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When the English and the Dutch sent their first fleets to the Indies in the last decade of the sixteenth century, they followed the route pioneered by the Portuguese. After passing the Cape of Good Hope, ships sailed northwards along the east coast of Africa, through the Mozambique Channel, then up across the central and northern Indian Ocean to the East Indies.
However, the Mozambique Channel route presented many challenges. The prevailing south-easterly trade winds and the southerly Mozambique Current made it difficult to sail north. The Portuguese strongholds of Zanzibar, Mombasa and Malindi excluded Dutch and English ships from obtaining supplies and water. In the hot equatorial areas, there were often long periods when ships became becalmed, causing provisions
to rot and crews to sicken. There were also numerous shoals, islands and reefs in the central Indian Ocean, causing navigational hazards.
Hendrik Brouwer (a Director and later Governor-General of the VOC) believed it could be advantageous to use the westerly winds that prevailed in the latitudes between 35° and 40° south. In 1610, he proposed that a new route from the Cape of Good Hope to the East Indies should be attempted.
Testing Brouwer’s Route
In December 1610, the VOC dispatched Brouwer in the Roode Leeuw met Pijlen, in company with two other ships, with instructions to investigate this route. After leaving the Cape of Good Hope, Brouwer first sailed south until the westerlies were encountered in about 36° south latitude, then sailed east until it was estimated that they were in the meridian of the Straits of Sunda, where they turned north. Brouwer’s new route took less than six months, compared with a year or more for the existing route. On his arrival, Brouwer advocated the new route, outlining its many advantages to the VOC. Before adopting this route and issuing general sailing instructions, the VOC ordered other ships to investigate it.
One captain, Pieter de Carpentier, reported that: If we had to sail a hundred times to the Indies we should use no other route than this. It ensures the good condition of trade goods and provisions and a healthy crew.
By 1617, the VOC had published sailing instructions which required captains to follow the Brouwer route. However, navigational problems in establishing longitude (not solved until the invention of the chronometer over 150 years later) made it inevitable that some ships would encounter Australia’s mainland coast and the Houtman Abrolhos Islands.
The Brouwer Route
The arrows represent the westerly winds in the latitudes between 35° and 40° south and the Brouwer Route taken by VOC ships. Navigational errors meant some ships would encounter the inhabited mainland.
Credit: WA Museum | Gibson Group