Dirk Hartog

Dirk Hartog (; baptised 30 October 1580 – buried 11 October 1621) was a 17th-century Dutch mariner and explorer. Dirk Hartog's expedition was the second European group to land in Australia and the first to leave behind an artefact to record his visit, the Hartog Plate. His name is sometimes alternatively spelled Dirck Hartog or Dierick Hartochsz. Explorer Ernest Giles referred to him as Theodoric Hartog. The Western Australian island Dirk Hartog Island is named after Hartog.

Early life Dirk Hartog was born into a seafaring family. He was baptized on 30 October 1580 in the (), Amsterdam, the Netherlands, the second son and one of at least four children of Hartych Krynen, mariner, and his wife Griet Jans.

Name At a time when Dutch spellings were not standardized, his first and family names were variously spelled. "Hartog" included Hartogszoon, Hartogsz, Hartoogs, Hatichs and Hertoghsz as his last name; "Dirk" was also Dirck or Dirick as his first name. He signed his name (in several extant documents) as Dyrck Hartoochz. In Australian history, however, he has become known as Dirk Hartog.

Career Hartog received his first ship's command at the age of 30 and spent several years engaged in successful trading ventures in the Baltic and Mediterranean seas.

In 1616, Hartog gained employment with the Dutch East India Company (, commonly abbreviated to VOC), and was appointed master of (meaning , ), in a fleet voyaging from the Netherlands to the Dutch East Indies.

Hartog set sail in January 1616 in the company of several other VOC ships, but became separated from them in a storm, and arrived independently at the Cape of Good Hope (later to become the site of Cape Town, South Africa). Hartog then set off across the Indian Ocean for Batavia (present-day Jakarta), utilising (or perhaps blown off course by) the strong westerly winds known as the Roaring Forties which had been noted earlier by the Dutch navigator Hendrik Brouwer as enabling a quicker route to the island of Java.

On 25 October 1616, at approximately 26° latitude south, Hartog and crew came unexpectedly upon "various islands, which were, however, found uninhabited." The Part Borne by the Dutch etc, can be found on Gutenberg, not sure which page but I'm sure you'll find it. He made landfall at an island off the coast of Shark Bay, Western Australia, which is now called Dirk Hartog Island after him. His was the second recorded European expedition to land on the Australian continent, having been preceded by Willem Janszoon in 1606, but the first to do so on the western coastline.

Hartog spent three days examining the coast and nearby islands. The area was named after his ship, although that name has not endured. Before Hartog left, he affixed a pewter plate to a post, now known as the Hartog plate, on which he scratched a record of his visit to the island. Its inscription (translated from the original Dutch) reads:

Finding nothing of interest, Hartog continued sailing northwards along this previously uncharted coastline of Western Australia, making nautical charts up to about 22° latitude south. He then left the coast and continued on to Batavia, eventually arriving safely in December 1616, some five months after his expected arrival.

Dirk Hartog left the employ of the VOC upon his return to Amsterdam in 1618, resuming private trading ventures in the Baltic.

Personal life On 20 February 1611, in the Old Church, Hartog married with Calvinist forms 18-year-old Meynsgen Abels. They are not known to have had children.

Death A lifelong mariner, explorer, trader, as skipper and owner of many vessels, Hartog died in 1621, in Amsterdam, and was buried on 11 October in the grounds of the (). His remains were later removed to a communal grave field outside the city.

Postscript In 1619 Frederik de Houtman, in the VOC ship , and Jacob d'Edel, in another VOC ship , sighted land on the Australian coast near present-day Perth which they called . After sailing northwards along the coast they made landfall in . In his journal, Houtman identified these coasts with Marco Polo's land of Beach, or Locach, as shown on maps of the time such as that of Petrus Plancius and Jan Huyghen van Linschoten.Letter of Commandeur Frederik de Houtman to the Chamber Amsterdam, 7 October 1620, Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague, 982, 1620 II, fol147-151, fol.148r; quoted in P. A. Leupe, De Reizen der Nederlanders naar het Zuidland of Nieuw-Holland in de 17e en 18e eeuw, Amsterdam, G. Hulst van Keulen, 1868, p.29, 32; cited in Frederik Willem Stapel, De Oostindische Compagnie en Australië, Amsterdam, P.N. van Kampen, 1937, pp.11 en 28.

Eighty years later, on 4 February 1697, the Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh landed on the island and by chance found the Hartog plate, which lay half-buried in sand. He replaced it with a new plate which reproduced Hartog's original inscription and added notes of his own, and took Hartog's original back to Amsterdam, where it is housed in the .

In 2000 the Hartog plate was temporarily returned to Australia as part of an exhibition at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney. This led to suggestions that the plate, considered important as the oldest-known written artefact from Australia's European history, should be acquired for an Australian museum, but the Dutch authorities have made it clear that the plate is not for sale.

In 1966 and 1985 Hartog was depicted on Australian postage stamps, both depicting his ship. In 2016 the Perth Mint issued a silver coin to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Hartog's Australian landfall.

The island in Shark Bay, Western Australia, where he made landfall was named Dirk Hartog Island. In Amsterdam, Canberra and fourteen other Australian towns, streets have been named in his honour.

See also Abel Tasman Dieppe maps Theory of the Portuguese discovery of Australia

References

Dirk Hartog

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