True Ocean Found: Paludanus’s Letters on Dutch Voyages to the Kara Sea, 1595-1596

True Ocean Found was first published in 1980. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Seeking an easy route to the rich trade of the East, sixteenth-century geographer theorized that northern routes, even those directly across the Pole, were open to navigation if only the right passage could be found. This book is based on two letters written by the geographer Bernardus Paludanus to his colleague Abraham Ortelius. The letters discuss Dutch attempts to find the northeast passage, and the theoretical arguments for the existence of the passage. In an introduction James D. Tracy provides a general discussion of the belief in and arguments for the northeast passage, summarizes Dutch attempts to find the passage, and comments on the debate about the routes to be followed. A final section describes the author of the letters and introduces the translation.

James D. Tracy, a professor of history at the University of Minnesota, is the author of Erasmus: The Growth of a Mind and The Politics of Erasmus: A pacifist Intellectual and His Political Milieu. True Ocean Found is a publication from the James Ford Bell Library of the University of Minnesota.