World map showing the voyage of Le Maire and Schouten

Willem Cornelisz. Schouten was a Dutch navigator whose 1615–17 voyage with Jacob Le Maire opened a new route around the southern tip of South America. Their expedition, made in the Eendracht after the loss of the smaller Hoorn, became the sixth recorded circumnavigation of the globe. Schouten’s account was first published by Willem Jansz. Blaeu in Amsterdam in 1618 and was accompanied by this double-hemisphere world map showing the voyage route.

The map traces the expedition across the Atlantic, through the newly discovered passage south of Tierra del Fuego, across the Pacific, past New Guinea and the East Indies, and home to the Dutch Republic. The voyage was especially important because it proved that Tierra del Fuego was not part of a continuous southern continent and that a navigable route existed south of the Strait of Magellan. The new passage, later known as Le Maire Strait, and the rounding of Cape Horn altered European understanding of the southern tip of the Americas and the approaches to the Pacific.

This example is the second state of the map. In the first state, the names of the Tropics and several places, including Japan, Banda, St. Helena, and the Cape of Good Hope, were absent; in this second state, they have been added. The map is also a commemorative image of circumnavigation. Above the hemispheres are portraits of Ferdinand Magellan and Willem Cornelisz. Schouten, with the expedition’s ships Victoria and Eendracht in the upper corners. Portraits of Francis Drake, Thomas Cavendish, Olivier van Noort, and George van Spilbergen appear along the sides, placing Schouten and Le Maire within a lineage of global navigators.

Although the cartography itself is relatively spare, the decorative programme is significant. The map presents the voyage not simply as a route, but as an achievement to be inserted into the history of circumnavigation. Its paired hemispheres, portraits, ships, armillary sphere, and laurel-bearing figures frame Dutch navigation as both geographical discovery and public commemoration.