Jacob Roggeveen

Jacob Roggeveen ( born February 1, 1659 Middelburg, † January 31, 1729 ) was a Dutch navigator and explorer.

Biography

Jacob Roggeveen was born on February 1, 1659 in the Dutch municipality of Middelburg, the third son of Arent Roggeveen, an astronomer, mathematician and navigator. Arent Roggeveen tried to establish a trading company, to explore the unknown countries of the Pacific Ocean. He found among the conservative Dutch merchants no shareholders, so he could not implement his plan. However, these plans could not have been without influence on the life of his son.

Jacob Roggeveen first attended the Latin school in his home town, then studied law at the University of Harderwijk and then stepped into the service of the Dutch East India Company. From 1714 he lived in Java, where he became a member of the Supreme Court in Batavia. In 1717 he returned to Holland to implement his father's plans. From the Dutch West India Company, he received three ships to travel to the South Sea, there to discover new lands and seek the fabled Terra Australis Incognita.

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With the ships Arend, Thien Hoven, Africaansche Galey and a total of 260 man crew he left on June 16, 1721 Amsterdam, peaking in January 1722 according to the rounding of Cape Horn to the Pacific. During his circumnavigation he discovered on Easter Sunday, April 5, 1722 ( Roggeveen wrote April 6, actually on 5 April was Easter Sunday 1722), the Polynesian island of Rapa Nui for Europe, to which he gave the name Paasch one island (Easter Island). In the northern Tuamotu Archipelago, the Africaansche Galey ran in today's island Takapoto on a coral reef and had to be abandoned. Roggeveen named the island therefore Het Schadelijk one island. On its onward journey to New Guinea he discovered in the same year belonging to Samoa Islands Tutuila and Upolu, before he and his weakened by scurvy crew arrived on December 10, 1722 in the then Dutch Batavia. Since he was accused of having violated the trade monopoly of the East India Company, he was arrested and his ships confiscated. In a subsequent lawsuit, which ended with a comparison, however, he received his team's compensation and the outstanding wages. From Batavia Roggeveen returned with the rest of his team back on various ships in the Netherlands. He made his journey with an important contribution to the study and mapping of the Pacific.