Dirk Hartog

Dirk Hartog ( in a different notation also Dirck Hartog ) (* 1580, † 1621) was a Dutch navigator and explorer, who has made ​​a name around the discovery of Australia.

Life and work

First experience with the sea made ​​Hartog as a trader in the Mediterranean and the Baltic Sea. In 1615 he was eventually employed by the Dutch East India Company, on whose behalf he was to sail with a merchant fleet to the Dutch East India.

From the Cape of Good Hope, he came with his ship, the Eendracht, in a storm off course and arrived in December 1616 alone to the island of Ambon. Or did Hartog use the so-called Roaring Forties, a west wind drift between 40 ° and 50 ° south latitude to transverse to pass through the Indian Ocean, faster to Java and make up for lost time.

Obviously again strayed off course, the crew of the Eendracht sighted on 25 October 1616 about 26 ° south latitude several uninhabited islands. Dirk Hartog had reached the West Australian coast in the area of ​​Shark Bay. On the, later named after him Dirk Hartog Island, he attached a pewter plaque on which he recorded his shore leave.

After the island had to offer interesting even little, Hartog followed the Australian west coast up to 22 ° south latitude and prepared a chart before he was heading Batavia, which he reached in December 1616, six months after its expected arrival.

Hartog is considered as the second European to Australian soil entered, the Hartog plate is the oldest written artifact of the European- Australian history.

The plaque

The badge of Hartung was replaced in 1697 by Willem de Vlamingh, this she added with a reference to its own shore. The original Hartog plaque is now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. In 1801, the found of a French expedition under Nicolas Baudin 's. The captain of the Naturaliste Emanuel Hamelin let them beat to a new post. But he also left its own badge. Much to the displeasure of a young officer named Louis de Freycinet, he returned 17 years later as a captain, and brought her to Paris. The plaque was then at the Western Australian Maritime Museum (WA Maritime Museum ). The badge of Hamelin, however, is gone.