TITLE DEEDS

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 April 1937, Page 13

TITLE DEEDS

SOME REMARKABLE CLAIMS The notices written on boards attached to palm trees declaring islands of the Phoenix group in the South Pacific to be the property of the King, recall the title-deeds to Empire set up in the great days when men in strange seas used to stumble on new lands by accident. Two of the most remarkable were written while Shakespeare was alive —one in the Arctic, the other claiming Australia, both by gallant Dutchmen. The first was the Dutch equivalent of a sixpence nailed up by William Barents, a coin showing the head of his king, for whom he claimed Nova Zembla, where he had been frozen in for the Winter with the first white crew to survive such a period in the Arctic. He was seeking an Arctic way to China, and, sailing 1,700 miles in his tiny ship, tried 81 directions, during which he saw Spitsbergen—and ignored it in the belief that it was part of Greenland. He was icebound at the Nova Zembla of his discovery, and, though it contains over 35,000 square miles, thought it but 850. When Spring came in 1597 he nailed up his sixpence, sailed for home, and died as gallantly as he had lived, in the open boat to which the wreck of his ship had forced him. His hut, - his diary, and all the belongings he had left were found nearly three centuries later. The Dutch claim to Australia was even quainler than that of Barents in the Arctic. It was set up by Dirk I-lartog, another Dutch sea rover, in the year Shakespeare died, on the west coast of the island continent at a spot still called after him, an island close by Shark’s Bay, famous as the scene of the earlier exploration of our own William Dampier. Dirk had to continue his travels, but he was minded to claim the land he had seen for his native Holland, so, there being nothing better available, he had recourse to his tin soup-plate. On this he scratched this message: “On October 25, 1616, arrived here in the ship Eendraght of Amsterdam: the first merchant, Giles Mihais Luyck; Captain Dirk Hartog, of Amsterdam: under-merchant, Jan Stoyn; upper steersman, Pieter Dockes, from Bil. Ao. 1616.” It. was Australia’s very first document. Towards the close of the 17th century .another Dutch capital named Vleemin, arrived, threw down Dirk’s post with its title-deed, and set. up one bearing his own name. The year before Trafalgar a Frenchman. Captain Hamelin, came on the scene, found Dirk’s soup-plate proclamation in the sand where it had fallen, and earrieil if back to Europe, where, transferred, by whoso hand we know not, it. was found in 1902 among the treasures of the Amsterdam Museum.