Journael vande Nassausche Vloot, ofte Beschryvingh vande voyagie om den gantschen Aerd-kloot

Jacques L’Hermite was a Dutch admiral who commanded the Nassau Fleet, a major Dutch expedition sent into the Pacific and around the world between 1623 and 1626. The fleet sailed with eleven ships under L’Hermite and Vice-Admiral Gheen Huygen Schapenham, with aims that combined trade, privateering, reconnaissance, and the search for routes into the Spanish Pacific. L’Hermite died during the voyage, and Schapenham continued in command. This 1643 Amsterdam edition of the Journael vande Nassausche Vloot records the expedition’s circumnavigation and its encounters in South America, the Pacific, and Southeast Asia.

The title page identifies the work as a description of the voyage “around the whole earth” undertaken in the years 1623, 1624, 1625, and 1626. It also states that the volume includes a description of the government of Peru by Pedro de Madriga and an account of Pedro Fernandes de Quir concerning the discovery of the unknown Australia, its great wealth and fertility. This additional Quirós material links the voyage narrative to wider seventeenth-century debates about the southern continent and the South Pacific. The engraved world map on the title page gives the book particular cartographic importance. It shows the world in an oval projection with the route of the Nassau Fleet marked across the Atlantic, around southern South America, through the Pacific, and into Asian waters. The map includes the label ’t Landt van d’Eendracht on the western coast of Australia, referring to Dirk Hartog’s 1616 landfall on the Eendracht. This makes the title-page map an important printed witness to the early Dutch recording of Australia’s west coast.

The map also reflects the Dutch interest in routes through the far south. The voyage passed through the region of Cape Horn and into the Pacific, reinforcing Dutch attention to the southern passage as an alternative to the Strait of Magellan. The title-page image therefore functions not only as an illustration, but as a compact geographical summary of Dutch global navigation, Pacific ambition, and emerging knowledge of Australia.

Within the collection, this volume is closely connected with Hessel Gerritsz.’s world maps with the Quirós inscription (99and 101), which similarly connect Pedro Fernandes de Quirós with the idea of Terra Australis. It also relates to Dutch and Dutch-derived maps of Australia and the Pacific, including Joan Blaeu’s Archipelagus Orientalis sive Asiaticus (76, 108, 121), Pieter Goos’s Pascaerte Vande Zuyd-Zee (466), and Pieter Goos’s East Indies chart (307). Together, these works show how Dutch voyage narratives, title-page maps, atlas maps, and sea charts carried information about the Pacific, Australia, and the southern continent into print.