Jacob Le Maire

Jacob Le Maire

Jacob Le Maire (* 1585 in Antwerp , † December 1616 at sea) was a Dutch navigator.

Life

His father Isaac Le Maire (* around 1558, † 1624) was a Dutch merchant of Walloon descent and co-founder of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). However, he left the VOC in a dispute in 1605 and founded the Australian Company . Despite the government's patronage of the VOC, he received a license for four voyages of discovery and the extremely profitable trade with the Spice Islands . But he could not use it without an alternative shipping route instead of the routes around the Cape of Good Hope or through the Strait of Magellan , which the VOC claimed for itself . So Isaac Le Maire was looking for a passage untouched by the rights of the VOC to the Pacific for trade with the East Indian Spice Islands.

He commissioned his son Jacob to do this and convinced the merchants of the small town of Hoorn north of Amsterdam to finance two ships for an expedition, the Hoorn and the Eendracht . Le Maire hired the experienced captain Willem Cornelisz Schouten from Hoorn for one ship . Le Maire gave command of the second ship to his son Jacob.

The two seafarers actually found the passage around the southern tip of South America on January 29, 1616 and named it Cape Horn . Jakob Le Maire and Schouten probably also discovered the States Island . The Le Maire road , a strait, is named after him. This separates the States Island and Tierra del Fuego .

During the following voyage through the Pacific, the Tonga Islands were discovered in May 1616 . The ethnologically interested Le Maire created a dictionary of the Hoorn , Tabar and Solomon Islands , to which later seafarers used - u. a. Abel Tasman and James Cook .

When landing on Java in October 1616, however, the two captains were arrested by the commanders of the VOC. They were not believed to have been found on an alternative route. The two were sent back to the Netherlands in chains, and the ships were confiscated. Jacob Le Maire died on this journey between Batavia and Amsterdam at the age of 31.

His father Isaac went to court and after three years obtained full compensation from the VOC, which not only had to replace the ship and cargo including compound interest, but also had to acknowledge the claim of Le Maire's son to have found his way around Cape Horn.

See also Willem Cornelisz Schouten for details of the trip .

literature

• Journal ou description du merveilleux voyage de Guillaume Schouten: Hollandois natif de Hoorn, fait es années 1615, 1616, & 1617, comme (en circum-navigeant le globe terrestre) il a descouvert vers le Zud du destroit de Magellan vn nouveau passage, jusques à la grande Mer de Zud. Ensemble, des avantures admirables qui luy sont advenues en descouvrant de plusieurs isles, & peuples estranges. Harman Ianson, Amsterdam 1619.
• Joris van Spilbergen : East end West Indische spieghel, was in Beschreven de twee laetste navigatien, ghedaen inde jaeren 1614. 1615. 1616. 1617. end 1618. Janssz, Amsterdam 1621.
• Jacob Le Maire: Mirror of the Australian navigation. A Facsimile of the "Spieghel der Australian Navigatie ...". Being an Account of the Voyage of Jacob Le Maire and Willem Schouten 1615-1616 (= Australian Maritime Series. Vol. 5). With an introductory essay by Edward Duyker . Hordern House for the Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney 1999, ISBN 1-875567-25-9 .

Web links

• Fully digitized travelogue Jacob Le Maire from 1621 with original maps and illustrations

Commons : Jacob le Maire  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

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