In 1606, Captain Willem Janszoon, in command of the Dutch ship Duyfken, became the first European to discover Australia. Now a replica of the Duyfken has completed a voyage to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Dutchman Dirk Hartog and his crew, the first Europeans to land on Western Australian. Hartog came ashore on an island just north of Shark Bay on October 25, 1616. Here is a short video about the Duyfken‘s commemorative voyage.
Duyfken 2016 Dirk Hartog Commemorative Voyage and Exhibition
From a friend in Perth:
Yep 400 years ago, how time flies
She is a lovely little ship, went on board with my son when she was birthed in Freo some years ago. Matthew put his name down to crew the ship prior to joining the navy
but due circumstances it didn’t eventuate.
The other sailing ship which is mostly berthed in Fremantle called STS Leeuwin II , which is a lot bigger that the little Dove, and also offers crew berths, and cruises off the coast on most days.
She has also gone north for the commemoration ceremony, with the King and Queen of the Netherlands in attendance I believe.
http://www.sailleeuwin.com/
My shipmates and fellow Cape Horner`s Gary Wilson and Alan Campbell were in EYE OF THE WIND Gary as Mate, when I was in *SOREN LARSEN back in 1991 making Cape Horn on the *9th and 10th of December of the year. Both were in DUYFKEN for her historic voyage from Australia to the Netherlands to commemorate and remember 400 years of the VOCs 1606 voyage Gary as Master and Alan as engineer. We published in the Cape Horner Journal a story of that voyage Gary said she handled much better than expected “given that her yards were in slings and trusses, we could brace her tighter to the wind than we had expected to be able”. It should be remembered that on 29th January 1616 Wilhelm Van Schouten in EENDRACHT named the rock at the bottom of the world after his home town of Hoorn in the Netherlands. So it was that after 33 days out of Salvador, Brazil, on December 6th 2015 the Dutch bark EUROPA hove off the horn from the east to remember that historic rounding. The only confirmed square riggers to make Cape Horn in this way from the east without the use of engines for over 4000 miles are 1938 four-mast bark PRIWALL, barquentine 1967 REGINA MARIS and then bark EUROPA. I was there on that day in 2015 with a crew of mostly Dutchmen. All those years ago when EENDRACHT arrived in Batavia she and her crew were taken prisoner the crew being sent back to the Netherlands in chains the governor Cohen, it took years for Schouten Le Maire to petition and get back the logs of the voyage that found a new way to the new world a way that had been thought impossible. Up to that point in time the only passage thought to exist was that found by Magellan through the strait named after him and VOC controlled that, which was why Van Schouten had felt his way so far south in the first place.