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Le Maire No 5. | |||||
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Mercator's World, Vol. 5 Number 3, May/June 2000 |
Isaac le Maire may well have been the largest shareholder in the Dutch East India Company (VOC), but he was not at all averse to independent ventures - one of which forced him to resign his trusteeship - and it was an attempt to circumvent the company's monopoly on East Indies trade, as well as the thought of finding the fabled southland, "Terra Australis", that led him to form an "Australian Company".
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The Weekend Australian, 18th-19th December, 1999 Review by Michael Reid |
Should a buyer wish to form a collection rather than a mere assemblage of objects, it is imperative that the collector gains a thorough understanding of their area of interest. Collecting art is after all is said and done primarily a task of obtaining and applying knowledge. Over the festive season collectors are advised to augment their hands on art handling experience by reading any number of user-friendly art reference or art market books. Consider the following subjects and authors....
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The Geelong Advertiser, 27th May, 2000 Review by Noel Murphy |
You have to feel for someone like young Jacob Le Maire, the 17th century Dutch navigator who struck a Pacific trade route from Europe to Asia, via South America’s treacherous Cape Horn, in 1616. No sooner did he achieve this historic fact and land in Batavia, present-day Jakarta, than he was deported back home because Dutch authorities refused to believe him capable of such a feat. Fatally compounding matters, he died en route. | ||||
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Book Club of California |
Such quirkiness needs a master editor. Dr. Edward Duyker, a New South Wales History Fellow and author of The Dutch in Australia, a 1987 study of early Dutch voyages in the surrounding seas, is such an expert. | ||||
| International Journal of Maritime History Volume XII Number 2, December 2000 |
This in brief explains much about the background of the founding of the "Australian Company" in 1614 by Le Maire and some of the wealthy citizens of the city of Hoorn. Trade with the mythic "Terra Australis" may well have been simply an excuse for opening up a new route to the Pacific via the most southern route around America. Besides, the reports about the initial encounters of the sailors of Duyfken with Australian aborigines in 1606 had not been at all positive. Nevertheless, the possibility of eventual success could not be ruled out entirely. | ||||
Hamilton No 4. |
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| The West Australian: Big Weekend 20 February 1999 Review by H.A. Willis Full article |
With only five Australian libraries holding copies of the 1793 original, this extremely rare book has been unavailable to the public. A 1990 limited edition went some way towards supplying scholars, but it only now, with the release of this superb facsimile (the first), that Hamilton’s work is more widely available. | ||||
| Nautical Research Journal Volume 45, Issue 3, September 2000 Review by Mark Staniforth, Flinders University Full article |
Hamilton's original publication was relatively short, containing only five chapters and a total of 165 pages. His account opens by suggesting that the British government's principal purpose for the voyage was "to bring punishment to the mutineers of His Majesty's late ship Bounty". | ||||
| International Journal of Maritime History Volume XIII, Number 1 (June 2001) Review by Christon I. Archer, University of Calgary |
George Hamilton, surgeon aboard Pandora, published his account of the voyage in 1793 during a time when there was considerable interest in the trials of the Bounty mutineers. A perceptive observer influenced by contemporary thinking about shipboard health, Hamilton made certain on the outward voyage around Cape Horn that Pandora took on fresh water at Tenerife and Rio de Janeiro and stocked lemons, oranges, pomegranates, bananas, and other fruit. He opposed salt meat, promoted the consumption of balanced diets, and he praised a new experimental ventilation system designed to force fresh air into the lower decks. Hamilton kept a barrel of sauerkraut – described as ‘this grand antiscorbutic’ – open for the crew, who consumed it as a salad with vinegar. | ||||
Dalrymple's Account No 3. | |||||
| The American Neptune Wilfred Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario. Review by Barry Gough, Full article |
Sailor, cartographer, visionary, and imperial "fixer," the amazing Scot, Alexander Dalrymple, bestrode the geographical world of the late eighteenth century like a colossus. His impact on the European world of scientific inquiry was extensive, and his enthusiasm for British discoveries in the South Pacific was equally remarkable, for it was he who would have hoped to command the barque Endeavour on that famous first voyage of James Cook to the Society Islands with the purpose of observing the Transit of Venus. | ||||
| Book Club of California Quarterly News-Letter Vol. LXII Number 2, Spring 1997 Review by Dr. Robert J. Chandler Full article |
How did it come to be? At age fifteen, Dalrymple (1737-1808) joined the East India Company, where he embarked on his life’s quest - not the company’s ordinary paperwork, but something more grand. "General geography and discoveries have almost from infancy been the fond object of his attention," he wrote in the Account, but his goal was focused: "The first and most striking object of research was, the discovery of a Southern Continent." He reasoned that "a Continent is wanting on the South of the Equator, to counterpoize the land of the North, and to maintain the earth’s motion." | ||||
