
1616–1618
Eendracht (Willem Schouten) and Hoorn (Jacob le Maire)
In 1615, a voyage by Willem Schouten and Jacob le Maire to the southern Pacific Ocean proved once and for all that Tierra del Fuego was not the northern tip of a southern continent beyond South America.
Schouten and le Maire had embarked on the expedition to dodge the VOC's (Dutch East India Company) trade restrictions, aiming to establish a new trade route into the Pacific through Tierra del Fuego. This it did—opening up an entirely different trade route—even though the voyage reached only so far as the Solomon Islands in 1616. The VOC later claimed that the new route infringed its monopoly of trade. Schouten was arrested in Java and his ship confiscated.
The associated map shows the pair's journey through Cape Horn (named for Schouten's birthplace, the Dutch city of Hoorn), up the western coast of Chile and out into the southern Pacific Ocean.
