Sebald de Weert
On June 27, 1598, a voyage of five ships with 494 men under the command of Jacques Mahu and financed by Dutchman Pieter van den Hagen and the Flemish Johan van der Veken, two wealthy retailers, and equipped by Magelhaanse Compagnie, left Goeree (Holland), bound for the Moluccas, in the Dutch East Indies.
After leaving European waters the ships spent from April 2 to September 29 at the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Africa.
When the Geloof finally lost sight of the Trouwe, Captain De Weert found himself with a restless crew threatening to force a return home to the Netherlands.
The Hoop was later lost in a vicious storm but the Liefde, commanded by a new captain, Jacob Quaeckernaeck, with a decimated crew, eventually managed to reach Usuki in the province of Bungo on Kyushu Island by April 19, 1600.
He encountered the Dutch seafarer Olivier van Noort, who on his ship Mauritius, would later become famous as the first Dutchman and only the fourth sea captain to circumnavigate the world.
Van Noort would also be famous from the same journey as being the man who sank the Spanish galleon San Diego in Manila Bay.
Nevertheless, both Van Noort and De Weert were eventually blown back eastward into the straits again where the two captains met for a second time.
De Weert on the other hand hoped to strengthen his crew's physical condition prior to making another attempt at the Pacific.
De Weert's original command, the Blijde Boodschap, had been so short on supplies that, in November 1599, they were forced to sail into the Spanish port of Valparaíso in Chile.
In fact, the captain, Dirck Gerritz Pomp, who had once worked for the Portuguese in Japan and China voyages, was held as long as 1604 when he had finally been released to return home due to a Dutch-Spanish prison exchange.
Reflecting the cordiality of the visit, Vimaladharmasuriya started to learn the Dutch language, saying that ‘Kandy is now Flanders’, while Spilbergen left two skilled musicians behind in the King's service.
On January 14, 1603, accompanied by a Kandy ambassador, De Weert traveled on to Atjeh and returned to Ceylon in April with six ships.
[4] En route to or near Batticaloa De Weert's fleet took four passing Portuguese ships, but then a number of events went wrong.
Worse, De Weert released the Portuguese crews who had surrendered to the Dutch on the promise that their lives would be spared.
Upset with the King's refusal and inebriated during the dinner, De Weert is said to have insulted the Queen by saying, "Your majesty need not worry.
Though not accepting responsibility for the deaths of De Weert and his crew, the King eventually offered his apologies and the VOC sent the merchant Jacob Cornelisz later that year.
[4][5] De Weert's death dealt a blow to any Kandy-Dutch alliance in Ceylon until the next king, Senarat, succeeded to the Kandyan throne in 1604.
The king granted the Dutch extensive commercial concessions and a harbor for settlement on the east coast in return for a promise of armed assistance against any and all Portuguese attacks.
On the shore the giants were apparently able to uproot trees from the ground to protect themselves from the musket fire and they waited with spears and stones so they could attack the Dutch intruders should they make a beach head.
Many others including Francis Drake, Pedro Sarmiento, Tome Hernandez, and Anthony Knyvet claimed to have seen giants in the Straits of Magellan with the last sighting have been at Cabo Virgines in 1764 by Commodore John “Foul Weather Jack” Byron.
Also according to Theodore de Bry (1528–98) in Part IX of his landmark Historia Americae Sive Novi Orbis (History of American Grand Voyages), Sebald de Weert reported how his crew had captured and imprisoned a Tierra del Fuegan mother with two children on the south side of the Magellan route heading eastward.
Although Sebald de Weert is usually credited with first sighting the Falklands in 1598, both the Spanish and British claim their own explorers discovered the islands earlier.
