Reference Books
Mirror of the Australian Navigation.
By Hesselink
Dec 29, 2005, 15:55

Mirror of the Australian Navigation. With an introductory essay by Dr. Edward Duyker. (The Australian Maritime Series, no. 5). Facsimile, 4to. Bound in quarter alum tawed goat skin with marbled papered sides designed by Margo Snape. 15 illustrations. 196 pp.
Limited edition.

After more than one hundred years of Portuguese monopoly, at the turn of the century, the Dutch responded by taking over control of the spice trade and they dominated trade and navigation to the Indies during the next centuries. In 1602 Dutch merchants trading in the East Indies joined together to form the VOC – the Dutch East Indies Company.

It soon became by far the most powerful of Holland’s trading houses. The wealthy and powerful Dutch merchant Isaac Le Maire from Hoorn, however, tried to break the VOC monopoly. He set up The Australian Compagnie and mounted an expedition, commanded by his son Jacob, to chart a new course to the Pacific and to find the great southland. As a result they established a new sailing route from the “old world” to the Pacific, around Cape Horn.
Jacob Le Maire wrote a journal of this expedition, which was published posthumously in 1622, under the title Spieghel der Australische Navigatie. This journal provided the world with the details of the two-year’s voyage, and ultimately led to due credit being paid to Le Maire for his remarkable achievements. The original book of 1622 contained many engraved illustrations and maps.

In a very few copies of this first edition the plates are gorgeously coloured by hand. For the fist time ever, this beautiful and contemporary handcolouring is faithfully reproduced here in this Australian Maritime Series edition.

In this book, the original Dutch edition is accompanied by a faithful facsimile of the English text prepared by one of the great Pacific historians of the eighteenth century, Alexander Dalrymple.


This Article was published on MapHist.com - http://www.MapHist.com