Holland's Influence on English Language and Literature

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Chapter XXIX Descriptions of Voyages. Lucas Janss Waghenaer, Bernard Langhenes, Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, William Cornelis Schouten, Gerrit de Veer, Hendrik Tollens.

Descriptions of voyages have formed for centuries in the most natural way a typical part of the literature read by the English. A nation destined to ‘rule the waves,’ a nation whose country is surrounded by the sea, learned through all generations to enjoy voyages; a nation, whose sons looked from their earliest youth to the sea for their future success in life, must enjoy and favor every kind of story relating to the bravery and the success, the dangers and the tragedies, the heroism and the sufferings, of those who sailed with their ships to the remotest corners of the globe, and coming home brought with them trophies of their trade or their robberies, as well as thrilling stories of their wonderful experiences.

From the ‘Voiage and Trevaile’ (1300-1372) until the time that the last of the one hundred and twenty volumes of the Hakluyt Society was published, English literature is full of ‘voyages and travels,’ which give abundant proof of this typical characteristic of the English nation. Among these descriptions of voyages are some translations from the Dutch, which have played a very important and interesting part, not only as a much cherished amusement for the reading classes in England but as an incentive to the develop-

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ment of English maritime power. Within the short but deciding period, from the year 1590 until 1620, we find the following books, and perhaps others, translated from the Dutch:

(1)	Lucas Janss Waghenaer (1550-1600), Mariners Mirrour. This book is mentioned by P.A. Tiele in his introduction to The Voyage of John Huyghen Linschoten, p. XXVII, as a translation of Waghenaer's Spiegel der Seevaert, published by C. Plantyn, Leyden, 1584.
(2)	Bernard Langhenes - The description of a voyage made by certain Ships of Holland into the East Indies - who set forth on the 2nd of April, 1595, and returned on the 14th of August, 1597. Printed by John Woolfe, 1598. ‘In his dedication to this work, of which the original was written by Bernard Langhenes, Phillip announces a translation of Linschoten's voyages.’^1 This work was translated by William Phillip.
(3)	John Huyghen van Linschoten, his discours of voyages into ye Easte and West Indies. Devided into foure books. Printed at London by John Woolfe (1598); on the title pages of the second, third and fourth books of which work the initials W.P. (William Phillip) are given as those of the translator. ‘In the advertisement to the reader in this work (copies of which have sold as high as ten pounds, fifteen shillings) it is stated that the Booke being commended by Maister Richard Hakluyt, a man that laboureth greatly to advance our English name and nation, the printer thought good to cause the same to be translated into the English tongue.’^2 Reprinted by the Hakluyt Society in two volumes, London, 1885, with introduction of P.A. Thiele.

1 Charles T. Beke, in his introduction to the work of Gerrit de Veer, p. CXXXIX.

2 Ibid.

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(4)

Gerrit de Veer - A true description of three voyages by the North-East towards Cathay and China, undertaken by the Dutch in the years 1594, 1595 and 1596, published at Amsterdam in the year 1598, and in 1609 translated into English by William Phillip. This book is reprinted in 1853 for the Hakluyt Society and edited by Charles T. Beke.

(5)

William Cornelison Schouten. The Relation of a wonderfull Voyage made by William Cornelison Schouten of Horne, Shewing how South from the Straights of Magellan in Terra del Fuego, he found and discovered a newe passage through the great South Sea, and that way seyled round about the World - Describing what Islands, Countries, People and strange Adventures he found in his saide Passage. London, imprinted by T.D. for Nathaneel Newberry, 1619. ‘This English edition,’ says Beke, is exceedingly rare.’^1

Of these five books, those of Van Linschoten, De Veer and Schouten are by far the most important.

That of Langhenes I have found mentioned only by Beke in his introduction to that of De Veer; that of Lucas Jan Waghenaer is mentioned, in the Dutch edition, by Van der Aa's Dutch Biography under the name of Waghenaer.

That of William Cornelis Schouten, however, who died in 1625, I have found in not less than twenty-five editions, of which seventeen are in Dutch, five in French, one in Latin, one in German and one in English. The importance of this work lies in what is mentioned in the title about the discovery of ‘a newe passage through the great South Sea.’

Far more important is that of De Veer, relat-

1 Charles T. Beke in his introduction to the work of De Veer, p.c., XXXIX.

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ing the three voyages by Dutch ships in 1594, 1595 and 1596, which were trying to find a new passage to China and India through the North-East, around the Northern coast of Russia. Especially the thrilling narrative of the third one of these voyages, in which William Barends was the commander, and in which this daring mariner, with his little company, was forced to stay a whole winter on Nova Sembla, has gained a world-wide fame. The struggle of these stubborn and daring explorers, against the intense cold of an arctic winter, against the attacks of polar bears and against other difficulties, is so interesting, and is described with such a naive simplicity, that it is retold in hundreds of books, and forever belongs to the most interesting literature of the kind in the world. Gerrit de Veer, himself one of the little company of Barends, describes the first of the three voyages, as published in the English edition of the Hakluyt Society, in thirty-eight pages, the second voyage in thirty pages, while all the rest of the book, covering two hundred and forty-two pages, is devoted to the third voyage. The building of a cabin, the accident that befel two of the company who were devoured by a bear, the sickness and death of Barends himself, the return in open boats from Nova Sembla to Kola on the White sea, a distance of about six hundred miles, are some of the most interesting parts of the story. More than two hundred years after this voyage, the Dutch poet, Hendrik Tollens (1780-1856) made the story a subject of one of his poems (‘De overwintering op Nova Sembla’), and this poem, too, is translated into English in 1860 by ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and entitled: ‘The Hollanders in Nova-Sembla - An Arctic poem.’

There exist at least three Dutch editions of the

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work of De Veer, in 1598, 1605 and 1619; one in Latin in 1598, four editions in French in 1598, 1599, 1600 and 1609; and one in English. Several abridgments of the work are published in German, one in Latin, and one in English, in the third volume of Purchas' collection. Short abstracts of the work have been published in Dutch, Latin, German, French and English, and all these editions are mentioned in the introduction to the English edition as published by the Hakluyt Society in 1853.

But the most important of all, is the book of Van Linschoten. Jan Huyghen van Linschoten was born at Haarlem, probably in the year 1560. His portrait has: ‘Anno 1595 aet 32,’ and this should indicate as the year of his birth 1563. But all the stories of his life tell that in the year 1576 he went to Spain as a boy of sixteen years, which brings the year of his birth back to 1560. And, as it is much more probable that he left home at sixteen than at thirteen, I rather believe that he was born in 1560. Probably about the year 1573, before or after the siege and conquest of Haarlem by the Spaniards, his parents moved to Enkhuizen, one of the first cities which fell into the hands of the Sea-Beggars, and was held for the Prince of Orange. Enkhuizen, to day one of the dead cities on the Zuider Zee, was at that time one of the best sea ports of the Netherlands and one of the centers of Dutch trade and fishery. ‘We learn from John that two brothers of his some years previous to the year 1576 had gone to Spain and established themselves probably in business at Seville. In spite of the war between the two nations, commercial relations were still maintained, and could not well be abandoned by either side, as the Dutch market was then indispensable to the prosperity of the Indian

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trade of Spain and Portugal.’¹ As a boy of sixteen years, in 1576, he left the home of his parents to join his brothers in Spain, and he did not return to Enkhuizen before the year 1592, ‘after an absence of thirteen years.’² If he really left home in 1576, and returned in 1592, his absence must have been not thirteen but sixteen years. But, however this may be, he stayed for six or seven years in Spain, and in Portugal in the house of a merchant at Lisbon; went in 1583 to India in the suite of Vincente de Fonseca, the newly appointed Archbishop of Goa, where the young Van Linschoten stayed for five years. During the years he spent in Spain and Portugal and in India, he studied not only the Spanish and Portuguese languages, but especially all the maps and books of the Spaniards and Portuguese about the route to India, and the countries of the far East, which at that time, were, in great part, entirely unknown to the Dutch and the English. And after he had returned to Enkhuizen in 1592, where he found that his father had died long ago, but his mother, brother and sister were in good health, he began to compile all his notes and maps for a book, to which he gave the title of ‘Intinerario,’ and in which he set forth the precious information which he had gained in his voyages. This book put an end to the monopoly which the Spaniards and Portuguese enjoyed of the trade with East India, and became the cause of the establishing of the Dutch, and of the English, East-Indian-Companies. This ‘Itinerario,’ the great work of Van Linschoten, is divided into three parts. The first part, being the Itinerario proper, is that which in 1885 was reprinted by the Hakluyt

1 P.A. Thiele, Introduction to ‘The Voyage of John Huyghen van Linschoten to the East Indies. Ed. Hakluyt Society, 1885, p. XXIII.

2 Ibid., p. XXIX.

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Society in two volumes. For this part the author received the assistance of Bernard ten Broeke, whose name, after the manner of the time, was Latinized into Paludanus. The second part, containing ‘a collection of the routes to India, the Eastern seas and the American coasts, was translated from the manuscripts of Spanish and Portuguese pilots; and is, in particular, full of details on the routes beyond Malacca, in the Malay Archipelago and on the Chinese coasts. It is by this compilation that Linschoten rendered his countrymen the most direct benefit.’¹ ‘The third part consists of a short description of the eastern and western coasts of Africa, with a more ample description of America.’² The maps of the Itinerario were declared to be from ‘the most correct charts that the Portuguese pilots nowadays make use of.’ ‘From a careful comparison of some parts,’ says Thiele, ‘with the earlier printed maps, I can affirm that this claim is no vain boast, but the simple truth.’³

The second part, as being most needed by the Dutch and English, was printed first of all in 1595, and immediately used on voyages to India, before the whole work of Van Linschoten was published in 1596. After having so far finished his work that it was ready for the press, Van Linschoten himself took part in the two first voyages around the North-East, described in the work of Gerrit de Veer, as mentioned above, but when he had come back from that second voyage, he took no further active part in maritime expeditions, although his interest in them remained unabated.⁴ The flourishing seaport of Enkhuizen where he found such congenial friends as Paludanus,

1 P.A. Thiele, p. XXX.

2 Ibid., p. XXXI.

3 Ibid.

4 P.A. Thiele, p. XXXVII.

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and Lucas Jansz Waghenaer, attracted him so much that he settled there, and was appointed treasurer of the town. In 1606 we find his name among the members of the committee for the establishing of a West-India-Company. He died on the 8th of February, 1611, at the age of fifty-one years.

His ‘Itinerario’ was in some respects a revelation. ‘After its publication, every one learned that the colonial empire of the Portuguese was rotten, and that an energetic rival would have every chance of supplanting them. Its importance met with speedy and extensive recognition. English and German translations were published in 1598; two Latin translations (one at Frankfort and one at Amsterdam) in 1599; a French translation in 1610. The latter as well as the original Dutch was more than once reprinted. For long the book was constantly quoted as an authority.’¹

1 Ibid., XL.