The long voyage to the East had its perils. A VOC vessel could not anchor in the sheltered bay of Batavia (present-day Jakarta) until it had survived a five-thousand-mile voyage, taking eight months on average. The navigators needed as many as 30 maps, including outline charts of the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean and more detailed charts of, for example, the North Sea, southern Africa, western Australia and the Sunda Strait.

 

The outward voyage was particularly hazardous. In the doldrums round the Equator, a ship could be becalmed, yawing in the swell while the sails hung limp. The burning sun would spoil the cargo and the drinking water, bringing death and disease to the crew.

 

In 1610, Hendrik Brouwer, commander and later governor-general of the East Indies, was the first to take a new route to the east. From the Cape of Good Hope he sailed south to the 40th parallel – the famous Roaring Forties – where the prevailing westerly winds are strong and steady. Then he headed east for over a thousand miles to the Australian coast, after which he turned north to the Sunda Strait. In this way, Brouwer reached Bantam in the East Indies from the Cape in less than six months. The cooler climate of the more southerly latitudes meant that provisions did not spoil, and deaths and disease among the crew were reduced. In 1617, official sailing orders made it compulsory for VOC captains to follow Brouwer’s route.

 

Despite its advantages, the southern route had its dangers too. Without any way of accurately measuring the distance they had covered, ships often failed to turn north in time and foundered on the reefs of western Australia. So the new route led to many unexpected encounters with the Australian continent.

In 1606, Willem Jansz. in the Duyfken was the first European to see the north-east coast of Australia. In 1616, a navigational error brought Dirk Hartogs, master of the VOC ship De Eendracht, to the west coast of the South Land that European seafarers had never seen, though they suspected its existence. Several voyages of exploration followed in the first half of the seventeenth century. In 1642 Abel Tasman sailed around Australia, after which the name Terra Australis Incognita was replaced on maps by Hollandia Nova.