Olivier Brunel

Olivier Brunel (* around 1540 in Leuven or Brussels ; † 1585 in the mouth of the Pechora ) was a Flemish explorer and pioneer of the Dutch trade with Russia. He was the first Dutchman to attempt to find the Northeast Passage to the Far East .

Life

Little is known about Brunel's youth. We do know, however, that in 1565 he came to Cholmogory , a trading town on the Northern Dvina, on a Russian ship . After shaking off Spanish rule, the Netherlands were on their way to becoming a sea and trading power and interested in direct trade relations with Russia . But that brought them into conflict with the English Muscovy Company . The English, who had their main trading post in Cholmogory, induced the Russian authorities to arrest Brunel as a spy and to jail him for several years. He was finally ransomed by two members of the Stroganow family and entered their service. The Stroganovs maintained a trading network that extended over all of Russia, especially the north and Siberia , where the fur trade had made them rich. On extensive travels Brunel got to know northern Russia from the Kola peninsula to western Siberia. He was probably the first Western European to come to the Ob , both by land and by sea.

Brunel tried to convince the stroganovs to equip a trip to follow the course of the Ob upstream. He thought he 'd come to Cathay that way . The Russians finally gave their consent and hired Swedish shipbuilders to complete two ships for the voyage. Brunel went to Holland in 1881 to hire sailors for the voyage and changed his plans here. Since he found the support of a consortium of Dutch merchants under the leadership of Balthasar de Moucheron (1552 - approx. 1630) and hoped for financial help from William of Orange , he now wanted to undertake the expedition as a Dutch company. Until the expedition came about in 1584, Brunel placed himself in the service of the Danish King Frederick II , who wanted to restore contact with his colonies in Greenland, which had been lost almost two centuries earlier . The results of Brunel's trip to Greenland are not known. Brunel was able to secure the goodwill of Denmark, which was important for the planned venture, which controlled the route around the North Cape .

In the spring of 1584 Brunel left the port of Enkhuizen with his ship de Vgende Draeck . Little is known about this trip. According to one report, however, since he found the Jugor Strait impassable, he was the first to sail through the Matochkin Schar , the strait between the two main islands of Novaya Zemlyas , into the Kara Sea . This is controversial, however, since Brunel gave the name "Kostin Schar", a name that is used today for a bay on the west coast of the South Island. Brunel soon had to turn back and ran into trouble from which native pomors freed him. In 1885 his ship, loaded with valuable furs , capsized in the Pechora estuary. He was probably killed in the process, as it is known that his wife received a widow's pension in April 1585.

Brunel's trip was just the beginning of the Dutch efforts to find the Northeast Passage. Willem Barents followed him ten years later .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld : The circumnavigation of Asia and Europe on the Vega. With a historical look back at previous journeys along the north coast of the Old World. Authorized German edition. First volume. With a preface to the German and Swedish editions. Leipzig, FA Brockhaus 1882, p. 207 f .
2. ^ ^{A b c} William James Mills: Exploring Polar Frontiers - A Historical Encyclopedia . tape 1 . ABC-CLIO, 2003, ISBN 1-57607-422-6 , pp. 105 f . (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
3. ^ Mulert: Brunel (Olivier) . In: Petrus Johannes Blok , Philipp Christiaan Molhuysen (Ed.): Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek . Part 2. N. Israel, Amsterdam 1974, Sp. 267–268 (Dutch, knaw.nl - first edition: AW Sijthoff, Leiden 1912, reprinted unchanged).