VOCFleet ArchiveAmsterdam · 1602Explore index
Maritime histories1602—1799

Ships that
carried an empire.

Meet the vessels that connected Amsterdam to Asia—and explore the ambition, exchange, and human cost carried in their wake.

Willem van de Velde the Younger, The Dutch Fleet Assembling, 1670

01 / The story

A global network under sail

Built for distance.
Designed for profit.

For almost two centuries, the Dutch East India Company sent ships from the Netherlands across the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Their routes formed one of the world’s earliest multinational trading networks.

These ships carried spices, porcelain, textiles, silver, and people. Their stories also reveal the violence, forced labor, and colonial systems on which the company’s wealth depended.

4,700+outward voyages
1Mpeople sailed
197years in operation
02 / Selected vessels

Four ships. Four windows into a connected—and contested—world.

The Fleet

Archive selection · A—Z
011628 — 1629

Spiegelretourschip

Batavia

Flagship of a fleet bound for Java, remembered for its wreck on Morning Reef and the dark story that followed.

56.6 mlength
021748 — 1749

East Indiaman

Amsterdam

Driven ashore on her maiden voyage, her remarkably preserved hull still rests beneath the sands at Hastings.

42 gunsarmament
03c. 1595 — 1608

Jacht

Duyfken

A small, fast vessel that charted part of Australia’s Cape York Peninsula under Willem Janszoon in 1606.

20 mlength
041608 — 1618

Vlieboot

Halve Maen

Commissioned by the VOC and captained by Henry Hudson on his search for a western passage to Asia.

16crew
03 / The outward voyage

Half a world
under sail.

A journey from the Texel roadstead to Batavia could take eight months. There were no engines, no forecasts, and little margin for error.

Follow the route
Amsterdam52.37° N
The Cape34.35° S
Batavia6.12° S
± 15,000 nautical miles
The VOC ship Phenix in calm waters, painted in 1653

VOC ship Phenix, Willem van de Velde the Younger, 1653

04 / A complicated legacy
“The archive holds more than triumph. It holds the lives caught in the company’s wake.”

The VOC drove innovation in navigation, finance, and shipbuilding. It also waged war, seized land, enforced monopolies, and profited from slavery and coercion. To understand these vessels is to hold both histories at once.

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