Willem Cornelisz Schouten (1567?-1625) was a Dutch navigator. Events The Duke of Alva arrives in the Netherlands with Spanish forces to suppress unrest there. ... Events March 27 - Prince Charles Stuart becomes King Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland. ...

In 1615 Willem Cornelisz Schouten and Jacob le Maire sailed from Texel in the Netherlands, in command of an expedition whose objective was to evade the trade restrictions of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) by finding a new route to the Pacific and the Spice Islands. In 1616 he rounded Cape Horn, which he named for his birthplace, the Dutch city of Hoorn. He followed the north coasts of New Ireland and New Guinea and visited adjacent islands, including what became known as the Schouten Islands. Events June 2 - First Récollet missionaries arrive at Quebec City, from Rouen, France. ... Jacob Le Maire (about 1585 to 1616), the Dutch mariner, born in Antwerp, circumnavigated the earth in 1615 to 1616. ... This article is about the Dutch island Texel. ... Dutch colonial possessions, with the Dutch East India Company possessions marked in a paler green, surrounding the Indian Ocean plus Saint Helena in the mid-Atlantic. ... For other meanings of Pacific, see Pacific (disambiguation). ... Spice Islands most commonly refers to the Maluku Islands (formerly the Moluccas), which lie on the equator, between the Celebes and the New Guinea islands in what is now Indonesia. ... Cape Horn is often said to be the southernmost point of South America. ... Hoorn (population: 67,952 in 2004) is a municipality and a town in the north-western Netherlands, in the province of North Holland, and was the main market-town for the region of West-Friesland. ... New Ireland is an island in the Pacific, and the most northeastern province of Papua New Guinea. ... The Schouten Islands are an island group of eastern Indonesia in the southern Pacific Ocean off the northern coast of New Guinea. ...

Although he had opened an unknown route, the VOC claimed infringement of its monopoly of trade to the Spice Islands. Schouten was arrested (and later released) and his ship confiscated in Java. Spice Islands most commonly refers to the Maluku Islands (formerly the Moluccas), which lie on the equator, between the Celebes and the New Guinea islands in what is now Indonesia. ... Map of Java Java (Indonesian, Javanese, and Sundanese: Jawa) is an island of Indonesia, and the site of its capital city, Jakarta. ...