Page 221 - Dutch Asiatic Shipping Volume 1

des (0018-0023), the voyage of Olivier van Noort (0024-0027) and of VanSpilbergen (0064-0066), and for the period after the founding of the VOC in 1602 the equipages led by V an Caerden (0107-0114) and Verhoeff (0118-0130), Hudson's expedition (0133), the circumnavigation of Joris van Spilbergen (0183-0188), the voyage of Le Maire organized by the 'Australische Compagnie' (0196-0197) and the special equipment of 1623, the 'Na- ssausche vloot' (0296-0307).38
Details of the first adventurous expeditions can also be gained from the collection of travel accounts Begin ende Voortgangh, published in 1645 by I. Commelin, and from the first volumes of the great source publication by J. K . J. de Jonge, De opkomst van het Nederlandsch gezag in Oost-Indië. Particulars of the ships deployed in the direct link with Surat and Gamron in the years 1622-1634 are recorded in the Bronnen tot de geschiedenis der OIC in Perzië, published by H . Dunlop.
There has been some incidental consultation of source publications or secondary writings for the later period as well: this has always been mentioned in the list of sources. Three works which occur frequently in this list should be mentioned here. The first is the two-vo- lume work by MacLeod, De VOC als zeemogendheid in Azië. This study is close to the primary sources, being a careful, chronological compilation of the maritime activities - including the annual equipages from the Netherlands of the VOC - during the first half of the seventeenth century. The physician D . Schoute in his Geneeskunde in den dienst der OIC gives figures for crews and death-toll on board for a number of ships, information based in part on the journals of ships' surgeons. And finally it goes without saying that for calls at the Cape the data collected by R. Raven-Hart in Cape of Good Hope 1652-1702 have been consulted.
Gaps and shortcomings
The limitations imposed by the sources are obvious in two ways: the Lists of both outward and homeward bound voyages are not equally complete over the entire period and there is a difference in availibility of data between the outward bound passage and the homeward bound voyage.
Both Lists are less complete for voyages in the first half of the seventeenth century. Sometimes dates of arrival and departure are missing. But in nearly all cases records of the numbres on board are either brief or left out altogether. Not until well into the seventeenth century do the daghregisters and OBP's give more detailed information on the numbers of persons on board. In as far as figures are given at all for this period for outward bound ships, they have been derived from uitloopboeken and are therefore global; they represent the numbers intended by the Heren Zeventien to be sent out, not the exact numbers actually on board at the departure of ships. For the years after 1765 again details become somewhat less complete, because then the consumptierekeningen are lacking in the OBP's. Specified accounts are then often found in the sources for an entire fleet but not for each ship separately.
Due to the lack of certain data in the sources the Lists of outward and homeward bound voyages are not identical. The differences are immediately apparent: for the outward voyage the value of the cargo per ship is missing, for the return voyage the numbers on board on arrival home. The value of the cargo of outward bound ships is not given in the sources described above, apart from a few exceptions. Sometimes the daghregister states
38 The use of these source publications and of the literature following them is all along accounted for in the list of sources; for the complete entries see the list of literature.