Dirk Hartog

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Hartog plaque Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

Dirk Hartog (in a different way of spelling Dirck Hartog ; * 1580 ; † 1621 ) was a Dutch navigator and explorer who made a name for himself by discovering Australia .

Live and act

Hartog made his first experience with the sea as a trader in the Mediterranean and the Baltic Sea . 1615 he was in the Dutch East India Company employed on whose behalf it with a merchant fleet of the Dutch East Indies to sail. In a storm he got off course with his ship, the Eendracht , and reached the Cape of Good Hope alone . From there, Hartog wanted to use the so-called Roaring Forties , a westerly wind drift between 40 ° and 50 ° south latitude , in order to get to Java more quickly across the Indic and make up for lost time. Obviously off course again, the Eendracht crew sighted several uninhabited islands on October 25, 1616 at about 26 ° south latitude. Dirk Hartog had reached the Australian west coast in the area of Shark Bay . On Dirk Hartog Island , which was later named after him, he attached a pewter plaque on which he recorded his shore leave . After the island itself had little interesting to offer, Hartog followed the Australian west coast up to 22 ° south latitude and made a nautical chart before heading for Batavia , which he reached in December 1616, six months after his expected arrival. Hartog is the second European to step on Australian soil, the Hartog plaque is the oldest written artifact in European-Australian history .

The badge

The Hartog plaque was exchanged by Willem de Vlamingh in 1697 , who added a reference to his own shore leave. The original Hartog plaque is now in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam . In 1801 it was found by a French expedition under Nicolas Baudin. The captain of the naturalist Emanuel Hamelin had them knocked on a new stake. He also left his own badge for this. Much to the displeasure of a young officer named Louis de Freycinet , he returned 17 years later as a captain and took her to Paris. The plaque then went to the West Australian Maritime Museum (WA Maritime Museum). Hamelin's badge, however, has disappeared.

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personal data
SURNAME Hartog, Dirk
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hartog, Dirck
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch navigator and explorer
DATE OF BIRTH 1580
DATE OF DEATH 1621