Johannes van Walbeeck

Jan, Johan or Johannes van Walbeeck (1602, Amsterdam – after 1649) was a Dutch navigator and cartographer during a 1620s circumnavigation of the earth, an admiral of the Dutch West India Company, and the first governor of the Netherlands Antilles.

Van Walbeeck is thought to have been born in Amsterdam in 1601 or 1602 and he might be the Jan van Walbeeck, son of the merchant Jacob van Walbeeck and of Weijntgen van Foreest (apparently the only Walbeeck family in town), who was baptized on August 15, 1602, in Amsterdam.

He studied at the University of Leiden before enlisting as navigator and cartographer on the ship De Amsterdam during the three-year circumnavigation of the world from 1623 to 1626 by the Nassau fleet (Nassause vloot) led by Admiral Jacques l'Hermite and Vice Admiral Gheen Huygensz Schapenham. It is thought that the account of this voyage published by Hessel Gerritsz shortly after the expedition's return in 1626 was written and drawn by Van Walbeeck.

In 1627, Van Walbeeck continued his mathematics and physics study in Leiden, but interrupted it again to join Laurens Reael's diplomatic mission to Denmark at the end of the year. Upon his return, he enlisted in a fleet that sailed to the Dutch East Indies.

In 1629, back in the Netherlands, he changed employment from the Dutch East India Company to the Dutch West India Company (WIC). In April 1630, he arrived on the ship Neptunus in Pernambuco, after Hendrick Cornelisz Loncq had taken Olinda in February and Recife in March from the Portuguese (who between 1580 and 1640 were governed by Habsburg Spain, with which the Dutch Republic was at war). Van Walbeeck immediately was made a member of the Politieke Raad ("Political Council"), the highest level of government in Dutch Brazil. Already in the same year, Loncq sent him (as "Admiral of the Brazilian coast") and Maarten Valck to establish a Dutch base on the Chilean coast from which to explore Terra Australis. However, due to the colonial conflicts between the Dutch Republic and Portugal, the expedition did not get to its destination. Several more expeditions followed, until in 1632 Van Walbeeck was promoted to president of the Politieke Raad.

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