Jacob Le Maire

Jacob le Maire was a Dutch merchant and mariner who circumnavigated the earth from 1615-1616. The strait between Tierra del Fuego and Isla de los Estados was named the Le Maire Strait in his honor.

Jacob le Maire was one of 22 children of Maria Walraven and Isaac le Maire, who was one of the founders and the largest shareholder of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). However, in 1605 Isaac le Maire was forced to leave the company after a dispute and after that he invested considerable amount of energy and money to break VOC’s monopoly on the trade to the East Indies. Jacob was part of this plan. The VOC owned by patent from the States-General, the Dutch monopoly on travels to the Indies via the Cape of Good Hope and through the Strait of Magellan, until then the only two known passages to the Indies. In 1615, Isaac sent two ships, the Eendracht and Hoorn, to find another route to the East Indies, so that he can break the VOC’s monopoly on spice trade. Jacob was in charge of trading during the expedition. The expedition did find new route, they rounded Cape Horn, which they named for the Dutch city of Hoorn, and arrived at Batavia on October 28 with a remarkable 84 of the original 87 crew members of both ships on board. Although they had opened an unknown route, the VOC claimed infringement of its monopoly of trade to the Spice Islands, and le Maire was arrested and the Eendracht was confiscated. Once le Maire and Willem Schouten, the navigator and investor of the expedition were released, they set sails from Batavia to Amsterdam in the company of Joris van Spilbergen, who was on a circumnavigation of the earth himself. Le Maire died en route leaving his report on the trip, which later his father published.