Willem De Vlamingh
Explorer
17-century Dutch explorer who captained sea voyages to the western coast of New Holland, which is now known as Australia.
He was born and raised in the village of Oost-Vlieland, in the Dutch province of Friesland.
He became a member of the Dutch East India Company in 1688 and, eight years later, headed an unsuccessful expedition to find a Dutch ship and crew that had gone missing en route to Jakarta.
He and his son, Collaert, served as co-commanders during a 1698 voyage from the Dutch Indies to the Netherlands.
The sixteenth-century East Indies expeditions of fellow Dutch explorer, Cornelis Dehoutman, paved the way for Willem de Vlamingh's seventeenth-century sea voyages.