Dirck Hartog. Hartog set sail from Texel, a port near Amsterdam, as part of a Dutch East India Company flotilla in January 1616. Traveling around the Cape of Good Hope to Java, Hartog sought to take advantage of the “roaring forties,” a region between latitudes 40° and 50° south where strong westerly winds prevailed.
On 20 February 1611, in the Old Church, Dirk married with Calvinist forms 18-year-old Meynsgen Abels. They are not known to have had children.
Hartog then visited other trading centres in the East Indies, delivering chests of money. Still under his command, the Eendracht left Bantam (Banten) on 17 December 1617, carrying a rich cargo of benzoin (an aromatic wax used for medicinal purposes), silk and other goods.
Hartog set sail from Texel, a port near Amsterdam, as part of a Dutch East India Company flotilla in January 1616. Traveling around the Cape of Good Hope to Java, Hartog sought to take advantage of the “roaring forties,” a region between latitudes 40° and 50° south where strong westerly winds prevailed.
When was Dirk Hartog born and died?
October 30, 1580, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Hartog gave the Australian mainland one of its earliest known names, as Eendrachtsland, which he named after his ship Eendracht, meaning "concord".
The Hartog dish, as it became known, is now usually held at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, but has been loaned to the Western Australian Maritime Museum to mark the 400th anniversary of Hartog's visit.
Although a theory of Portuguese discovery in the 1520s exists, it lacks definitive evidence. The Dutch East India Company ship, Duyfken, led by Willem Janszoon, made the first documented European landing in Australia in 1606.
On 25 October 1616, at approximately 26° latitude south, Hartog and crew came unexpectedly upon "various islands, which were, however, found uninhabited." He made landfall at an island off the coast of Shark Bay, Western Australia, which is now called Dirk Hartog Island after him.
When did Dirk Hartog die?
On 20 February 1611, in the Old Church, Dirk married with Calvinist forms 18-year-old Meynsgen Abels. They are not known to have had children.
approximately 840 kilometres
Perth Lord Mayor Sir Thomas Wardle purchased the island as a private retreat for his family in about 1969 and later retired there, becoming a semi-recluse with his wife. With the exception of the pastoral homestead, the island later returned to government ownership and became part of the Shark Bay Marine Park.
