Remember when I was driving through Van Diemenstraat and the last wall painting was of… Willem Barentsz [1550-1597], he was a Dutch navigator and explorer, a leader of early expeditions to the far north. [In English his name is mostly written as Barents].
A cartographer by trade, Barentsz sailed to Spain and the Mediterranean to complete an atlas of the Mediterranean region, which he co-published with Petrus Plancius.
His career as an explorer was spent searching for the Northeast passage, which he reasoned must exist as clear, open water north of Siberia since the sun shone 24 hours a day, which he believed would have melted any potential ice.
In June 1594 Barentsz left the island of Texel aboard the small ship Mercury, as part of a group of three ships sent out in separate directions to try and enter the Kara Sea, with the hopes of finding the Northeast passage above Siberia.
On July 9, the crew encountered a polar bear for the first time. After shooting it with a musket when it tried to climb aboard the ship, the seamen decided to capture it with the hope of bringing it back to Holland. Once leashed and brought aboard the ship however, the bear rampaged and had to be killed. This occurred in Bear Creek, Williams Island.
Upon discovering the Orange Islands, the crew came across a herd of approximately 200 walruses and tried to kill them with hatchets and pikes. Finding the task more difficult than they imagined, they left with only a few ivory tusks.
Barentsz reached the west coast of Novaya Zemlya [in Dutch Nova Zembla], and followed it northward before being forced to turn back in the face of large icebergs. Although they did not reach their ultimate goal, the trip was considered a success.
The following year, Prince Maurice of Orange was filled with “the most exaggerated hopes” on hearing of Barentsz’ previous voyage, and named him Chief Pilot and Conductor of a new expedition, which was accompanied by six ships loaded with merchant wares that the Dutch hoped to trade with China.
Setting out on June 2, 1595, the voyage went between the Siberian coast and Vaygach Island. On August 30, the party came across approximately 20 Samoyed “wilde men” with whom they were able to speak, due to a crewmember speaking their language. On September 4, a small crew was sent to States Island to search for a type of crystal that had been noticed earlier. The party was attacked by a polar bear, and two sailors were killed.
Eventually, the expedition turned back upon discovering that unexpected weather had left the Kara Sea frozen. This expedition was largely considered to be a failure.
In 1596, disappointed by the failure of previous expeditions, the States-General announced they would no longer subsidize similar voyages – but instead offered a high reward for anybody who successfully navigated the Northeast Passage. The Town Council of Amsterdam purchased and outfitted two small ships, captained by Jan Rijp and Jacob van Heemskerk, to search for the elusive channel under the command of Barentsz. They set off on mid May, and on June 9, they discovered Bear Island. Eight days later they discovered Spitsbergen, sighting its northwest coast.
On June 20, they saw the entrance of a large bay, later called Raudfjorden. On June 21, they anchored between Cloven Cliff and Vogelsang, where they “set up a post with the arms of the Dutch upon it.” Later in June they entered Magdalenefjorden, which they named Tusk Bay, in light of the walrus tusks they found there. The following day they sailed into the northern entrance of Forlandsundet, which they simply called Keerwyck, but were forced to turn back because of a shoal. On June 28, they rounded the northern point of Prins Karls Forland, which they named Vogelhoek, on account of the large number of birds they saw there. They sailed south, passing Isfjorden and Bellsund, which were labelled on Barentsz’s chart as Grooten Inwyck and Inwyck.
The ships once again found themselves at Bear Island on July 1, which led to a disagreement between Barentsz and Van Heemskerk on one side and Rijp on the other. They agreed to part ways, with Barentsz continuing northeast, while Rijp headed due north. Barentsz reached Novaya Zemlya on July 17. Anxious to avoid becoming entrapped in the surrounding ice, he intended to head for the Vaigatch Strait, but became stuck within the many icebergs and floes.
Stranded, the 16-man crew was forced to spend the winter on the ice, along with their young cabin boy. After a failed attempt to melt the permafrost, the crew used lumber from their ship to build a 7.8 by 5.5 metre lodge they called Het Behouden Huys (The Kept House).
Dealing with extreme cold, the crew realised that their socks would burn before their feet could even feel the warmth of a fire – and took to sleeping with warmed stones and cannonballs. In addition, they used the merchant fabrics aboard the ship to make additional blankets and clothing.
The ship bore salted beef, butter, cheese, bread, barley, peas, beans, groats, flour, oil, vinegar, mustard, salt, beer, wine, brandy, hardtack, smoked bacon, ham and fish. Much of the beer froze, bursting the casks. By November 8, Gerrit de Veer, the ships carpenter who kept a diary, reported a shortage of beer and bread, with wine being rationed four days later.
In January 1597, De Veer became the first person to witness and record the atmospheric anomaly known as the Novaya Zemlya effect.
The Novaya Zemlya effect is a polar mirage caused by high refraction of sunlight between atmospheric thermoclines. The Novaya Zemlya effect will give the impression that the sun is rising earlier than it actually should (astronomically speaking) and depending on the meteorological situation the effect will present the sun as a line or a square (which is sometimes referred to as the “rectangular sun”), made up of flattened hourglass shapes. The mirage requires rays of sunlight to have an inversion layer for hundreds of kilometres (at least 400 km). The mirage depends on the inversion layer’s temperature gradient. The sunlight must bend to the Earth’s curvature at least 400 km to allow an elevation rise of 5 degrees for sight of the sun disk.
Proving successful at hunting, the group caught 26 arctic foxes in primitive traps, as well as killing a number of polar bears.
When June arrived, and the ice had still not loosened its grip on the ship, the scurvy-ridden survivors took two small boats out into the sea on June 13. Barentsz died at sea on June 20, 1597, while studying charts only seven days after starting out. It is not known whether Barentsz was buried on the northern island of Novaya Zemlya, or at sea. It took seven more weeks for the boats to reach Kola where they were rescued by a Russian merchant vessel, and by that time only 12 crewmen remained. Ultimately, they did not reach Amsterdam until 1 November. Sources differ on whether two men died on the ice floe and three in the boats, or three on the ice floe and two in the boats. The young cabin boy had died during the winter months in the shelter.
The wooden lodge where Barentsz’ crew sheltered was found undisturbed by Norwegian seal hunter Elling Carlsen in 1871. Making a sketch of the lodge’s construction, Carlsen recorded finding two copper cooking pots, a barrel, a tool chest, clock, crowbar, flute, clothing, two empty chests, a cooking tripod and a number of pictures. Captain Gunderson landed at the site on August 17, 1875 and collected a grappling iron, two maps and a handwritten translation of Pet and Jackman’s voyages. The following year, Charles L.W. Gardiner also visited the site at the end of July where he collected 112 more objects, including the message by Barentsz and Heemskerck describing their settlement to future visitors. All of these objects eventually ended up in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, after some had initially been held in The Hague.
The Barents Sea, Barentsburg and Barents Region were all named after him. Even a small part of a fruit fly is named Barents.
Source: City Archives Amsterdam
500,000 million tons of cocoa beans enters the port of Amsterdam yearly, making it the largest end station of this commodity in the world. That’s 1/3 of the world production!
I like to be dramatic, once in a while, the shots I’m talking about are not gunshots! But flue shots.
With these indoor temperatures I’m not going to start them period. Why waste money when my nextdoor neighbours want to heat the place.
Beetroot derives from a wild seashore plant, the sea beet, native to southern Europe and North Africa. It’s thought to have been brought to Britain by the Romans. Beetroot should be boiled in their skins to prevent the purple juices from leaking out. The leaves of the plant are also edible.
For the 10th time the first Saturday of November is Museum Night or N8 [Nacht = Dutch for night]. In 42 museums in Amsterdam and 10 other spots around town over 200 extra performences will be held, as diverse as theater performences to specialised guide tours or behind the scene looks.
What is on your Desktop Wallpaper?
In France, due to the low cost of pumpkins, their flesh was originally used to bulk out the dough in pumpkin bread. Nowadays, with speciality breads in vogue, customers pay through the nose for the same dish, called pain de courge. It is eaten in the morning, with coffee, or as a mid-afternoon snack, like brioche.
Mushrooms are not universally adored. Some people are not keen on the taste or texture of funghi, while others suffer from an irrational fear of mushrooms, called mycophobia.
It’s been a long time but I’m back at Peter’s place for a long weekend. My keepers are away for the weekend, Peter hoped I would stay in Amsterdam so he could take care of me. And that he does, four times or more a day we go for walkies, he rubs my belly when I a want to and sometimes when I don’t, there are cookies and and other snacks specially for me. He even asked if I would go with him on a trip tomorrow to ’s-Graveland, where two friends of his live with their dog. I only hope its not some “young thing” I’m over 14 and running around is not my forte.
