Another minor detail may have slipped under Philip's guard. While the Portuguese exercised an official monopoly on the trade with the East, they were perenially short of experienced seamen.
Portuguese monarchs censored the details of their discoveries. Still, the ships that made those discoveries carried an eclectic mix of nationalities. Dutchmen like Jan Huygen van Linschoten 1 had travelled East in the Portuguese service.
As a result, when the Dutch merchants set about sourcing the goods Philip's embargo denied them, they had a fair idea of where they were going and how to get there. When Cornelis van Houtman led the first Dutch expedition to the East Indies in 1596, he had van Linschoten's Itinerario as a guidebook.
Others followed over the next few years, representing competing companies from rival Dutch ports. However, competition among business rivals pushed prices in the Indies up. At the same time, an oversupply at home diminished returns on their investments.
An act of the Dutch States-General on 20 March 1602 established the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or United East India Company, with exclusive trade and shipping rights east of the Cape of Good Hope, as far north as the Bering Straits and as far east as the meridian 100 degrees east of the Solomon Islands.
Twenty-six enterprises that had previously competed with each other became a political and military entity strong enough to take on Spanish and Portuguese interests in the East.
The new arrangements also meant the VOC fleets that headed east included ships that would remain in eastern waters after the rest of the fleet sailed for home. The first VOC fleet left the Texel in December 1603 included two such vessels, the 60-ton Duyfken and the 300-ton Delft.
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1 Dutch merchant, trader and historian Jan Huygen van Linschoten (1563 – 1611) spent six years in India as secretary to the Portuguese Archbishop of Goa (1583 – 1588). He collected previously classified information he published in his Itinerario (1596) during his time there. Published in English as Discours of Voyages into Ye East & West Indies, the work was an invaluable resource for early Dutch and English expeditions to India and the East Indies. He also sailed with Willem Barents on his 1594 and 1595 voyages in search of a northeast passage to the Orient. He published his journal of the expeditions in 1601.