Heemskerck

Type

Pinnace

Period

17th Century

Nation

Netherlands

Overview: Heemskerck was a small Dutch VOC war yacht (often classed as a pinnace/jacht) best known as the flagship of Abel Tasman's 1642 voyage of exploration, which made the first recorded European sightings of Tasmania and New Zealand and crossed the Tasman Sea. Her consort on that voyage was the fluyt Zeehaen. Specifications: Heemskerck was launched in 1638 for the Dutch East India Company as a small war yacht of about 120 tons burthen, roughly 106 feet (32 m) long with a 24 ft (7.3 m) beam and 9 ft (2.7 m) draft, carrying a complement of around 60 officers and men (some contemporary accounts describe her as closer to 60 tons). Surviving sketches from Tasman's journal show a three-masted rig with a bowsprit: square sails on both fore and main masts, a lateen sail on the mizzen, and a spritsail beneath the bowsprit, typical of small Dutch warships of the period. Service History: Heemskerck sailed from Texel in April 1639 bound for Batavia, reaching the Cape of Good Hope that September before arriving in the Dutch East Indies in November 1639; she never returned to Europe, instead serving VOC trade and defense duties around Batavia as both warship and cargo carrier, including a clove-carrying run in 1640. In August 1642 she departed Batavia under Captain Yde Tjercksz Holleman with Abel Tasman aboard as expedition commander, together with the Zeehaen, on the voyage that discovered Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) and reached New Zealand, Tonga, and Fiji before returning to Batavia in 1643. Notable Facts: No contemporary technical draught of Heemskerck survives; modelers and historians rely on the rough sketches in Tasman's own journal and later engravings (such as those by Isaac Gilsemans) for her appearance — Wikipedia notes there are no contemporary detailed descriptions and that much of her design must be inferred from general VOC shipbuilding standards of the era. The ship's pinnace (ship's boat) played a notable role during the fatal encounter with Māori in Golden Bay in December 1642, towing the Zeehaen's cockboat back to the ships after an attack that killed several Dutch sailors. A well-regarded 1:5 scale scholarly reconstruction model by Dutch ship modeler A. J. Hoving is held at the New Zealand Maritime Museum, useful as a reference for modelers given the absence of original plans. Heemskerck was ultimately broken up in 1649.