VOCFleet ArchiveAmsterdam · 1602Explore index
Chronicles of the sea1602—1799

Ships that bore
an empire afar.

Behold the vessels that joined Amsterdam with Asia, and consider the ambition, exchange, and human cost borne within their wake.

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

01 / The chronicle

A worldwide web beneath the sail

Fashioned for distance.
Devised for profit.

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

Spices, porcelain, textiles, silver, and people did these ships carry. Yet their histories also bear witness to the violence, forced labor, and colonial systems upon which the company’s wealth depended.

4,700+outward voyages
1Mpeople sailed
197years in operation
02 / Vessels selected

Four ships. Four casements upon a world both connected—and contested.

The Fleet

Archive selection · A—Z
011628 — 1629

Spiegelretourschip

Batavia

Flagship of a fleet bound for Java, she is remembered for her wreck upon Morning Reef and the dark tale that followed thereafter.

56.6 mlength
021748 — 1749

East Indiaman

Amsterdam

Driven ashore upon her maiden voyage, her remarkably preserved hull yet resteth beneath the sands at Hastings.

42 gunsarmament
03c. 1595 — 1608

Jacht

Duyfken

A small and swift vessel, she 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 in his search for a western passage unto Asia.

16crew
The VOC ship Phenix in calm waters, painted in 1653

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

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

The VOC advanced navigation, finance, and shipbuilding. Yet it also waged war, seized land, enforced monopolies, and profited from slavery and coercion. To know these vessels aright is to hold both histories together.

Return unto the beginning