person to sight land. Simultaneously, he more seriously penalized anyone found asleep on watch: fifty lashes and a fine of a month's pay on the first offense, twice as much for the second, and death for the third. Systematically crossing the sea in the areas indicated, reaching as far as 42° N. and 177° E., the two ships discovered or rediscovered the entirely uninhabited Bonin Islands but found nothing even vaguely resembling what they were looking for. The crew decimated by illness exacerbated by poor rations and the ships beginning to fail, Quast finally abandoned his fruitless search on 25 October. Bad as things were, he directed his men to sail for Fort Zeelandia on Taiwan (now within Tainan's Anping District) rather than attempting to continue northwest. By the time his men reached Tayouan and its fort on 24 November, 41 of the 90 men who had sailed with Quast had died. Legacy Uninhabited, remote, and without known resources or harbors, the Bonins were entirely ignored by the Dutch East India Company as they had been ignored by any Spanish before them, permitting their rediscovery and colonization by the Japanese in the next century. Quast's expedition added some detail to Dutch charts of the southern coast of Japan but nothing vital or profitable; it long lingered in complete obscurity until Philipp Franz von Siebold rediscovered its logs after noticing charts of Dutch islands in the area of the rediscovered Bonins. The final leg of his mission which he had been unable to complete was given to Martin de Vries, whose expedition explored Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the southern Kurils in 1643. Notes References Citations Bibliography . , sections reprinted directly with permission. . . . . . External links Holland4 17th-century Dutch explorers 1641 deaths Dutch East India Company people Explorers of Asia Year of birth unknown Bonin Islands