Vendée Globe

At the south-western tip of of Australia, Cape Leeuwin is the least well known of the three capes traditionally marking out a round the world voyage.  it was not until the sixteenth century that a Portuguese navigator discovered this hostile coastline populated by aborigines and kangaroos, and surrounded by a huge desert…

 

In 1494, the Treaty of Tordesillas divided the world into two: Spain took control of everything to the west of the Cape Verde Islands, while Portugal got the new lands to the east… The merchants set out to discover new worlds and particularly new riches.  The Portuguese seafarers thus discovered the Victoria region (SE Australia) in 1522, but Terra Australis did not really inspire navigators… When Holland got its freedom from Spain, the Dutch had no hesitation in going beyond the Cape of Good Hope to look for spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, pepper…), in spite of the risk of meeting up with the Portuguese fleet. The Battle of Bantam in 1601, when five Dutch vessels overcame thirty Portuguese galleons marked the birth of the Dutch East India Company: Merchants were able to form armies, declare war and sign treaties…
 
In 1606, the Duyfken, a ship from Texel, thus set sail to recognise the Moluccas in New Guinea, reached  the Straits of Torres and the crew went ashore at Cape York: This was the first time Europeans had stepped ashore in Northern Australia.  On the west coast, while Willem Janszoon caught sight of these new lands in 1606, it was Dick Hartog, who was the first European to step ashore on the north-west on 26th October 1616: he marked his passage with a brass plate fixed to a post.  After that, the Dutch Company made it compulsory for their merchant ships sailing to Java, to sail down to Australia after stopping off at the Cape of Good Hope, before heading northwards at the longitude of the Straits of Sundra.  Cape Leeuwin owes its name therefore to one of the boats setting out from Texel on 20th April 1621 on her way to Batavia (Djakarta): they gave a name to the point in March 1622 when their calculations took them off course…
 
From James Cook to Nicolas Baudin
 
It was not easy in the 17th Century to report your position and on 4th June 1629, the Batavia ran aground on the Houtman Abrolhos, a group of coral islands off the west coast of what was still known as New Holland. Three hundred shipwrecked sailors had to watch madness grab hold of Jeronimus Cornelisz, a representative of the owner, who imposed his law for five months until the Sardam arrived to save 70 crewmen.  In 1770, James Cook took possession of Australia during his first round the world voyage, then Bruni d’Entrecasteaux (1737-1793), sent by King Louis XVI to look for La Pérouse (who had set out three years before to go on a voyage of discovery around the Pacific), set sail from Brest in September 1791 with the frigates L’Espérance and La Recherche to explore the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific. The rear-admiral reached the Cape of Good Hope on 17th January 1792, in March named Amsterdam Island, then in South Australia the Recherche Islands, Recherche Bay, Hope Harbour, the D'Entrecasteaux Straits, Bruni Island, Riche Point, and Gicquel Point…
 
It was Nicolas Baudin, who was to draw up precise maps of the western coastline of the continent during his expedition from Le Havre with Le Naturaliste and Le Géographe. On 30th May 1801, the Frenchman passed « a dull coast without any havens… (and) no apparent source of fresh water.  However, fires indicate the presence of natives… ». He was to name a lot of islands, capes, bays, points and gulfs with the names of his officers: Joseph Bonaparte in the north, down to Kermadec Island in the south.  In the Bonaparte islands, the names of famous people from that era and literary figures were used for the remarkable coastline. Suffren, Jussieu, Colbert, Montesquieu, Fénelon, Laplace, Monge, Bernoulli, Buffon, Lamarck, Lavoisier, La Fontaine, Corneille, Molière, Voltaire, Borda, Descartes, Racine…are still there today as the names of the capes, peaks, headlands, peninsulas on this Western coast of Australia.
 
DBo.

 

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