Willem Bontekoe

 ( 1587 Births ) 

Bontekoe set out from Texel on December 28, 1618 as skipper of the Nieuw Hoorn ("New Hoorn"), an East Indiaman (i.e. an armed merchant ship). His destination was the town of Bantam on Java. The merchant Hein Rol had formally the upper command. After passing the coast of Brazil, at the end of May 1619 the ship passed Cape Hope, where it did not stop due to the weather. Instead it stayed for 21 days in Réunion and 9 days at Île Sainte-Marie near the coast of Madagascar. It departed from there on 8 September. The ship sailed alone through the Indian Ocean. By then 17 of the 216 crew members had died.

A fire, caused by a shipmate accidentally setting fire to a cask of brandy, caused the gunpowder magazine to explode and sink the ship. Of the 119 still on the ship only two survived, including Bontekoe, but he was wounded. Seventy more had escaped before the sinking in two lifeboats. They continued in the two boats; later they went on together in one. Sails were made from the shirts of the crew. They were hungry and thirsty, some drank seawater or urophagia. Bontekoe did the latter too, until it became too concentrated. Sometimes there was relief by being able to catch birds and flying fish, and by rain supplying drinking water. The hunger became so severe again that the crew decided to kill the ship boys; Bontekoe writes that he was against that, and that they agreed that they would wait three more days. Just in time, 13 days after the ship wreck, they reached land where they could eat coconuts. It was an island in the Sunda Strait, 15 miles off Sumatra.

They went on to Sumatra, where they encountered locals from whom they could first buy food, but who later attacked them. Eleven crew members were killed, and four had to be abandoned; they had probably also been killed.

In the end, 55 survivors reached Batavia, after encountering a Dutch fleet of 23 ships near Java under the command of Frederik de Houtman, which saved them from going to the now-hostile Bantam. Divided over the ships they got to Batavia on Java, where Bontekoe and Rol were received by Jan Pieterszoon Coen, who gave Bontekoe a new command and an order to harass the Chinese coast. He narrowly survived a hurricane, and returned to Hoorn a wealthy man. He became a trader, and twenty years after his return published his journal.

In 1995 and 1996, on the occasion of the 350th anniversary of the journal's publication, a new edition, an edited collection of essays, and an annotated bibliography were published.

• Bontekoe, Willem Ysbrandz. Die vier und zwantzigste Schiffahrt, 1648. Frankfurt/Main ed., facsimile ed., 1993, introd. by Augustus J. Veenendaal, Jr., Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, .
• ---, Iovrnael ofte gedenkwaerdige beschrij vinghe; De wonderlijke avonturen van een schipper in de Oost 1618-1625. Ed. V.D. Roeper. Amsterdam: Terra Incognita, 1996. .
• Bostoen, Karel, Remmelt Daalder, Vibeke Roeper, Garreit Verhoeven, and Diederick Wildeman. Bontekoe; De schipper, het journaal, de scheepsjongens. Zutphen; Amsterdam: Walburg Pers, Nederlands Scheepvaartmuseum, 1996. .
• Verhoeven, Garreit and Piet Verkruijsse (eds.), Iovrnael ofte Gedenk waerdige beschrijvinghe van de Oost-Indische Reyse van Willem Ysbrantsz. Bontekoe van Hoorn; Descriptieve bibliografie 1646-1996. Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 1996. .