Willem Cornelisz. van Muyden
Encyclopedia
Muiden
Muiden is a municipality and a town in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. It lies at the mouth of the Vecht and is in an area called the Vechtstreek.-Population centres :...
-1634, Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
) was an early 17th century mariner. He is known in The Netherlands as De Eerste Walvisvanger ("The First Whaleman") (1613). Van Muydenbukta
Van Muydenbukta
Van Muydenbukta is a large, open bay on the northern side of Bellsund, on the west coast of Spitsbergen. It is named after the Dutchman Willem Cornelisz. van Muyden, commander of the Dutch whaling fleet in 1612 and 1613.-References:...
and Van Mijenfjorden on the west coast of Spitsbergen and Kapp Muyen
Kapp Muyen
Kapp Muyen is a cape just 107m west of Beerenberg. The point is named after the Dutch whaling master Willem Cornelisz. van Muyden, who was among the first to catch whales at Jan Mayen.-References:...
on the west coast of Jan Mayen
Jan Mayen
Jan Mayen Island is a volcanic island in the Arctic Ocean and part of the Kingdom of Norway. It is long and 373 km2 in area, partly covered by glaciers . It has two parts: larger northeast Nord-Jan and smaller Sør-Jan, linked by an isthmus wide...
are named after him.
Life
Van Muyden started his career as a ship's carpenter, but in 1607 he shipped aboard a vessel loaded with grain for ItalyItaly
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. In 1609 he travelled to Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
and Saint-Malo
Saint-Malo
Saint-Malo is a walled port city in Brittany in northwestern France on the English Channel. It is a sub-prefecture of the Ille-et-Vilaine.-Demographics:The population can increase to up to 200,000 in the summer tourist season...
. In 1611 he made his way to the Mediterranean, where his ship was seized by pirates. He arrived in Middelburg
Middelburg
Middelburg is a municipality and a city in the south-western Netherlands and the capital of the province of Zeeland. It is situated in the Midden-Zeeland region. It has a population of about 48,000.- History of Middelburg :...
in January of the following year.
A company in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
under Lambert van Tweenhuysen
Lambert van Tweenhuysen
Lambert van Tweenhuysen was a prominent Lutheran merchant at Amsterdam in the early seventeenth century. Born of a well-known patrician family, he had contacts ranging from Archangel and Spitsbergen to North America, and from Northwest Africa to Istanbul...
, in the wake of the first whaling
Whaling
Whaling is the hunting of whales mainly for meat and oil. Its earliest forms date to at least 3000 BC. Various coastal communities have long histories of sustenance whaling and harvesting beached whales...
expedition to Spitsbergen
Spitsbergen
Spitsbergen is the largest and only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in Norway. Constituting the western-most bulk of the archipelago, it borders the Arctic Ocean, the Norwegian Sea and the Greenland Sea...
, sent Van Muyden in the Neptunus to the same locale in 1612. They hired the adsconding bankrupt Alan Sallows as pilot, a man who had spent twenty years "in the Northern Seas" in the service of the Muscovy Company
Muscovy Company
The Muscovy Company , was a trading company chartered in 1555. It was the first major chartered joint stock company, the precursor of the type of business that would soon flourish in England, and became closely associated with such famous names as Henry Hudson and William Baffin...
.
On May 13 (NS) the expedition ran into the English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
off Bjørnøya. The following day there was talk among the English to detain Sallows, but they ultimately decided to let him go. On June 5 the ship sailed into the northern entrance of Forlandsundet
Forlandsundet
Forlandsundet is an 88 km long sound separating Prins Karls Forland and Spitsbergen. Its northern limits are Fuglehuken to the west and Kvadehuken to the east. Its southern limits are Salpynten to the west and Daudmannsodden to the east.-References:...
, where, the next day, Sallows told the English of the loss of their merchant Kijn, who had fallen off a cliff and broken his neck. The same day the Neptunus sailed to the south. They anchored in a small bay on the north shore of Bellsund
Bellsund
Bellsund is a 20 km long sound on the west coast of Spitsbergen, part of the Svalbard archipelago.-History:Bellsund was first seen by William Barents in 1596. He simply referred to it as Inwyck . In 1610 Jonas Poole explored Bellsund, giving the fjord the name it retains to this day. He named it...
later called Van Muyden Harbor (modern Van Muydenbukta). Lacking the expertise of Basque
Basque people
The Basques as an ethnic group, primarily inhabit an area traditionally known as the Basque Country , a region that is located around the western end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay and straddles parts of north-central Spain and south-western France.The Basques are known in the...
whalemen, they had little success with catching whales, and when the men asked Sallows how to catch Walrus
Walrus
The walrus is a large flippered marine mammal with a discontinuous circumpolar distribution in the Arctic Ocean and sub-Arctic seas of the Northern Hemisphere. The walrus is the only living species in the Odobenidae family and Odobenus genus. It is subdivided into three subspecies: the Atlantic...
and stated that they were prepared to follow his instructions, he provided none. Sallows proved incompetent. He appears to have never been to Spitsbergen before, as the information he provided the Dutch was incorrect; he in fact knew nothing about the country or its fauna
Fauna
Fauna or faunæ is all of the animal life of any particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is flora.Zoologists and paleontologists use fauna to refer to a typical collection of animals found in a specific time or place, e.g. the "Sonoran Desert fauna" or the "Burgess shale fauna"...
. He further angered the men when drunk, daily consuming brandy
Brandy
Brandy is a spirit produced by distilling wine. Brandy generally contains 35%–60% alcohol by volume and is typically taken as an after-dinner drink...
.
Isfjord (Svalbard)
Isfjorden is the second longest fjord in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. It lies on the west side of Spitsbergen, an island in the Arctic Ocean about midway between Norway and the North Pole, and the largest in the archipelago. A portion of Isfjorden is included in the national parks of...
, but were ordered away by the English just three days later. After being driven out of Grønfjorden
Grønfjorden
Grønfjorden is a 16km long fjord, separated from Isfjorden to the north by Festningsodden in the west and Heerodden in the east. It lies within the western portion of Nordenskiöld Land...
and Van Muydenbukta, Van Muyden sailed to Recherchefjorden
Recherchefjorden
Recherchefjorden is a small fjord on the south side of Bellsund, Spitsbergen.-History:The fjord is named after the French cruiser La Recherche, which visited Spitsbergen in 1838 and 1839. Before being renamed, it had been called Schoonhaven by the Dutch since the early 17th century. The English...
and settled in a little cove on its western shore, which he christened Schoonhaven (modern Josephbukta). From June 25 to July 20 they caught eighteen Bowhead whale
Bowhead Whale
The bowhead whale is a baleen whale of the right whale family Balaenidae in suborder Mysticeti. A stocky dark-colored whale without a dorsal fin, it can grow to in length. This thick-bodied species can weigh to , second only to the blue whale, although the bowhead's maximum length is less than...
s, thirty walrus, and two polar bears
Polar Bear
The polar bear is a bear native largely within the Arctic Circle encompassing the Arctic Ocean, its surrounding seas and surrounding land masses. It is the world's largest land carnivore and also the largest bear, together with the omnivorous Kodiak Bear, which is approximately the same size...
. They were discovered here by the English on July 21. They seized their goods and detained Vrijer until July 25 and Van Muyden until July 28. Despite being ordered away, Van Muyden continued along the coast until August 9, when he sailed homewards.
Van Muyden again sailed to Spitsbergen in 1614 and 1615. In 1616 he was again master of the Neptunus, this time on a whaling voyage to the recently discovered Jan Mayen
Jan Mayen
Jan Mayen Island is a volcanic island in the Arctic Ocean and part of the Kingdom of Norway. It is long and 373 km2 in area, partly covered by glaciers . It has two parts: larger northeast Nord-Jan and smaller Sør-Jan, linked by an isthmus wide...
. He was among the first to arrive at the island early in June; he left in late July with a full cargo of oil. He appears to have sailed north in 1618, and in 1619 and again in 1621 he once more went to Jan Mayen. The last year he was living in a house on the Rapenburg. A year later, 1622, he lived on the Keizersgracht near the Greenland
Greenland
Greenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...
warehouses.