Gerrit de Veer

Gerrit de Veer was a Dutch ship's officer who sailed with Willem Barentsz on the expeditions of the 1590s that sought a northeast passage to China. He took part in the voyages of 1595 and 1596, and on the last of them shared the winter the crew spent in a driftwood house on Novaya Zemlya and the escape in open boats in 1597. His journal of the three voyages, published in Amsterdam in 1598, is the main source for the expeditions, and it was soon translated into Latin, French, German, Italian and English.