An important vellum manuscript chart of the Dutch East India Company

The Gentlemen Seventeen, the highest authority board of the VOC, were careful that the maps
and navigational equipment issued to navigation officers sent to the East Indies were returned
and not discarded or sold to outsiders. In order to better exercise control over these tools,
experts in the field of navigation compiled lists of the necessary charts and instruments.
The lists (first handwritten, later printed) include a detailed overview of the instruments and
cartographical material that were allocated, followed by the price of each item as determined
by the Company.
Each of the navigational officers (skipper, first steersman, and two second steersmen) had to
sign the inventory upon receipt and was required to return all the material upon completing
the journey to Batavia. In the event of missing or mishandled charts, they were fined an
amount equal to twice the list price of the item in question.
These lists were drawn up for the first time in 1655, and were regularly revised and adapted to
navigational developments. Thus, for example, the lists of 1675, 1731 and 1747 were all
improved. As of 1663 the lists were printed in order to avoid their frequent copying, so that
only the names of the ship, ship’s officer and the date had to be filled in by hand.
The printed list for the Zeeland Chamber that specifies the books, charts and nautical
instruments gives us a detailed insight of the equipment on board of an East Indiaman of that
period (ill. 4). Today these lists are invaluable sources for our knowledge and understanding
of the navigational equipment used by VOC vessels in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, and they allow us to reconstruct the kind and number of charts used. Thus, we now
know that three or four sets of charts were used for navigating from Zeeland to Batavia.
While the list of 1675 refers almost exclusively to manuscript charts, the revised list of 1731
includes the first mention of the printed charts which Johannes (II) van Keulen had only
recently been permitted to supply to VOC ships. The much more expensive manuscript charts
were usually drawn on vellum, a sturdy material which was less prone to damage from
climate and moisture as well as wear and tear. These charts were never folded, after use they
were rolled up and stored in large tin containers.
The contract between the Zeeland Chamber and Abraham Anias formalised that he had to
supply all East Indiamen of the Chamber with the necessary books, charts and nautical
instruments, as far as they were not in local stock with the Company. In the first half of the
18th century, the majority of manuscript charts on vellum was produced by the Amsterdam
Chamber, i.e. Isaac de Graaf (1705-43) and his assistants. The Amsterdam Chamber also
equipped the other five chambers with vellum charts. Zeeland was the only other Chamber
with a chart-making workshop. It was the responsibility of Abraham Anias to provide for
charts that were lacking at the Zeeland Chamber, by drawing them in his own hand. Whereas
worldwide eight vellum charts of the Indian Ocean are known by Isaac de Graaf, only one
single other example has come to us from the hand of Abraham Anias (The Hague National
Archives). This fact emphasizes the great significance and rarity of the item offered here.
Closer inspection of the 1731 list of charts reveals that two different groups of charts can be
distinguished. One group consists of small-scale charts that cover large parts of the area
between Texel and Batavia, whereas the other group contains the large-scale charts of small
regions that are essential to navigate the difficult waters around Holland, the English Channel,
the treacherous coasts around the Cape, and the navigation of the waters near Australia and
the Indonesian Archipelago.