Jan Carstenszoon

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Jan Carstenszoon (also Jan Carstensz ) was a Dutch navigator in the 17th century .

Act

In 1623 he led an expedition to the coast of New Guinea on behalf of the Dutch East India Company . Carstenszoon commanded the Pera ; The captain of the second ship of the expedition, the Arnhem , was Willem van Coolsteerd . The trip was intended to confirm the reports of Willem Janszoon , who first sailed the region in 1606, and to bring knowledge of countries previously unexplored for Europe further south.

Starting from Ambon , Carstenszoon sailed to the Torres Strait region on January 21, 1623 . However, like Janzoon before, he missed the passage and instead sailed south on the west side of the Cape York Peninsula into the Gulf of Carpentaria , which he mapped and named after Pieter de Carpentier , the governor-general of Batavia . While going ashore, he met Aborigines whom he denied any knowledge of precious metals or spices and therefore described them as "underdeveloped" and "needy". The Pera crew kidnapped one of the locals and killed another of the group as they tried to free the prisoner. The ships reached 17 ° 8 ′ south latitude before it was decided to turn around and return home on different routes. Nothing is known about the further fate of Carstenzoon after his return to Ambon, but his discoveries were already included in new maps in 1628.

The Carstensz pyramid is named after Carstenszoon, the highest peak in Oceania at 4884 m . Carstenszoon's original reports of the sighted glaciers on the mountain were ridiculed in Europe at the time, because people were not prepared to believe in snow in such southern regions.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Tim Flannery: The explorers: Stories of discovery and adventure from the Australian frontier . Grove Press, 2000, pp. 18 ff.
personal data
SURNAME Carstenszoon, Jan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Carstensz, Jan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch navigator
DATE OF BIRTH before 1623
DATE OF DEATH 17th century