Frederick de Houtman

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Frederick de Houtman (1571—1627) was a Dutch explorer who sailed along the Western coast of Australia (see History of Western Australia) en route to Batavia.

He assisted fellow Dutch navigator Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser with astronomical observations during his first expedition to the East Indies in 1595-1597.

During subsequent expeditions he added further stars to the list of those observed by Keyser. Between them the constellations at the bottom of this article are credited to them as discoverors.

Houtman was the elder brother of Cornelis de Houtman who in a second expedition in 1598-1599 was killed. Frederick was imprisoned by the Sultan of Aceh in northern Sumatra, but made good use of his two years in prison by studying the local Malay language and making astronomical observations.

In 1603, after his return to Holland, Frederick published his stellar observations in an appendix to his dictionary of the Malayan and Malagasy languages (Spraeck ende woordboeck inde Maleysche ende Madagaskarsche talen).

In 1619 he, in the VOC ship Dordrecht and Jacob d'Edel, in another VOC ship Amsterdam, sighted land on the Australian coast near present day Perth which they called d'Edelsland. After sailing northwards along the coast he encountered and only narrowly avoided a group of shoals, subesequently called the Houtman Abrolhos. Houtman then made landfall in the region known as Eendrachtsland which previous explorer Dirk Hartog had encountered.

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