Historisch ende wijdtloopigh verhael van 'tghene de vijf schepen … door de Straet Magellana … wedervaren is; Sebalt de Weert

Key Properties

Second imprint of the first edition of 1600, with a new and improved set of etchings. Bound in 20th-century vellum over three raised bands, with gilt title on a leather label, two sets of differently-coloured marbled endpapers, gilt top edge and a bookmark ribbon.

Collation & Technical Description

Oblong quarto (Quer-4°). 1 leaf (title) + 77 (1) pp. With an engraved title vignette (celestial globe), 8 full-page copper etchings, and a closing woodcut vignette.

Condition

Pagination errors (as issued): 43 for 34, 60 and 61 transposed, 72 lacking, 77 for 73, 27 for 76, and 73 for 77. Top edge trimmed a little close but without loss of text; the last five leaves slightly stained at the upper fore-edge; some early marginalia in pencil; paper with slight browning. Overall a well-preserved copy of this very rare edition, of particular rarity in commerce, with only two copies traceable at auction in the last fifty years.

References & Bibliography

Sabin 64582 (vol. XV); Tiele, Mémoire bibliographique sur les journaux des navigateurs néerlandais, pp. 24–26.

Description

A detailed and richly illustrated first-hand account of the calamitous voyage of the five ships fitted out at Rotterdam in 1598 by the Magellanic Company (Magelhaensche Compagnie), one of the earliest Dutch attempts to reach the East Indies and the Pacific by way of the Strait of Magellan, both to open the spice trade and to strike at the Spanish settlements on the coast of Chile. It was, in effect, the expedition of Jacques Mahu and Simon de Cordes, with Sebald de Weert one of the captains; this is his narrative of it.

The voyage was a disaster for its commanders. Admiral Jacques Mahu died of fever off Cape Verde in September 1598, only months out, and command passed to Simon de Cordes. De Cordes brought the fleet through the strait into the Pacific, only to be killed in November 1599, he and some twenty-seven of his men were cut down by Araucanians (Mapuche) on Mocha Island off the Chilean coast. The fleet was scattered by storms; of the five ships only one, the Liefde, ever reached its destination, drifting into Japan in 1600 with the Englishman William Adams aboard, the beginning of European (and soon Dutch) contact with Japan.

This narrative follows the ships under Sebald de Weert, which were separated from the fleet in a storm and forced to winter four months in the Strait of Magellan, where the crews endured a catalogue of "dangers and sufferings" (Tiele, p. 24) before de Weert turned for home, sighting on the return the islands that still bear his name, the Sebald (Sebaldine) Islands off the Falklands.

Its importance is considerable. It is one of the principal printed sources for the early Dutch voyages of discovery; a vivid record of the perils of the Magellan route, which would soon drive the Dutch to seek the alternative passage round Cape Horn (found by Schouten and Le Maire in 1616); and a foundational document of Dutch overseas expansion on the very eve of the founding of the VOC in 1602. This is the second imprint, with a new and improved set of etchings, of the first edition of 1600; of the plates Tiele remarked that "Les planches sont des imitations beaucoup plus exactes que celles qui se trouvent dans la collection des De Bry" (Tiele, p. 25). South America.

Historical Significance

Records one of the first Dutch attempts to reach the East Indies by way of the Strait of Magellan, the Magellanic Company's fleet of 1598, the same expedition whose sole surviving ship, the Liefde, carried William Adams to Japan. Sebald de Weert's account is also the source for the sighting of the Sebald Islands (now the Jason Islands, near the Falklands). Its etchings are notably more accurate than those in the celebrated De Bry collection (Tiele).