Dirk Hartog

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Theodoric Hertoge[1] or Dirk Hartog (1580—1621), the 17th Century Dutch sea captain and explorer, whose expedition was the second European group to land on Australian soil. He left behind an artefact to record his visit, the Hartog plate. His name is sometimes alternately spelled Dirck Hartog, Dirck Hartog or Dirch Hartichs.

Born into a sea-faring family, at the age of 30 he received his first ships' command, and spent several years engaged in successful trading ventures in the Baltic and Mediterranean seas.

He then gained employment with the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in 1615, and was appointed master of a ship (the Eendracht, meaning "Concord" or "Unity") in a fleet voyaging from the Netherlands to the Dutch East Indies. Setting sail in January 1616 in the company of several other VOC ships, Hartog and the Eendracht became separated from the others in a storm, and arrived independently at the Cape of Good Hope (later to become the site of Cape Town, South Africa).

Leaving there, Hartog set off across the Indian Ocean for Batavia (present-day Jakarta), utilising (or perhaps blown off course by) the strong westerly winds known as the "Roaring Forties" which had been earlier noted by the Dutch navigator Henderik Brouwer as a quicker route to Java. On October 25, 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. His was the second recorded European expedition to land on the Australian continent (having been preceded by Willem Janszoon), but the first to do so on the western coastline.

Hartog spent three days examining the coast and nearby islands. He named the area Eendrachtsland after his ship, but this name has not endured. When he left he affixed a pewter plate to a post, now known as the Hartog plate. On the plate he had etched a record of his visit to the island. Its inscription (translated from the original Dutch) read:

  • 1616 On 25 October arrived the ship Eendracht, of Amsterdam: Supercargo Gilles Miebais of Liege, skipper Dirch Hatichs of Amsterdam. on 27 d[itt]o. she set sail again for Bantam. Deputy supercargo Jan Stins, upper steersman Pieter Doores of Bil. In the year 1616.

Finding nothing of interest or of use, Hartog continued sailing northwards along this previously undiscovered coastline of Western Australia, making nautical charts up to about 22° lat. south. He then left the coast and continued onwards to Batavia, eventually arriving safely in December 1616, some five months after his expected arrival.

Eighty years later in 1696 the Flemish explorer Willem de Vlamingh landed on the island and by chance found the plate, which now lay half-buried in sand. He replaced it with a new plate which reproduced Hartog's original inscription and added notes of his own, and took Hartog's original back to Amsterdam, where it may now be seen in the Rijksmuseum.

In 2000 the Hartog plate was temporarily brought to Australia as part of an exhibition at the Sydney Maritime Museum. This led to suggestions that the plate, considered important as the oldest-known written artifact from Australia's European history, should be acquired for an Australian museum, but the Dutch authorities have made it clear that the plate is not for sale.

Dirk Hartog left the employ of the VOC upon his return to Amsterdam in 1617, resuming private trading ventures in the Baltic. He died in 1621.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Australia Twice Traversed, by Ernest Giles see the introduction where Dirk Hartog is called Theodoric Hertoge.
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