Jan Rijp

January Corneliszoon Rijp (* circa 1570 in the Netherlands, † after 1613 ) was a Dutch skipper at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th century.

Life

Rip is best known for his travels with the Dutch polar explorer Willem Barents in search of the Northeast Passage, to avoid clashes with the warships of the Portuguese and Spanish fleets on the way to India and the Far East.

In May 1596 Rijp was appointed captain of the second ship, which had been equipped by Dutch merchants to research on the Northeast Passage. The first ship was under the command of Jacob van Heemskerk. Barents was the pilot of the expedition. After the discovery of the island of Spitsbergen, the ships were prevented from proceeding further by pack ice. Barents decided to turn off to the east and to sail around the northern tip of Novaya Zemlya, which he had previously reached in 1594 already. Rijp refused to accept this suggestion as he assessed the dangers of the Arctic winter properly and sailed back to the Netherlands. Barents was included in the north of Novaya Zemlya from the ice and had to spend the winter. The ship was lost and Barents died before the rest of the team took the return trip in June 1597 in two small dinghies to the south. On the Kola Peninsula near the present city of Murmansk, the survivors of Rijp were taken and brought back to the Netherlands, where they arrived on 29 October.