Willem Schouten

Willem Cornelisz Schouten was a Dutch investor and navigator for the Dutch East India Company (VOC). He was the first to sail the Cape Horn (and the one who named it) route to the Pacific Ocean.

In 1615 Schouten sailed from Texel in the Netherlands, in command of an expedition sponsored by Isaac Le Maire and his Australische Compagnie in equal shares with Schouten. Purpose of the expedition was to break VOC’s monopoly on the trade in Pacific by finding a new route, since the VOC had monopoly on travels to the Indies via the Cape of Good Hope and through the Strait of Magellan. One of the objectives was search for Terra Australis. In 1616 the expedition rounded Cape Horn, which Schouten named for his birthplace, the Dutch city of Hoorn. H proceeded up the north coasts of New Ireland and New Guinea and visited adjacent islands, including what became known as the Schouten Islands. Although the expedition opened an unknown route, the VOC officials arrested him and confiscated his ship in Batavia. He returned to Europe and published description of his travels which was soon translated into several other languages. Later, he sailed for the VOC, and on one of these trips he died off the coast of Madagascar in 1625.