Maritime history of the Dutch Republic

island in the Arctic Ocean, part of Norway

1602–1799 Dutch trading company

Spitsbergen (; formerly known as West Spitsbergen; Norwegian: Vest Spitsbergen or Vestspitsbergen , also sometimes spelled Spitzbergen) is the largest and the only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in northern Norway in the Arctic Ocean.

Dutch chartered company responsible for trade and colonization in the New World (1621–1792)

island group

thumb|Remains of blubber ovens at Smeerenburg thumb|"The train oil cookery of the Amsterdam chamber of the Northern Company at Smeerenburg". Painting by Cornelis de Man (1639), based on a painting of a "Dansk hvalfangststation" (Danish whaling station) by ABR Speeck (1634). thumb|Map of the original Smeerenburg, with trade huts (red) and oil boilers (green). The names denote which city owned the relevant facilities.

The northern entrance to the Strait of Magellan

thumb|Early 19th-century painting, showing beurtvaarders between Lemmer and [[Amsterdam]] thumb|Waterways in the Netherlands, 1878. In red, canals proposed in parliament, which rejected the proposal. Amsterdam's connection to the Rhine was improved much later and Rotterdam went on to dominate the trade on the German hinterland thumb|Some beurtships in the Singel in Amsterdam, around 1570 thumb|The 1911 beurtvaart ship Stânfries X thumb|Remnants of a beurtship that came to light in 1980. Pictures of various finds of the site were put on :c:Category:Shipwreck B71OFL|Wikimedia Commons Beurtvaart