Between 1614 and 1617, two Dutch mariners, Joris van Spilbergen (1568-1620) and Jacob Le Maire (c. 1585-1616), undertook voyages to circumnavigate the globe.
Setting off from the Netherlands in 1614, van Spilbergen sailed west, through the Magellan Strait and raided Spanish ports along the Pacific coast of Mexico and South America before crossing the Pacific Ocean to the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia).
Le Maire set off the following year with fellow mariner Willem Schouter. Le Maire and Schouter, also travelled west, where they rounded Cape Horn (named after the Dutch city of Hoorn, the birthplace of Schouter) and sailed almost directly across the Pacific. In April 1616, they became the first Europeans to encounter Polynesian society when they arrived at Tonga. After sailing along the northern coast of New Guinea, the party soon reached Batavia (now Jakarta) where they were arrested and their ships confiscated by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) governor Jan Pietersz Coen for infringing on the Company's monopoly in the region.
Le Maire and Schouter were soon released and joined van Spilbergen, who had also arrived in Batavia, in order to complete their voyage. Le Maire died en route but van Spilbergen and Schouter arrived back in the Netherlands in July 1617. This account of the voyage was compiled by van Spilbergen from his own logs and those of Le Maire. It was published in 1619 but was not profitable for van Spilbergen, who died in poverty the following year.