Australia (and for that matter, New Zealand) was discovered, somewhat by chance, by vessels of the Verenigde Nederlandse Geotroyeerde Oostindische Companie (commonly known as 'VOC'), the Dutch East India Company, a pious and hard-headed consortium whose motto, roughly translated, was 'God is great, but business comes first'.To understand the events of the Company's early days, it is necessary to go back to the latter part of the fifteenth century, when Portugal and Spain came into dispute over their respective rights in South America. They appealed to the Pope who, in the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494, allocated to Spain those lands west of a line 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands (roughly, beyond 60°W); and to Portugal those to the east, in particular Brazil. It is ironic that the prelate in question was Roderigo Borgia, that most dissolute of Popes, Alexander VI.The opening up to settlement and trade of the Far East in the next century led to the recognition that the Papal meridian had a reciprocal on the opposite side of the globe. The Portuguese, approaching by their land-hopping route round the Indian Ocean, gained a foothold in places like Goa, Macao and Timor, where they maintained a presence into our own times; the Spaniards, after Magellan, became established in the Philippines. But given the difficulties of determining longitude in those days, the line of demarcation was at best conjectural.When the Spanish provinces in the Netherlands asserted their independence in the late 1500s, therefore, they seized on the 'grey area' for their own incursions. A number of Dutch ventures were undertaken beginning in 1595, when four vessels - the Mauritius, Hollandia, Amsterdam and the yacht Duyfje set out from the Texel, under the command of Kornelis de Houtman, on what was to be a three-year round trip. Others followed from various seaports, but when the English set up an East India Company under Royal Charter in 1600, the Dutch quickly appreciated that only by being united could they compete.In December 1601 a merger of the Amsterdam, Zeeland (Middleburg, on the island of Walcheren), Hoorn, Enkhuisen, Delft and Rotterdam companies produced the VOC. Its charter had no fewer than 46 clauses, was originally for 21 years, and set up a board of 17 directors, the Heren Zeventien. Its functions were protean: apart from being an institution of merchants and shippers, it had to involve itself in shipbuilding and, in the East, in government and the military force that underpinned this government. The English and Portuguese were soon hustled out of the East Indies as we know them - the English to India, the Portuguese to toeholds on the perimeter of what became the Dutch colonial empire.Dutch ships were designed for handling by small crews - as early as 1603 Sir Walter Raleigh lamented that ten Dutchmen could handle a vessel where the corresponding English ship would require thirty. They were built 'shellfirst', the hull planking being formed first and the necessary braces added, by contrast with, say, English 'frame-first' shipbuilding in which the framing was laid out first, then covered by planking. The largest vessels were of spiegelschepen or square-sterned construction, but the Dutch also went in for a round-sterned vessel with the generic name of fluyt, which might well be little smaller. Unfortunately the curved planks at the stern of the fluyt showed an inclination to spring loose.The Route TakenThe route from the Netherlands was more complex than, for instance, British ships had to contend with. It was first necessary either to pass down the Channel or else take what was known as the Backway round the north of Scotland. This was longer - some 600 miles longer, in fact - but the Heren Seventien liked it because it avoided the risk of capture when the Dutch were at war, or of captains making a convenient port call along the English south coast (with delay or desertion, even a touch of smuggling as a corollary) in time of peace. …