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Dirk Hartog
1580–1621
Dirk Hartog Island

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Dirk Hartog Island
www.dirkhartogisland.com

 

Pewter plate

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Pewter plate inscribed with the details of Hartog's ship and crew.
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

The first European to set foot on Western Australian soil was Dirk Hartog, the VOC (Dutch East India Company) captain who is almost as famous for a pewter plate as he is for that initial step.

Hartog received his first command at the age of 30 and spent several years trading as a private merchant in the Baltic and Mediterranean seas.

In 1615, he was appointed master of the VOC ship Eendracht, and in January 1616 set sail in company of a fleet of VOC ships for the East Indies. Before reaching the Cape of Good Hope, the Eendracht became separated from the fleet in a storm but continued its voyage, running before the roaring forties across the Indian Ocean.

Following the route set by Hendrik Brouwer in 1610, Hartog sailed east for about 7000 kilometres before turning north and setting a course for Java. But he turned too late and the Eendracht—farther east than she should have been—made landfall on the Australian coast just north of Shark Bay, in Western Australia.

On 26 October 1616, Hartog stepped onto Australian soil, on what is now known as Dirk Hartog Island. Before leaving he left a pewter plate inscribed with the details of his ship and crew:

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

The plate, now held in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, was found 81 years later by another VOC captain, Willem de Vlamingh, who replaced it with his own plate (of which the National Library has a replica).

Hartog continued sailing north as far as North West Cape, charting as he went. His voyage heralded the beginning of the unveiling of the west coast of the South Land, and soon Hartog's name for the region—Landt van d'Eendracht, or Eendracht's Land—began appearing on maps of the world.