Veer, Gerrit de: [Barentsz, William]:

$7,750 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

TRE NAVIGATIONI FATTE DAGLI OLANDESI E ZELANDESI.... The first Italian edition of de Veer's important compilation of three Arctic voyages, published the year after the Dutch original. Two issues of Giunio Parisio's translation were printed the same year, one by Giovanni Ciotti and the present one by Porro. De Veer was an officer under William Barentsz's second and third voyages, and one of the fewer than ten who survived the horrific shipwreck of the latter (wherein much of the crew froze to death and many others were devoured by polar bears). Thus much of the material in this work is relayed from firsthand experience, and presents a remarkable narrative of intrepid exploration and survival against the odds. The fine engravings are reduced versions of the illustrations in the first edition.The three voyages contained herein were undertaken by Barentsz from 1594-97 under the auspices of the Dutch government. During the first voyage of 1594, the coast of Nova Zembla was successfully explored to its northernmost point. Searching for a Northeast Passage north of Siberia, Barents and his crew were the unlucky participants in the first recorded encounter with a polar bear, and had a similarly deadly run-in with a large herd of walruses (both of which melees are ably depicted in the numerous engravings). The second voyage of 1595 proved a failure when pack ice blocked the passage of the ships between the Straits of Vaigatz and the mainland as late as the summer months, the result of

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