Hessel Gerritsz

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Hessel Gerritsz put a word into print that would eventually name an entire continent. In 1612, on the title page of a Dutch translation he published in Amsterdam, the phrase "Land ghenaemt Australia Incognita" appeared in type. Scholars believe this is the earliest occurrence in print of the word Australia outside Spain. The man behind it was not a famous explorer or a crowned monarch. He was a cartographer working out of a printing workshop on Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, a street lined with the booksellers and mapmakers of Amsterdam's booming trade in geographical knowledge. How did an engraver from the northern Netherlands become, in the judgment of some, the chief Dutch cartographer of the 17th century? And what did it mean to hold that title at the exact moment the world was being drawn for the first time?

• 2. An Alkmaar Apprenticeship

  ›

  Gerritsz was born around 1581 in the northern Netherlands, and his path into cartography began in Alkmaar under Willem Janszoon Blaeu, a cartographer and globe maker about ten years his senior. The two men would shape each other's careers in ways neither could have anticipated. Gerritsz followed Blaeu's workshop when it relocated to Damrak in Amsterdam, the commercial heart of a city rapidly becoming Europe's capital of mapmaking. He married Geertje Gijsberts of Alkmaar in 1607, and the couple had eight children together. Geertje died sometime before 1624, after which Gerritsz remarried. By 1610, aged about 29, he had broken away from Blaeu's orbit entirely and established his own printing workshop. The maps he made there were later compiled into atlases by publishers including Blaeu himself and Jan Janssonius, a reminder that even rivals in Amsterdam's trade relied on Gerritsz's craft.

• 3. VOC Cartographer

  ›

  On the 16th of October 1617, Gerritsz was appointed the first exclusive cartographer of the Dutch East India Company, the VOC. The recommendation came from Petrus Plancius, chief scientist of the VOC, who had a difficult relationship with the senior Willem Blaeu. Plancius backed Gerritsz instead, though Gerritsz and Blaeu personally remained friends. The position was probably the most strategically important a cartographer could hold at that time. Every chart and logbook from returning VOC merchants and explorers had to be submitted to Gerritsz. The wealth of new information that crossed his desk was extraordinary, and several breakthrough maps resulted from it. In return, his charts traveled with every VOC captain on their voyages. He kept the post until his death, after which the Blaeu family held it, beginning with Willem Jansz, continuing until 1705.

• 4. Drawing the South Pacific

  ›

  Gerritsz's 1612 world map marked Austrialia del Espiritu Santo, identified by the explorer Pedro Fernandes de Queiros and now known to be Vanuatu, though for a long time it was believed to be part of a vast southern land. That map shaped Dutch and French representations of the South Pacific across two centuries. In 1618, Gerritsz produced a chart of the Indonesian islands that surpassed all earlier efforts and included, for the first time, the northwest coast of Australia. His 1622 map of the Pacific, probably the "Map of the Great South Sea," was consulted extensively by Abel Tasman on his 1642 voyage around Australia and to New Zealand. His 1622 map of Australia itself showed the first charted portion of the continent, the work done by Willem Janszoon in 1606, though at that point it was labeled Nueva Guinea and considered part of New Guinea. Gerritsz added a careful inscription to the map noting that sailors who had traveled in the neighborhood of New Guinea to ten degrees westward through many islands and shoals, across two, three, and four fathoms for as many as forty days, suspected that New Guinea did not extend beyond ten degrees to the south. He left the implication open: if that were true, the land from nine to fourteen degrees would be a separate territory entirely.

• 5. Naming a Continent

  ›

  The 1627 map known as the Caert van't Landt van d'Eendracht was Gerritsz's most focused contribution to the mapping of Australia. It was devoted entirely to the discoveries along the Western Australian coastline. On that map, Australia carries the name Eendrachtsland, a name given by Dirk Hartog after his stay on its coast in 1616. The name Eendrachtsland remained in use until the end of the 17th century. In 1628, Gerritsz updated the map to include the 1627 charting of Australia's south coast by Francois Thijssen, making it the first map in existence to show an outline of the continent. The word Australia itself had appeared earlier, in that 1612 publication where Gerritsz translated and published the eighth memorial of Queiros, with the title page reading "Land ghenaemt Australia Incognita." That same publication included Isaac Massa's description of Siberia and his account of the roads from Muscovy. The Torres Strait is clearly visible on the world map Gerritsz included in that volume.

• 6. Printer, Engraver, Historian

  ›

  In 1613, Gerritsz wrote and published a History of the land named Spitsbergen, documenting the discovery, early voyages, and whaling activities on those islands. The volume demonstrated a range that went beyond cartography. His engraving of a walrus with its calf, included in that publication, was noted for its skill. His 1619 posthumous portrait of the playwright Gerbrand Adriaensz Bredero became one of his most reproduced engravings. Also in 1613, he edited a map of Russia that had been prepared by the future Feodor II of Russia when he was still a tsarevich. Gerritsz revised it again in 1614 with additions and corrections. The Blaeu firm continued to reproduce that map until 1665, fifty years after Gerritsz's amendments. His work on the maps of Joannes de Laet's Beschrijvinghe van West-Indien, published in 1630, reflected an interest in the New World that was unusual for a cartographer in his position at the VOC.

• 7. Brazil, Florida, and the Final Years

  ›

  In 1628-1629, Gerritsz took a step rare for someone in his role. He joined a voyage to Brazil and the Caribbean. The maps he contributed to de Laet's 1630 publication drew on that direct experience alongside French and Spanish sources. His map of Florida became particularly influential. Gerritsz named the region Tegesta on that map, and the name stuck: for two hundred years after, Florida was known by that label. Gerritsz died in 1632 in Amsterdam, in the Dutch Republic, and was buried in the Nieuwe Kerk on the 4th of September, aged about fifty. The VOC cartographer's post passed to the Blaeu family, who held it for another seven decades. The Tegesta name, printed on countless maps that followed his, would outlast almost everything else he touched.