Jakob Roggeveen

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Jakob Roggeveen (born February 1, 1659 in Middelburg ; † January 31, 1729 ) was a Dutch navigator and explorer .

biography

Jacob Roggeveen was born on February 1, 1659 in the Zeeland community of Middelburg, the third son of Arent Roggeveen, an astronomer, mathematician and navigator. Arent Roggeveen tried to set up a trading company to explore the as yet unknown countries of the Pacific Ocean . However, he did not find any shareholders among the conservative Dutch merchants, so that he could not implement his plan. These plans, however, are likely to have had an impact on his son's life.

Jacob Roggeveen first attended Latin school in his home municipality and then studied law at the University of Harderwijk . He married Marija Margaerita Vincentius, who died in October 1694. In 1706 he joined the Dutch East India Company . Between 1707 and 1714 he stayed as "Raadsheer van Justitie" (Councilor of Justice) in the then Dutch Batavia (now Jakarta ). There he married Anna Adriana Clement, who died shortly afterwards. In 1714 he returned to Middelburg in Zeeland.

He got into religious disputes because he published the work De val van 's werelds afgod (The Fall of the Idols of the World) by the liberal preacher Pontiaan van Hattem . The first part was published in Middelburg in 1718 and was immediately confiscated and burned by the city administration. Roggeveen fled from Middelburg to nearby Flushing . He then set up in the small town of Arnemuiden and published the second and third parts of the series, which in turn attracted the public.

Circumnavigation

Jubilee coin 250 years after the discovery of Samoa by the Dutch captain Jacob Roggeveen (1722–1972)
Roggeveen's route

In order to implement his father's plans, Roggeveen received three ships from the Dutch West India Company to go to the South Seas, to discover new countries there and to look for the legendary Terra Australis Incognita . With the ships Arend, Thienhoven, Africaansche Galey and a crew of 260 men, he left Amsterdam on June 16, 1721 and reached the Pacific in January 1722 after circumnavigating Cape Horn . During his circumnavigation of the world, he discovered the Polynesian island of Rapa Nui for Europe on Easter Sunday, April 5, 1722 (Roggeveen writes April 6, in fact Easter Sunday 1722 was April 5), to which he named Paasch Eyland ( Easter Island ). In the northern Tuamotu Archipelago , the Africaansche Galey ran onto a coral reef near what is now Takapoto Island and had to be abandoned. Roggeveen therefore named the island Het Schadelijk Eyland . On his onward journey to New Guinea in the same year he discovered the islands of Tutuila and Upolu, which belong to Samoa , before arriving on December 10, 1722 with his crew, weakened by scurvy , in Batavia. Since he was accused of violating the East India Company's trading monopoly, he was arrested and his ships were confiscated. However, in a later legal battle that ended in a settlement, he received compensation and his crew received the outstanding pay. From Batavia, Roggeveen returned to the Netherlands in 1723 with the rest of his crew on various ships . With his trip he made an important contribution to the exploration and mapping of the Pacific.

After his return he published the fourth part of De val van 's werelds afgod .

literature

  • Jacob Roggeveen: Twee Jahresige reyze rondom de wereld met drie scheper (1721) door last vd: Nederl Westind, Maatschappen, Dortrecht 1728 (German translation in extracts in Friedrich Schulze-Maizier: Die Osterinsel, Insel-Verlag Leipzig 1926)
  • Carl Friedrich Behrens : The well-tried southerner, trip around the world 1721/22, reprinted by Brockhaus-Verlag Leipzig 1923 (Behrens was the commandant of the marines at Roggeveen's circumnavigation)
  • Werner P. Lange: South Sea Horizons. A Maritime Discovery Story of Oceania . Urania, Leipzig 1983 (3rd edition 1990). ISBN 3-332-00365-8

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dagverhaal der Ondekkings-Reis van Mr. Jacob Roggeveen met de Schepen den Arend, Tienhoven en de Africaansche Galey in de Jaaren 1721 en 1722 , Middelburg 1838, p. 147
personal data
SURNAME Roggeveen, Jakob
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch navigator and explorer
DATE OF BIRTH February 1, 1659
PLACE OF BIRTH Middelburg
DATE OF DEATH January 31, 1729