Willem Bontekoe of Hoorn: the ship that flew into the air and the boat without a compass

What the sources say

• Willem IJsbrantsz. Bontekoe was born in Hoorn in 1587. His surname is one of those given after the house sign or gable stone of the family house. His brothers Pieter and Jacob IJsbrantsz. Bontekoe were also skippers for the VOC; in 1623 all three were in the Indies. ^[1]
• On December 28, 1618 he sailed from Texel as skipper of the Nieuw Hoorn, “ghemant met 206 eters, groot ontrent 550 lasten” (manned with 206 “eaters”, about 550 lasts), with an east wind. “Eaters” means everyone aboard who had to be fed: 206 people on board. The title page of the print says “Begonnen den 18. December 1618” (begun December 18) and “vol-eynt den 16. November 1625”, the text itself “den 28. December”. The entries after it (“Den 29. dito sijn wy de Hoofden gepasseert”, on the 29th we passed the “Hoofden”, “Heads” in Hoogewerff’s note) fit December 28, and Hoogewerff gives that date too; why the title page says December 18 no source we read tells us. ^[1]
• The ship went south to 33 degrees and then turned toward the Sunda Strait. On November 19, 1619, at 5½ degrees south (“the height of the aforementioned Strait of Sunda”), the brandy caught fire as it was pumped: the butler’s mate, Keelemeyn of Hoorn, stuck a candle on a pointed holder into a cask, and a “thief” on the candle (a crooked-burning wick, says Hoogewerff) fell off, right into the bung hole of the cask he was pumping from. ^[1]
• The fire reached the powder. About 60 half-barrels of powder went overboard, but about 300 remained in the ship. “Het schip sprongh aen hondert duysent stucken; 119 persoonen waren wy noch in 't schip doe het sprongh” (the ship burst into a hundred thousand pieces; we were still 119 persons in the ship when it blew). ^[1]
• Bontekoe survived the blast on a floating mast, together with the young Hermen van Kniphuysen from the Eiderland. Later he counted 46 people in the boat and 26 in the launch: 72 persons. ^[1]

Without compass, chart or cross-staff

• In the boat and the launch there was “noch compas, noch kaert, noch boogh” (neither compass, nor chart, nor quadrant); it was said that the chief mate, Jan Piet van Hoorn, had taken the compasses out of the binnacle. ^[1]
• On November 21, 22 and 23 they made a degree-bow: a quadrant on the foredeck (“plecht”) and a stick with a cross. The carpenter Teunis Sybrantsz of Hoorn had a pair of dividers; according to Hoogewerff the degrees were marked on the stick and the cross is an adjustable crosspiece. ^[1]
• Bontekoe also cut a chart into the back of a plank, with Sumatra, Java and the Sunda Strait, and a compass rose. On the day of the disaster he had still taken the sun’s height at noon: 5½ degrees south, and the dead-reckoned position in the chart stood about 90 miles from land. Each day he stepped off the estimated run with the dividers and set the course 70 miles to one side of “'t gat” (the strait), to know which way to turn when they sighted land. ^[1]

Two high blue mountains

• When the clouds drifted off the land he saw “twee hooge blauwe berghen” (two high blue mountains). He remembered hearing Willem Cornelisz. Schouten tell in Hoorn (who had been to the East Indies two or three times) that on the corner of Java lay two high blue mountains. ^[1]
• Schouten, “fellow townsman and friend of Bontekoe” (Hoogewerff), died in the spring of 1625 in Antongil Bay on Madagascar; the journal ends with his death, with a verse on it. So the man of Cape Horn appears in the closing pages of this book. ^[1]

• Cape Horn and the Hoorn Islands

The needle does not point north

• On the way home, on March 15, 1625, Bontekoe took a bearing of the sun at its rising and found “22 graden, afgaende Noord-westeringh van 't compas” (22 degrees, decreasing northwesting of the compass). Hoogewerff adds: “Afnemende noordwestering. Deze mededeeling slaat op de miswijzing van het kompas” (decreasing northwesting; this refers to the compass variation). ^[1]
• Bontekoe also gives a rule of thumb for the Cape of Good Hope: “als ghy met de peylinghe van 't compas bevindt, dat het compas recht Suyen en Noorden houdt” (if by the bearing you find that the compass keeps exactly south and north), look out for land. Hoogewerff: “Dus zonder miswijzing hoegenaamd” (so without any variation at all). ^[1]
• So a Hoorn skipper used the variation as a tool. The golden compass of Hoorn, for which Reynier Pietersz. van Twisch received a patent in 1597, was meant to read that variation from the sun. ^[1]

• The golden compass of Hoorn

How the book came about

• The journal appeared in Hoorn in 1646, printed by Isaac Willemsz. for the Hoorn publisher Jan Jansz. Deutel; the dedication is dated July 16, 1646. According to Hoogewerff three reprints followed within a year, next to the double print run of the first edition, and in 1648 Deutel complains of pirated editions in Utrecht and Rotterdam. ^[1]
• From the dedication Hoogewerff infers that Bontekoe was still alive at publication and living in Hoorn, probably retired. The year of his death “lies in darkness”. ^[1]

What we do not know

• When Bontekoe died: Hoogewerff calls the year obscure; other dates we saw have not been checked.
• Whether he sailed to the Indies again after this voyage: Hoogewerff knows nothing of it.
• How close the printed text of 1646 stands to his ship’s journal: the edition is Hoogewerff’s, after the print, and editing by the publisher cannot be ruled out.
• Where the tonnage (550 lasts in the journal) and the date of arrival in Zeeland are given differently in other sources: we have not read those sources ourselves.
• What in Hoorn commemorates him (statue, gable stone): we have not yet checked that in a source and leave it out.
• Why the title page of 1646 says “Begonnen den 18. December 1618” and the text “den 28. December”: we do not know; we found no explanation.