This is one of two issues of Giunio Pariso’s Italian translation printed in Venice in italic characters in 1599, the other by publisher Gioan Battista Ciotti. A French and a Latin edition were published in 1598. Both follow the original Dutch edition, (as does this version), which was an oblong quarto issued by Claesz without a date; yet it is assumed in November or December of 1597, as the third expedition did not return to Amsterdam until the 1st November of that year. In this edition, the plates are re-engraved in a smaller format and as a consequence, it being their first use, the impressions are extremely fine and dark.
Gerrit de Veer’s account of Willem Barents’ three voyages in search of northern trade routes to the Orient in 1594, 1595, and 1596. The idea for these voyages was enthusiastically promoted by Oliver Brunel who had made a land journey through the Samoyed territory to Siberia, before making a coasting voyage as far as the river Ob. De Veer served as mate and chronicler on the second and third voyages.
As Boies Penrose remarks: “Brunel’s travels led to the fitting out of a fleet in 1594, headed by Willem Barents, who ranks in history as one of the greatest Arctic navigators. With Barents went Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, the celebrated traveller to the East. Their first venture took the Dutch the whole length of Novaya Zemlya, to its northern tip, after which Barents retraced his course to Vaigatz, and passed through the Kara Sea as far as the latitude of the Ob.
The relative success of this voyage led to another the following year (1595), like the first commanded by Barents with Linschoten as supercargo. The high hopes placed in this undertaking were not realized, for the ships could not fight their way through the straits between Vaigatz and the mainland, and were obliged to return to Holland, victims of the unusual severity of a season which had kept the straits packed with ice through the summer.
Barents’ third and last was his greatest, ranking among the hardiest achievements of all Polar Exploration. Sailing in 1596, he set his course neither by the Northeast nor the Northwest Passage, but boldly across the Pole. In this wise he discovered Spitzbergen, but as he could not penetrate the pack-ice beyond, he abandoned his original idea, and steered once more for Nova Zemlya. After passing the farthest point of his 1594 voyage, Barents rounded the northern tip of the island, where his ship was crushed in the ice and he and his men were forced to spend the winter in great misery. The following spring the survivors set out on open boats and after incredible difficulties reached Russian territory. Barents perished during the passage, and with him the driving force of Dutch exploration in this quarter, but his indomitable spirit had enabled a party of men for the first time to winter far within the Arctic Circle, suffering from all the hardships inseparable from such a first experience” (Travel and Discovery in the Renaissance p174).
The engraved plates are a chief attraction of this edition, their iconic and at times brutal scenes setting the tone for the hardships awaiting future centuries of Arctic explorers. They include depictions of a parhelion, lethal encounters with polar bears, men being killed by the stink of rotting whales, ships colliding in open water, and gridlocked in the ice. One particularly gruesome plate shows the punishment meted out to two sailors who stole hides from the Indigenous community they encountered. The thieves were keelhauled three times: one resurfaced as only half a body, and the other was marooned in his wet clothing, doomed to freeze. The conditions of their overwintering are also illustrated – one plate shows the hut in which the crew sheltered during the winter of 1596, made from the wood of their trapped ship and named Het Hehouden Huys: ‘The Saved House’. In 1871 this hut was rediscovered by a Norwegian whaler and many remarkable artefacts were recovered then, and on subsequent expeditions. None, however, have located the site of Barents’ grave.
Tiele Mémoir, 95; Alden, 598/113; Brunet V, 1127.
