![]() ![]() Many ships were wrecked along the coast, including Batavia in 1629, Vergulde Draeck in 1656, Zuytdorp in 1712, and Zeewijk in 1727. The Brouwer Route played a major role in the European discovery of the west coast of Australia. The English then avoided the route for the next two decades. įor the British East India Company, Captain Humphrey Fitzherbert on Royal Exchange trialled the route in 1620, which they called the Southern route, and initially thought it a great success, but the second English ship to use the route, Tryall (sometimes spelt Trial), incorrectly judged the longitude, sailed too far east before turning north, and was wrecked on Tryal Rocks off the Pilbara coast of Australia in May 1622. By 1616 the Brouwer Route was compulsory for ship captains of the Dutch East India Company. The route was devised by the Dutch explorer Hendrik Brouwer in 1611, and found to halve the duration of the journey from Europe to Java, compared to the previous Arab and Portuguese monsoon route, which involved following the coast of East Africa northwards, sailing through the Mozambique Channel round Madagascar and then across the Indian Ocean, sometimes via India. ![]() Consequently, many ships were damaged by or wrecked on rocks, reefs, or islands on the western continental shelf of Australia, which was virtually unknown to Europeans at the time. However, this was reliant on the captain's expertise. A sighting of either Amsterdam Island or Saint Paul Island was the only cue for ships to change direction and head north. The problem with the route was that there was no accurate way, at the time, to determine longitude, and thereby to know how far east a vessel had travelled. In the Age of Sail, the Brouwer Route, devised by the Dutch navigator Hendrik Brouwer in 1611, greatly reduced the voyage between Cape of Good Hope ( Dutch Cape Colony) to Java ( Dutch East Indies) from almost 12 months to about 6 months, compared to the previous Arab and Portuguese monsoon route ![]()
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