Jacob Roggeveen was a Dutch explorer who was sent to find Terra Australis, but he instead came across Easter Island. On 1 August 1721 he left on his expedition, in the service of the Dutch West India Company, to seek Terra Australis. It con...

Jan Pieterszoon Coen was an officer of Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the early seventeenth century, holding two terms as its Governor-General in the Dutch East Indies. He was long considered a national hero in the Netherlands, for provi...

Willem Cornelisz Schouten was a Dutch navigator for the Dutch East India Company. He was the first to sail the Cape Horn route to the Pacific Ocean. In 1615 Willem Cornelisz Schouten and his younger brother Jan Schouten sailed from Texel...

Sir Francis Drake, Vice Admiral was an English sea captain, privateer, navigator, slaver, a renowned pirate, and a politician of the Elizabethan era. Elizabeth I of England awarded Drake a knighthood in 1581. He was second-in-command of the...

Dom Vasco da Gama, (c.1460s-1524) was a Portuguese explorer. He was the first European to reach India by sea, linking for the first time Europe and Asia by ocean route, as well as the Atlantic and the Indian oceans entirely and definitively...

Bartolomeu Dias was a Portuguese navigator. He was the first European to round (1488) the Cape of Good Hope, which he called Cabo Tormentoso [cape of storms]. That voyage opened the road to India. Dias accompanied Cabral on the voyage that...