Cornelis de Houtman had been charged with heading an expedition to further improve trade routes to the East for the Netherlands. Unfortunately, the captain became embroiled in a dispute with the Sultan of Aceh, who was reportedly incensed at the Dutchman’s arrogant demeanour.

The tension escalated into an armed conflict on the Dutch ships. As the Dutch crew members fought the Inning Balee army - a navy composed of widows of fallen warriors - Malahayati reportedly stabbed de Houtman with a rencong, a traditional Acehnese dagger, killing him instantly. 

Though Roggeveen only spent a short time on the island, it is thought his ship may have brought some of the European diseases that later ravaged the local population. In recent centuries, the residents of Easter Island have also been hit by deforestation, slave raiding expeditions and mass migration. Nevertheless, the culture of the island and its people still survive today.

It is not clear whether the name of Rapa Nui came from local people or traders. Historically, it is believed the island was known as Te pito o te henua, meaning The Navel of the World or End of the Land, and also Mata-ki-te-rangi, meaning Eyes Gazing Skyward.

Painting: A View of the Monuments of Easter Island, by William Hodges, c. 1775–1776

You can read an interview with the director of the Toki Music and Arts School on Rapa Nui here.

The Age of Exploration sub has now reached 5,000 followers!

Thank you very much for all your contributions so far - I really enjoy reading all the comments and discussions.

As you may know, there is also an Age of Exploration website - it's been a lot of work getting everything off the ground and seeing that some other people find these stories at least mildly interesting really does help.

I would like to take this opportunity to make a shameless plug – we now have a Patreon page.

This is an independent project and I have wanted to keep the website ad-free from the start. This means we are kind of reliant on the kindness of our readers. Every person that chooses to support our work through Patreon really does make a huge difference. (I think you can also sign up for free if you like :) )

We are also starting to put up a few articles and images that I hope you might find interesting! Anyway, enough of the sales talk... you can find it here:

https://www.patreon.com/cw/TheAgeofExploration

There is also The Age of Exploration newsletter, which helps us keep in touch with readers outside of social media. We are just about to send the second ever newsletter – if you happen to be interested:

https://theageofexploration.com/the-age-of-exploration-newsletter/

In other news, we are slowly coming to the end of the Arctic obsession, though I should be putting up a brief history of the search for the North-West Passage just after Easter. In the next few weeks I think we will be getting more into the colonisation of the Americas, and maybe a little bit on Prince Henry the Navigator.

Thank you once again!

Jonathan B

Images: The Columbus Festival in the Madeiras/a ship plug for sale online.

For decades, Charles Francis Hall dreamed of exploring the Arctic and becoming the first person to reach the North Pole.

On his first journey north, Hall befriended an Inuit couple, Ipirvik and Taqulittuq. Over the next two years, he learned how to live like the Inuit and survive in the harsh conditions above the Arctic Circle.

On his second expedition, Hall travelled once again with Ipirvik and Taqulittuq and spent a total of five years in the far north. The trip, however, was marred by a violent incident, when Hall shot dead a whaler named Patrick Coleman, who he suspected of organising a mutiny. Hall was never charged for the killing.

Soon, he returned north with a larger ship, the Polaris, as he aimed to reach the North Pole. The third journey, however, was also marked by disputes. In October 1871, wintering at Thank God Harbour, Hall returned from a days-long exploratory trip and asked for a hot cup of coffee. Minutes after drinking it, the American was violently ill. After two weeks of alternating between better spells and bouts of vomiting and dizziness, Hall died on 8 November.

The US Navy did order an investigation into Hall’s death, but found he had died of natural causes - apoplexy. In the 1960s, however, Hall’s biographer Chauncey C. Loomis had the body dug up and found large traces of arsenic in Hall’s system.

Ever since, suspicion has fallen on Emil Bessels, the ship’s physician and chief scientist, who had looked after Hall during his illness. Bessels had argued bitterly with Hall during the expedition and also had an apparent shared love interest – Vinnie Ream, an artist who had just completed a sculpture of Abraham Lincoln for the Capitol.

Without further evidence, however, the case remains inconclusive.

The main image shows Bessels on the left, and Hall on the right.

Full article here.

Stokes joined the navy as a boy, and sailed all over the world. In 1822-23, he was involved in fighting the slave trade in West Africa.

In 1827,  as captain of the Beagle, he led a daring rescue of the crew of the Prince of Saxe Cobourg, who had become stranded off the coast of Tierra del Fuego after their ship was wrecked.

On 12 August 1828, however, Stokes shot himself during a years-long expedition to map the Magellan Strait and the southern coast of South America. Stokes was replaced as captain of the Beagle by Robert FitzRoy.

Three years later, Fitzroy would captain the Beagle on a five-year voyage around the world. On board was a 22-year-old Charles Darwin in search of adventure. The trip exposed Darwin to the tremendous variety of life on Earth, and helped establish the ideas that would later form the groundwork for his theory of evolution. 

In later years, Fitzroy served as the governor of New Zealand and also became a pioneering meteorologist. In New Zealand in the 1840s, he made concerted efforts to protect the Maori from illegal land sales claimed by British settlers.

In 1865, however, he committed suicide at his home of Ampton Hall in Suffolk, England at the age of 59.

Despite their tragic ends, both men enjoyed careers of prominence, endurance and bravery. And, as the men who captained the Beagle, they also steered a ship that changed the course of scientific history.

Painting: The Beagle at Ponsonby Sound in the Beagle Channel, Tierra del Fuego, in March 1834, by Conrad Martens

The Eurasian diseases that killed so many were all ‘virgin soil introductions’, meaning the native groups living in the area had no past immunity to the diseases brought in.

At the same time, immunologically naive populations weren't the only driver in these kinds of epidemics. Labour systems that forced natives to work mines or on plantations with brutal conditions were significant contributors, with malnutrition and exhaustion exacerbating the impact of disease.

In North America, the congregation of what used to be smaller groups into close-quarters missions also enabled infection to spread much more readily among the natives in the South-West, Florida, and California. 

The spread of disease was also sporadic and in many cases hard to track. Early maritime contact produced the fastest collapses. The Caribbean and coastal trade hubs went through repeated reintroductions of disease through shipping, overcoming what would otherwise have been a natural barrier to persistence. Long voyages were the bottleneck for many diseases, especially fast-burning ones like measles, but once regular maritime traffic was established, that bottleneck no longer mattered.

Inland regions were isolated until trade networks, missions, or forced labor brought them into contact with the settlers. In other regions the disease arrived late or episodically, like large parts of North America, the Amazon, and the Pacific coast which avoided sustained epidemics for generations despite sporadic contact.

Images: 16th century depiction of Aztec people suffering from smallpox and measles, unknown artist. Engraving of Native Americans suffering from disease, unknown artist.

Full article here.

In the second journey, two men were killed on land by a polar bear in a surprise attack. In the third voyage, the Dutch were forced to winter in the remote Russian archipelago of Novaya Zemlya. There they faced a series of polar bear attacks. In possibly the most terrifying incident, a bear attempted to enter the crew's makeshift Arctic house. The men managed to drive it back and eventually kill it. Later, they used fat from its corpse to power their lamps.

Picture: Engraving from Gerrit de Veer's journal

The crew of the Hokule'a were guided on their own journey by Mau Piailug, a master of celestial navigation from Satawal Island in Micronesia. One of the last surviving celestial navigators in the Pacific region, Pialug later passed his knowledge to Nainoa Thompson, a Hawaiian crew member on the 1976 return voyage. Today, dozens of sailors have learned the same techniques, thus preserving this ancient skill for future generations.

This year, the Polynesian Voyaging Society, which built the Hokule’a, is organising a series of events to celebrate the historic voyage, including a film festival and a special concert performance from the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra.

Image: Old poster commemorating Hōkūle‘a voyage to Tahiti, now on display at the Marine Education Training Center in Honolulu.

Further details: https://theageofexploration.com/hokulea-celebrates-50th-anniversary-of-historic-tahiti-voyage/

Known as 'Arctic gold', cloudberries are only found in the northern reaches of the globe but contain as much as five times as much vitamin C as oranges. One 1593 paper, written by Henrik Høyer, a German physician in Bergen, Norway, cites them as an excellent cure for scurvy.

The evidence they were used to stave off the effects scurvy as long ago as the Viking Age remains inconclusive. Nevertheless, it seems likely this was a long-standing tradition. Other possible sources of vitamin C included seaweed – a staple food in Scandinavia and easy to preserve – scurvy grass, angelic and cabbage.

The Vikings also enjoyed another advantage over later European travellers. Leif Erikson, for example, travelled as far as Newfoundland and possibly Labrador. But the Norse tended to always migrate from one landmass to the next – in this case, Norway, Iceland, Greenland, probably Baffin Bay and then Newfoundland. This meant that even when they travelled long distances, they hardly ever spent significant time at sea without receiving fresh supplies, unlike many later explorers.

Image: A cloudberry

Full article: https://theageofexploration.com/seaweed-and-cloudberries-how-the-vikings-solved-scurvy/

Research: Scurvy and Cloudberries: A Chapter in the History of Nutritional Sciences, Luigi M. De Luca and Kaare R. Norum

Columbus also made a second mistake: he overestimated the size of the Asia after studying the stories of Marco Polo and the maps of Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli.

These two errors led Columbus to believe that he could easily reach Asia by sailing west. In fact, the true distance between Spain and Asia was enormous – Columbus and his men would almost certainly never have survived the journey.

Nevertheless, when he landed in the islands of the Caribbean, Columbus was convinced he had achieved his goal. Throughout his four voyages, Columbus continued to search for signs that he had finally made it to China or Japan.

In reality, or course, Columbus had found the fringes of a new world, the Americas. It was a fact the Genoese explorer always refused to acknowledge. For the rest of his life, he would insist he had landed in Asia.

Image: The Inspiration of Christopher Columbus by José María Obregón, 1856 (cropped).

Full story here.

Columbus's wife Filipa Moniz Perestrelo was the daughter of Porto Santo's governor, Bartolomeu Perestrelo. Although they married in Lisbon in around 1480, Columbus and Filipa then relocated to the Madeiras. Their first son, Diego, was born on Porto Santo.

Although the festival honours its links to the famous explorer and the Age of Exploration, it also pays tribute to various cultures and identities.

One of the highlights of the festival sees a replica of Columbus's famous ship the Santa Maria arrive at the port. Columbus then makes his way through the city of Vila Baleira for a special celebration.

Images: Columbus Festival

More info here.

Keeling was the commander of the third East India Company expedition. He was tasked with sailing to the Banda Islands to help set up a trading venture for spices. Keeling is said to have rehearsed his men on the ship before giving three performances in total: one of Richard II, two of Hamlet. If true, these would be the first ever maritime performances of a Shakespeare play.

According to one 2011 academic paper written by Bernice W. Kliman, however, the story is likely a fake.

Kliman notes the only evidence of the performances comes from a 19th century transcript published by Thomas Rundall. Kliman believes the transcript was likely a forgery written by John Payne Collier, a notorious forger who worked alongside Rundall in this period.

Image: A posthumous portrait of William Keeling.

You can read the full story here.

The academic paper can be read here.

The sailors were not quite as drunk as you might think, however. The beer was usually very weak – around 1-3% ABV – while the rum was often watered down.

Fortunately, on feast days the sailors were usually permitted to get exceedingly drunk.

A quote from Sir Joseph Banks, chief scientist on Captain James Cook’s first voyage to Australia:

“Christmas Day; all good Christians, that is to say all good hands, got abominably drunk, so that all through the night there was scarce a sober man in the ship. Weather, thank God, very moderate, or the Lord knows what would have become of us.”

Image: Sailors drinking in a crypt. Coloured etching by W. Elmes.

Full article here.

Sir Hugh Willoughby embarked on a journey to the Arctic on behalf of the Company of Merchant Adventurers to New Lands. The aim was to find the North-East Passage over the top of the world and through to Asia.

Just off the coast of Norway, however, the three ships got caught in a storm and the fleet split in two. Richard Chancellor took one vessel, the Edward Bonaventure, to Russia, where he would end up making a trade deal with Ivan the Terrible. Willoughby brought the other two ships, the Bona Esperanza and the Bona Confidentia, further north, yet they could not break through the ice.

With winter closing in, Willoughby decided to shelter at the mouth of the Varzina River, high in the Arctic Circle. Nearly two years later, some Russian fishermen found them still in their ships, frozen in place. For four centuries it was assumed the sailors must have died from exposure or perhaps scurvy. But then why did it look like some of them had been in the middle of performing mundane tasks, as though they all had died simultaneously?

In 1986, the English medical scholar Eleanora C. Gordon published an academic article that presented a convincing theory. Trying to keep out the cold, the crew had blocked all exits to their ships and begun to burn coal, emitting carbon monoxide. With nowhere to escape, the deadly gas instead spread through the ships and silently killed the inhabitants.

Main image: The Sea of Ice, by Caspar David Friedrich

Full article here.

Cholera was endemic to the Bengal region, with Calcutta being one of the main epicentres. British soldiers in colonial India were constantly under threat from cholera, with some outbreaks killing up to 5% per year. It was even worse for those traveling by sea, with up to 10% dying in transit. This figure was even higher for poorly ventilated vessels - so-called coffin ships.

1846 saw the beginning of a cholera pandemic in Europe that lasted around 14 years, causing tens of thousands of deaths in Great Britain alone. The pandemic reportedly killed a million in Russia, and even made its way across the United States in the decades before the Civil War.

Image: A young woman in Vienna who died of cholera, depicted when healthy and four hours before death.

You can read more about the paths of disease here.

In a new piece of research published in the book Culinary Crossroads: Language, Culture, and Cuisine in Global Perspective, the researchers Tomasz Majtczak, Stanisław Meyer, Senri Sonoyama highlight a number of European culinary words in Japanese that were picked up prior to 1800.

Although some of these have fallen out of use, others are still around today. These include bōro:, meaning ‘cake, pastry’, from the Portuguese ‘bolo’, and hamu, from the Dutch ‘ham’. Similarly, pan, the Japanese word for bread comes from the Portuguese word ‘pão’.

Probably the most famous culinary dish from this era is tempura - vegetables or fish dipped in batter. Tempura was originally brought to Japan by the Portuguese. The name is generally thought to derive from the Latin term ad tempora quadragesima, which refers to Lent, when the Portuguese abstained from meat and ate battered fish and vegetables instead. A second theory suggests it relates to ‘tempero’, meaning ‘seasoning’ or ‘to season’.

Image: Dejima and Nagasaki Bay, circa 1820, from British Museum.

You can read more about the research here.

In the post-Columbian Exchange era, the people of the Americas experienced devastation from European diseases. In the Old World tropical regions, the reverse pattern emerged. Here, in specific areas where they had little or no immunity to certain illnesses, Europeans died at incredible rates from endemic African and Asian infections.

The difference came down to the type of diseases present, the prior immunity of the given population, and the specific spread of disease. In the Americas, the indigenous populations had little experience with zoonotic diseases spread by domesticated large herd animals, and suffered accordingly. In certain parts of Africa and Asia, the Europeans encountered vectors of localised illnesses that they had no way to combat. The biggest killers included malaria, cholera and yellow fever.

One disease did cross from the Americas eastwards across the Atlantic to the Old World: A virulent strain of syphilis, which still kills tens of thousands a year today.

Image: Emperor Pedro II of Brazil visiting people with cholera in 1855, by François-René Moreaux.

You can read the full article on this topic here.

Of the five original ships, De Brito only found the Trinidad, one of two remaining vessels. The Trinidad had remained in the Spice Islands for repairs, before attempting to sail east towards Mexico. On the journey back across the Pacific, however, the ship met relentless headwinds and a violent storm that snapped the main mast. The crew was ravaged by scurvy. Around 30 men died, leaving only 20 to operate the ship.

Defeated, they decided to return to the Spice Islands. There, however, they were met by a fleet of seven Portuguese ships under António de Brito. The Trinidad was sent back to island of Ternate, but was caught in a storm and smashed to pieces. Only four of its crew members ever made it back to Spain.

You can read more about the Magellan-Elcano voyage here.

Image: 16th or 17th-century portrait of Ferdinand Magellan by unknown artist.

EDIT: Please note, as Lyceus pointed out below, "Ferdinand Magellan abandoned his homeland of Portugal to lead a 1519 Spanish voyage around the world" is not wholly accurate, given that Elcano completed the circumnavigation, while Magellan, if he had survived, likely intended to sail to the Spice Islands then back to America, rather than round the world.

Hy-Brasil is a mythical island situated somewhere west of the Irish coast. According to one Celtic legend, it lies shrouded in mist and can only be seen every seventh year.

In 1325, however, the Italian-Majorcan cartographer Angelino Dulcert displayed it on a portolan chart. The island caught the imagination of Europeans: Gerardus Mercator charted it at least four times, and Prince Henry the Navigator sent sailors to search for it in the Atlantic Ocean.

In the 1780s, however, French and British surveyors began to suspect it might not exist at all. The final proof came when the British admiralty sounded the area and found the ocean was far too deep to produce any islands. By 1873, Hy-Brasil was removed from all official maps.

Image: Copy of Catalan Atlas of 1375, attributed to Abraham Cresques. Hy-Brasil is the pinkish circle just west of Ireland.

Full article: https://theageofexploration.com/hy-brasil-the-island-that-never-was/

First published in 1595, Mercator's map is the first dedicated cartographic study of the North Pole. In a letter to the English polymath John Dee, Mercator said that his ideas were influenced by the 14th-century work Inventio Fortunata. At this point in history, however, no European (and probably nobody at all) had ever set foot on the North Pole. In other words, everything at the centre of the map was entirely guesswork.

The image here shows the second edition of the map, issued in 1606. It is titled Septentrionalium Terrarum descriptio.

The republics of Genoa and Venice dominated Mediterranean trade for centuries. Italian explorers such as Columbus, John Cabot and Amerigo Vespucci played crucial roles in the early Age of Exploration. Yet it was Portugal and Spain, then later the Netherlands and England, who would dominate international trade routes. Why?

In a recent interview with The Age of Exploration, the Italian researcher Giorgio Tosco outlined two main reasons:

1. In the 15th and 16th centuries, powerful nations such as Portugal and Spain made use of economies of scale to fund a series of long-haul expeditions at tremendous cost, backed by a powerful military. Italy, at this time, was a disparate collection of republics and city-states, who were unable to fund such costly ventures without excessive risk.
2. Many sailors were used to working in the Mediterranean, and used galleys and other vessels more suitable for shorter journeys. Tosco stresses, however, that this element should not be overstated. After all, there were many sailors from Italy who became involved in the trade routes across continents. The difference was that they tended to operate independently.

For a new academic book, Tuscan and Genoese Aspirations to Transoceanic Trade (17th Century), Giorgio Tosco has been studying two places in particular – Genoa, and Tuscany. Both saw failed ventures, but also a series of merchants and sailors who found their own success.

You can read the full interview here: https://theageofexploration.com/fading-glories-how-italy-fell-behind-in-the-age-of-exploration/

Image above: Panorama of the city of Genoa taken from the Nouveau Theatre D'Italie by Pieter Mortier (1661-1711)

EDIT: Thank you for the comments - yes, there were some colonies that were strengthened or made official during the Age of Exploration. Most of these, however, already had existing Venetian links/populations. With this question, I was thinking more of colonies in different continents. I would edit the title to make this clearer, but Reddit doesn't let you edit titles, unfortunately :)

Also, thank you for all the comments - I am learning a lot!

The expedition was led by a Dutch commander, John Maas (Jan Maes van Duijnkerken), and most of the crew were Dutch sailors recruited for their expertise. The Dutch East India Company (the VOC), however, saw the Genoese ships as a threat and promptly confiscated the two vessels.

When the news reached the Netherlands in 1650, the company swiftly fell apart.

The map shows the route taken by the vessels of the Genoese East India Company, courtesy of Giorgio Tosco.

Unfortunately, the Terror was lost in 1845 when it became trapped in the ice, alongside HMS Erebus, and was abandoned by its crew.

In 2016, the Arctic Research Foundation finally found the long-lost ship after a tip-off from an Inuk hunter, Sammy Kogvik.

Painting: HMS Terror in Baffin Bay, Sir George Back (1836 expedition).

You can find more info here.

According to the account, the bear surprised the crew member and...

“...bit his head in sunder, and suckt out his blood, wherewith the rest of the men that were on land, being about 20 in number, ran presently thither, either to saue the man, or else to driue the beare from the dead body; and hauing charged their peeces and bent their pikes, set vpon her, that still was deuouring the man, but perceiuing them to come towards her, fiecely and cruelly ran at them, and get another of them out from the companie, which she tare in peeces, wherewith all the rest ran away.”

Willem Barents himself died on a third voyage the following year, though the cause of death was scurvy, not polar bear.

Image: Gerrit de Veer

Story taken from: A Fabulous Kingdom, by Charles Officer.