Hessel Gerritsz - Malay Archipelago and Australia

François Thijssen or Frans Thijsz (died 13 October 1638?) was a Dutch- French

explorer Exploration is the process of exploring, an activity which has some Expectation (epistemic), expectation of Discovery (observation), discovery. Organised exploration is largely a human activity, but exploratory activity is common to most organis ...

who explored the southern coast of

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

. He was the captain of the ship t Gulden Zeepaerdt'' (''The Golden Seahorse'') when sailing from

Cape of Good Hope The Cape of Good Hope ( ) is a rocky headland on the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa. A List of common misconceptions#Geography, common misconception is that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Afri ...

to Batavia. On this voyage, he ended up too far to the south and on 26 January 1627 he came upon the coast of Australia, near Cape Leeuwin, the south-westernmost tip of the continent. Thijssen continued to sail eastwards, mapping more than of Australia's coast. He called the land t Land van Pieter Nuyts'' (''The Land of Pieter Nuyts''), referring to the highest VOC official aboard his ship. Part of Thijssen's map shows the islands St Francis and St Peter, now known collectively with their respective groups as the Nuyts Archipelago. He also mapped the coastline around Fowlers Bay. The ship, which had been built in Middelburg and left

Zeeland Zeeland (; ), historically known in English by the Endonym and exonym, exonym Zealand, is the westernmost and least populous province of the Netherlands. The province, located in the southwest of the country, borders North Brabant to the east ...

on 22 May 1626, finally arrived in Batavia on 10 April 1627. Thijssen's observations were included as soon as 1628 by the VOC cartographer Hessel Gerritsz in a chart of the Indies and " New Holland". This voyage defined most of the southern coast of Australia and discouraged the notion that New Holland, as it was then known, was linked to

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean), it contains the geographic South Pole. ...

. Much later, Thijssen's findings led Jean-Pierre Pury to propose a Dutch colony on the mainland there in 1717–18. Thijssen took the ''Gulden Zeepaerdt'' back to Middelburg in 1629–1630. He was captain on the ship '' Valk'' which sailed in 1636 from Zeeland to Batavia. Later, this ship perished near Pulicat in southeast India on 13 October 1638, though it is unclear if François Thijssen was its captain at the time. In his 1726 novel ''

Gulliver's Travels ''Gulliver's Travels'', originally titled ''Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships'', is a 1726 prose satire by the Anglo-Irish writer and clerg ...

'',

Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish writer, essayist, satirist, and Anglican cleric. In 1713, he became the Dean (Christianity), dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, and was given the sobriquet "Dean Swi ...

placed Lilliput and Blefuscu near the unimaginably remote Nuyts Archipelago, a hundred years after their discovery.

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a States and territories of Australia, state in the southern central part of Australia. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, which in ...

was not visited again by Europeans for 165 years, when in 1792 the French explorer Antoine Bruni d'Entrecasteaux searched there for his lost compatriot La Pérouse.

General references

*
Data on trips of the VOC ships ‘’Gulden Zeepaard’’ and ‘’Valk’’

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thijssen, Francois Year of birth missing 16th-century births 1638 deaths 17th-century Dutch explorers Explorers of Western Australia Explorers of South Australia Sailors on ships of the Dutch East India Company