguese ships.
The third expedition of 1596/1597 was on the advice of Barentsz, after the Spitzbergen archipelago had been discovered, to the northern tip of the Russian double island of Novaya Zemlya , which Barentsz had already circumnavigated. There, however, the expedition's ship was trapped by pack ice . In the country, the crew built a permanent house made of driftwood , the Behouden Huys , the walls of which, along with various furnishings, were found and even photographed in 1881. Half of the crew did not survive the winter, but Gerrit de Veer was one of the survivors.
De Veer kept a diary in which the difficult winter time was recorded. However, it was particularly important for the expedition that the position of the sun and the position of the planets and stars were recorded precisely in the diary. In this way, the crew knew the date at all times and was able to decide when the expedition should continue their journey.
De Veer and the 16 members of the crew, including the expedition leader, built a sloop and set off into the inhabited world. Barentsz died after seven days, but the rest of the trip to the Kola Peninsula went without any problems. On Kola she was picked up by a Dutch merchant ship under the command of Jan Corneliszoon Rijp , who had already led a sister ship on Barentsz's second voyage, and brought back home.
De Veer published the diary very soon after his return. It was printed in various languages and was also illustrated and colored.
The Novaya Zemlya Effect
De Veer described in his diary on January 24, 1597 a sunrise that happened two weeks earlier than expected. For this phenomenon, the Novaya Zemlya effect, an explanation could only be found in 1998: It is an arctic mirage. Former teacher de Veers Robbert Robbertsz. le Canu turned against these observations and tried to challenge them theoretically.
Filming of the diaries
In 2011, the adventure drama Nova Zembla was directed by Reinout Oerlemans , which is supposed to be based relatively closely on the events of the second expedition. The main roles are played by Robert de Hoog as Gerrit de Veer, Derek de Lint as Willem Barents and Victor Reinier as Jacob van Heemskerk.
literature
- Gerrit de Veer: Description of the three boat trips to get to Cathay and China . Hulsius, Nuremberg 1598. ( Digitized , facsimile: Deutsches Schifffahrtsmuseum / Edition Stiedenrod / Oceanum Verlag, Wiefelstede 2010, ISBN 978-3-86927-107-1 )
- Gerrit de Veer: The Three Voyages of William Barents to the Arctic (1594, 1595, and 1596) . Hakluyt Society , London 1870.
- Gerrit de Veer: Barentz et Heemskerck , voyageurs hollandais , Paris 1857.
Individual evidence
- ↑ A hot bath in the ice desert. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung . October 3, 2011, pp. 62, 63.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Veer, Gerrit de |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Dutch ship's carpenter and diary writer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 1570 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Netherlands |
| DATE OF DEATH | after 1598 |