"Seeing so many low islands and debris of flooded land, anyone would have guessed that there might be a continent near it. Geography, however, is a science of fact. ”

Captain Bougainville

In the Age of Discovery, sailors were most afraid of three things, storms, windlessness, and archipelagos.

Storms are clearly dangerous.

It would be tragic for a sailboat to fall into a windless belt, which is the grave of the seafarer. The Dutchman's global routes, the Atlantic equator, are among the most dangerous voyages. The unlucky ship can sink into a windless situation for half a year. If you are particularly lucky, there are also ships that have crossed the equator in more than a week, completely depending on fate. On average, the journey from Amsterdam to Batavia takes 8 months, and 2 or 3 months at the equator.

Archipelago, on the other hand, means reefs and turbulent winds, and if you run aground in unfamiliar waters, the end will be very miserable.

Spread out any modern map and you'll see that Australia has all three of its worst elements. The northern half of Australia's eastern coast is defended by the Great Barrier Reef, and in the early days of the Age of Discovery, if a ship arrived on the Great Barrier Reef, the probability of running aground was 100%. To the east of the Great Barrier Reef is the dotted South Pacific islands. The chain of islands blocked the route from south to west along the trade winds, and the Great Barrier Reef acted as the best keeper.

The southern half of Australia's east coast is undefended, but its location in the westerly wind belt makes it impossible for sailing ships to reach New South Wales and Victoria directly from South America.

The brave Spaniards launched three assaults on the Pacific breakwater, which stretched for thousands of miles, all of which were blocked by the island chain. Spain and Portugal have some of the best navigators in the world, and no European country can match them in this regard, but there are so many islands in the Pacific that they are so desperate that even the competitive Spaniards have to give up.

It may have been that the gods were also jealous of the achievements of the Iberian Peninsula during the Age of Discovery, and the Iberians braved storms, turbulences, and mutinies, and at the nearest point were only 27 miles from the target, beyond the sight of the lookout. All it takes is a chance crosswind turbulence or a mistake on the part of the helmsman to find the southern continent of their dreams.

God gave the discovery of Australia to Dutch merchants who had no intention of participating in the great geographical discoveries. The Portuguese, who were the first to occupy the Spice Islands, discovered the island of New Guinea, and the Dutch followed in the footsteps of the Portuguese and sent the Defgen to sail to the island. William. Captain Jantz and the tiny brig sailed into the Gulf of Carpentalia and encountered the damned Torres Strait, the hundreds of islands and reefs in the strait that disgusted the Dutch from the bottom of their hearts. They were more businessmen than navigators. William. Yantz concluded that it was not a strait, but a coast. He turned south, landed on land, and came into contact with a group of extreme and backward savages. This land of no food and gold disgusted Captain Yantz to the extreme, and history repeats itself here, and like Columbus, Yantz thought he had landed on the island of New Guinea until his death.

Unbeknownst to Yantz, he rubbed shoulders with the last Spanish expedition in search of the southern continent. Portuguese captain Pedro. Fernandez. Morality. Led by two Peruvian expedition ships, Quiros ran around the labyrinthine passages of the Solomon Islands, the Tuamotu Islands, and the Samoan Islands, and the continuous mutinies and hopeless voyages shook the strong-willed Captain Quiros, who fell into a religious illusion.

Quiros gave up navigation altogether, and when the weather cleared, he ordered the sails to be hoisted and set sail.

The sailor asked him, "Captain, where are we going?" ”

In a trance, Quiros said only one sentence, "Whatever direction the bow of the ship swings in, God will surely tell it which direction is right." ”

God took him to the New Hebrides, where there were freshwater rivers and towering mountains, and everyone thanked God. In the name of King Philip III of Spain, Quiros issued a holy knightly decree that all the regions he discovered up to the poles, named "Australia. Morality. Espiritu. Santo. "Australia got its name from Austria, and Philip III was also the Duke of Austria. Contrary to Captain Yantz in the Netherlands, Quiros thought he had found the southern continent until his death. God played a little joke on both of them.

Quiros' fleet consisted of 2 ships, in the New Hebrides, the flagship Capitana and Don Diego. De Prado. The Almiranta, commanded by Tovar, was lost. The Almiranta wandered around the archipelago for a while, and was scheduled to return to Manila along the eastern part of the island of New Guinea. At this time the ship's navigator Louis. Wes. Morality. Torres, a brilliant Portuguese navigator, said whimsically, "I can't get around the east corner, we can only go west along the south bank." ”

The Spaniards bravely sailed into the strait that the Dutch had avoided, and Torres took the Almiranta out of the terrifying reef and into the Sea of Arafura with great seamanship.

The Almiranta returned to Manila, and Torres submitted a nautical report to the Governor of Manila, which made no mention of the southern continent, and the Almiranta never understood what they had done. Unintentionally, Torres actually solved a public case that had plagued geography for hundreds of years, but no one knew about it at the time. Historically, the honor of rediscovering the sea between the southern continent and the island of New Guinea will be taken by the British, and the glory will belong to the serious, meticulous and conscientious Captain James Cook 160 years later. The British still named the southern continent Australia and the strait that separated Australia from Asia the Torres Strait, and although Torres himself did not realize the significance of his voyage, he still used his name to light up the map of the civilized world.

In the stern of the flagship Hemskek, Tasman convened a council of officers of the first expedition to brief all officers on the expedition's plans, and Enzo gained a general understanding of the situation facing the Dutch.

William. The Temp of Janz sailed from the Gulf of Carpentaria and the Sea of Arafura.

The East Indian merchant ship Ndracht, which had arrived from Europe, was blown over its head by a westerly wind and reached the west coast of the southern continent. The merchant ships, of course, did not know what they had discovered, and simply referred to this place as Ndracht. The Endrakht referred to the intermittent view of the Western Australian coastline as a variety of islands, and on one of the islands, Captain Dirk. Haltoch erected a pillar and marked it with a tin plate. Accompanying the ship's draftsman Hesel. Heritz drew a map of the archipelago, starting at 28 degrees south latitude and continuing to the northwest corner of Australia.

Without the Pacific island chain, drifting down the westerly wind from the Cape of Good Hope, it was only a matter of time before the Dutch arrived in Western Australia. Over the next six years, more Dutch merchant ships arrived in Australia. In 1622, Frederick. Morality. Captain Hautman delivers the final blow. Captain Hautman arrived at a promontory that would later be known as 'Hautman's Hope' and confirmed that the entire coastline of WA was connected from Perth onwards. This is not an archipelago, this is the southern continent, which Hautman named Dedale Land after a merchant.

The coastal reefs and the westerly drift blocked by the Australian mainland converged here to form an extremely complex sea situation, and the Dutch merchant ships that saw Australia did not set foot on the Australian continent again. The Dutch had the best cartographers in the world at this time, and they lit up all of Western Australia.

Cohen, the founder of the Batavia Throne, had an ambitious expedition to explore all of Australia. However, during the siege of Batavia by Matalan, Cohen died of illness, and the Dutch returned to their usual modest manners and succeeded Jacques Brown. Spikes cancels the expedition. Ambon Administrator Van Speer was not reconciled, and within his means, he sent two expedition ships, the Arnhem and the Pera, to explore the northern coast of Australia.

The Dutch captain was more afraid of the islands and the downwind blowing to the coast than of the demons, and this expedition and the subsequent Herit. Thomas Zorn. Captain Pohl did not even discover the strait through which Torres passed. But with these two voyages, the Dutch completed a mapping of the western part of the Gulf of Carpentalia.

So far, half of Australia has been shown in front of the world.

The Spaniards were unsuccessful in their voyage, but they proved that there was a vast ocean between Australia and South America. So what does the southern part of Australia look like, is it connected to Antarctica? This question haunts the minds of all geographers.

What's behind those red dunes on the WA coast? Everyone wondered if that land was dangerous or promising, and Van Diemen, who had inherited Cohen's mantle, was determined to open up across Australia.

From Tovar and Torres's nautical reports, it can be inferred that there is a strait between Australia and the island of New Guinea, and even the Dutch themselves have speculated that the islands are not connected to the mainland. But the serious Dutch businessman only believed that he could confirm it.

Chief Navigator Frans. Fishair made three plans, the most ambitious of which shocked even Enzo. Fishair chose the northern hemisphere summer because he wanted to catch the summer when he arrived in the southern hemisphere. First bypass the island of Guinea, sail south to 54 degrees south latitude, drift all the way east with a westerly wind, explore the South Atlantic Ocean via Cape Horn, rest on the island of Mauritius after the Cape of Good Hope, and continue to drift east along the westerly wind to explore southern Australia.

If Van Dimen approves the plan, Frans will be able to do so. Fishair will be able to delineate the continents of Antarctica and Australia in a single voyage to complete the circumnavigation of Antarctica. Of course, it is more likely that the whole ship of people lost their lives in Antarctica.

Of the three plans, the most conservative one was to follow the lines of Herit. Thomas Zorn. Captain Pol's order to go and explore that damn Torres Strait thoroughly, to reconfirm whether New Guinea is an island or the southern mainland, and then, if possible, to the Solomon Islands.

Mendania, the first Spanish navigator to arrive in Oceania, named the islands after King Solomon, and in order to gain support, he described the indigenous people of the Solomon Islands wearing glittering gold ornaments. According to his description, it was a fascinating Golden Island. Sadly, Mendanha was thrown into prison after returning home from his first voyage, and his second expedition with Kyros to breach the Pacific breakwater was eighteen years later, when the Spaniards themselves could not find the Solomon Islands.

Van Diemen was neither crazy nor conservative, and he chose the plan in the middle. Pulling enough potential energy to the southwest, it drifted on the westerly wind and rushed to the southern coast of Australia. It's not as crazy as sailing around Antarctica, but it's also a first-class move. Once again, Van Diemen showed that he was an unusual head of the East India Company.

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