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 N 1696 the Honourable Directors of the Dutch Chartered Company trading to the Dutch East Indies decided to send an expedition for the purpose of searching for missing vessels, especially for the Ridderschap van Hollandt, of which no news had been received for two years. The local Board of Directors of the Amsterdam Chamber of the Company was charged to carry out this resolution, and it equipped three vessels which were placed under the command of Willem de Vlaming. The Commander was directed to search for missing vessels or for shipwrecked sailors at the Tristan da Cunha Islands, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Islands of Amsterdam and St. Paul in the Southern Ocean. Thence he was to proceed to the 'Onbekende Zuidland,' by which name, or by that of Eendragts Land, Australia was designated in whole or in part in the official dispatches of the Dutch East India Company in the seventeenth century.

On the 29th of December, 1696, the vessels under the command of De Vlaming lay at anchor between Rottnest Island and the mainland of Australia. The island was searched for wreckage with little result. One piece of timber was found which, it was conjectured, might have been deck timber, and a plank was found, three feet long and one span broad. The nails in the wreckage were very rusty. The search for shipwrecked sailors on the adjacent mainland was unsuccessful. On the 20th and on the 31st of December, and on the 1st of January, 1697,