In June 1615, Dutch navigators Jacob Le Maire (circa 1585–1616) and Willem Corneliszoon Schouten (circa 1567–1625) set out in two ships, the <em>Eendracht</em> and the <em>Hoorn</em>, from the Dutch port of Texel. Their goal was to find a new route to the Moluccas Islands, Europe’s main source of pepper in the lucrative spice trade with the East Indies, and in so doing avoid the trade monopoly of the Dutch East Indies Company. They sailed south of the Strait of Magellan and on January 24, 1616, discovered a new passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans: a strait about 13 kilometers wide between Tierra del Fuego and what they called Staten Land (present-day Isla de los Estados, Argentina). The passage came to be called Le Maire Strait. Several days later, Le Maire and Schouten became the first Europeans to round the extreme southern point of South America, known for its storms and heavy seas, which they named Cape Horn in honor of Schouten’s birthplace, the city of Hoorn. This map of Le Maire Strait is from the French edition of Schouten’s journal of the voyage, <em>Journal ou description du merveillevx voyage de Guillaume Schovten, hollandois natif de Hoorn, fait en années 1615, 1616 &amp; 1617</em> (Journal or description of the marvelous voyage of Willem Schouten, a Dutch native of Hoorn, made in the years 1615, 1616, and 1617), which was published in Amsterdam in 1619.
<br>Discovery and exploration; Horn, Cape (Chile); Le Maire Strait (Argentina); Magellan, Strait of (Chile and Argentina); Tierra del Fuego (Argentina and Chile)
Le Maire, Jacob (1585-1616)
1619<div style="display: none;">date QS:P571,+1619-00-00T00:00:00Z/9</div>
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<ul><li>Gallery: <a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="http://www.wdl.org/en/item/3970/">http://www.wdl.org/en/item/3970/</a></li></ul>