Willem de vlamingh biography of william blake

British attack dutch in malacca

Willem Hesselsz de Vlamingh November — c. The mission proved fruitless, but he charted parts of the continent's western coast. He was baptised on 28 November In , he married; his profession was skipper in whaling , and he still lived on the island Vlieland. In , he and his wife sold their "apartment" in the Jordaan. Following a second voyage, in , he was asked, on request of Nicolaes Witsen , to mount an expedition to search for the Ridderschap van Holland , a VOC capital ship that was lost with passengers and crew on its way to Batavia in VOC officials believed it might have run aground on the western coast of Australia.

In , De Vlamingh commanded the rescue mission to Australia's west coast to look for survivors of the Ridderschap van Holland that had gone missing two years earlier, and had admiral Sir James Couper on board. The expedition departed Texel 'strictly incognito' on 3 May and, because of the Nine Years' War with France, sailed around the coast of Scotland to Tristan da Cunha.

In early September the three ships arrived at Cape of Good Hope, where they stayed for seven weeks because of scurvy among the crew. There, Cornelis de Vlamingh took command after Laurens T. Zeeman died. On 5 December they sailed on. He saw numerous quokkas a native marsupial , and thinking they were large rats he named it ' t Eylandt 't Rottenest "Rats' Nest Island".

He afterwards wrote of it in his journal: "I had great pleasure in admiring this island, which is very attractive, and where it seems to me that nature has denied nothing to make it pleasurable beyond all islands I have ever seen, being very well provided for man's well-being, with timber, stone, and lime for building him houses, only lacking ploughmen to fill these fine plains.