The stamp depicts a combination of two cards, namely a sea-chart and a profile card into a rectangle (right)
The flagship MAURITIUS viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6586&p=6582&hilit=MAURITIUS#p6582 on which Cornelis de Houtman stayed is seen sailing in Bantam Bay on West Java, which is surrounded by green mountains on different height.
Behind the ship is part of a wind-rose of a compass, with the compass lines visible. It ship sails literally on the compass and the compass points. In reality this is also done in unknown waters in a metaphohorical sense.
In the rectangle on the left is a detail of the Table Mountain at Cape of Good Hope placed.

Cornelis de Houtman (2 April 1565 (Gouda, Netherlands – 1 September 1599 Aceh, Java), brother of Frederick de Houtman, was a Dutch explorer who discovered a new sea route from Europe to Indonesia and managed to begin the Dutch spice trade. At the time, the Portuguese Empire held a monopoly on the spice trade, and the voyage was a symbolic victory for the Dutch, even though the voyage itself was a disaster. Houtman was not the navigator of skipper of the expedition but the first merchant
In 1592 Cornelis de Houtman was sent by Amsterdam merchants to Lisbon to discover as much information on the Spice Islands as he could. At the same time he returned to Amsterdam, Jan Huygen van Linschoten returned from India. The merchants determined that Bantam (Banten) provided the best opportunity to buy spices. In 1594 the two merchants founded the company 'compagnie van Verre' (meaning "the long-distance company"), and on April 2, 1595 four ships left Amsterdam: the AMSTERDAM, HOLLANDIA, MAURITIUS and DUYFKEN.
The voyage was beset with trouble from the beginning. Scurvy broke out after only a few weeks, due to insufficient provisions. At Madagascar, where a brief stop was planned, seventy people had to buried. The Madagascan bay where they were anchored is now known as the "Dutch Cemetery". After the dead of one of the skippers, quarrels broke out among the captains and traders; one was imprisoned on board and locked up in his cabin. On June 27, the ships finally arrived at Bantam, a northwestern port in Java. Jan Huyghen van Linschoten had told them not to pass through the Malacca Strait, which was controlled by the Portuguese, but through Sunda Strait.
De Houtman was introduced to the Sultan of Bantam, who promptly entered into an optimistic treaty with the Dutch, writing "We are well content to have a permanent league of alliance and friendship with His Highness the Prince Maurice of Nassau, of the Netherlands and with you, gentlemen." The local Portuguese traders became very conspicuous when De Houtman did not buy any black pepper, and wanted to wait on the next harvest. Unfortunately, De Houtman was undiplomatic and insulting to the sultan, and was turned away for "rude behavior", without being able to buy spices at all.
The ships then sailed east to Madura, but were attacked by pirates on the way. In Madura, they were received peacefully, but De Houtman ordered his men to brutally attack and rape the civilian population in revenge for the unrelated earlier piracy.
The ships then sailed for Bali, and met with the island's king. They managed to obtain a few pots of peppercorns on February 26, 1597. Two of the crewmembers stayed on the island. At Bawean one of the ships, the AMSTERDAM was purposely set on fire, and the crew divided over the other three ships. When the sailors had enough of the exhausting voyage, it was decided not to go to the Moluccas and return to Holland. That evening another one of the skippers died. De Houtman was accused of poisoning him.
Portuguese ships prevented them from taking on water and supplies at St. Helena. Out of the 249 man crew, only 87 returned, too weak to moor their ships themselves.
Though the trip was a humanitarian disaster and financially probably just broke even, it was a symbolic victory. It may be regarded as the start of the Dutch colonization of Indonesia. Within five years, sixty-five more Dutch ships had sailed east to trade. Soon, the Dutch would fully take over the spice trade in and around the Indian Ocean.
On his second trip to the East, for the new formed Veersche Company, Cornelis de Houtman was in command of two ships and on 21 June 1599 Houtman was with much deference received by the Sultan of Ache.
Houtman agreed then that his two ships would sail to Johor in Malaysia with troops of the Sultan to start a war in exchange for a load of pepper. But in the meantime the Portuguese incited the Sultan against the Dutch.
01 September 1599 numerous heavily armed officers and troops of the Sultan boarded the two vessels. As a gift they were bringing food and liquor with them, what was distributed under the crews of the two ships. In the food and the drinks was an ingredient that had hallucinogenic properties, most probably derived from the plant Dature. Once a part of the crew was numb the native troops attacked and killed Cornelis de Houtman and 27 crew, also the 22 men on shore were killed or enslaved. Frederick Houtman de brother of Cornelis was imprisoned for several years until gifts given to the Sultan by Prince Maurits of Orange-Nassau freed him.
Netherlands 1996 80c sg1815, scott994
Wikipedia. And Internet.

The Netherlands issued a set of stamps to honor Dutch explorers, one of this stamps shows Willem Barendsz, the house they built at Nova Zemlya, and his ship the DE WINDHOND.
Willem Barentsz was born around the year 1550 on the island Terschelling in the Seventeen Provinces.
A cartographer by trade, Barentsz sailed to Spain and the Mediterranean to complete an atlas of the Mediterranean region, which he co-published with Petrus Plancius.
His career as an explorer was spent searching for the Northeast passage, which he reasoned must exist as clear, open water north of Siberia since the sun shone 24 hours a day which he believed would have melted any potential ice.
On 5 June 1594 Barentsz left the island of Texel aboard the small ship MERCURY as part of a group of three ships sent out in separate directions to try and enter the Kara Sea, with the hopes of finding the Northeast passage above Siberia. Between 23 and 29 June, Barentsz stayed at Kildin Island.
On 9 July, the crew encountered a polar bear for the first time. After shooting it with a musket when it tried to climb aboard the ship, the seamen decided to capture it with the hope of bringing it back to Holland. Once leashed and brought aboard the ship however, the bear rampaged and had to be killed. This occurred in Bear Creek, Williams Island.
Upon discovering the Orange Islands, the crew came across a herd of approximately 200 walruses and tried to kill them with hatchets and pikes. Finding the task more difficult than they imagined, they left with only a few ivory tusks.
Barentsz reached the west coast of Novaya Zemlya, and followed it northward before being forced to turn back in the face of large icebergs. Although they did not reach their ultimate goal, the trip was considered a success.
The following year, Prince Maurice of Orange was filled with "the most exaggerated hopes"on hearing of Barentsz' previous voyage, and named him Chief Pilot and Conductor of a new expedition, which was accompanied by six ships loaded with merchant wares that the Dutch hoped to trade with China.
Setting out on 2 June 1595, the voyage went between the Siberian coast and Vaygach Island. On 30 August, the party came across approximately 20 Samoyed "wild men" with whom they were able to speak, due to a crewmember speaking their language. 4 September saw a small crew sent to States Island to search for a type of crystal that had been noticed earlier. The party was attacked by a polar bear, and two sailors were killed.
Eventually, the expedition turned back upon discovering that unexpected weather had left the Kara Sea frozen. This expedition was largely considered to be a failure.
In 1596, disappointed by the failure of previous expeditions, the States-General announced they would no longer subsidize similar voyages – but instead offered a high reward for anybody who successfully navigated the Northeast Passage.
The Town Council of Amsterdam purchased and outfitted two small ships, captained by Jan Rijp and Jacob van Heemskerk, to search for the elusive channel under the command of Barentsz. They set off on 10 May or 15 May 1596, and on 9 June discovered Bear Island. The ship commanded by skipper van Heemskerk with on board Willem Barendsz as first mate and a crew of 17 carried the name DE WINDHOND (the greyhound) or DE GULDEN WINDHOND (the gulden greyhound). The length of the hull was about 25m, beam 5 m. Rigged on the fore and main mast with square rigged and on the mizzen mast one lateen sail. She was a yacht most probably of the same design as used by the VOC later.
They discovered Spitsbergen on 17 June, sighting its northwest coast. On 20 June they saw the entrance of a large bay, later called Raudfjorden. On 21 June they anchored between Cloven Cliff and Vogelsang, where they "set up a post with the arms of the Dutch upon it." On 25 June they entered Magdalenefjorden, which they named Tusk Bay, in light of the walrus tusks they found there. The following day, 26 June, they sailed into the northern entrance of Forlandsundet, which they simply called Keerwyck, but were forced to turn back because of a shoal. On 28 June they rounded the northern point of Prins Karls Forland, which they named Vogelhoek, on account of the large number of birds they saw there. They sailed south, passing Isfjorden and Bellsund, which were labelled on Barentsz's chart as Grooten Inwyck and Inwyck.
The ships once again found themselves at Bear Island on 1 July, which led to a disagreement between Barentsz and Van Heemskerk on one side and Rijp on the other. They agreed to part ways, with Barentsz continuing northeast, while Rijp headed due north. Barentsz reached Novaya Zemlya on 17 July. Anxious to avoid becoming entrapped in the surrounding ice, he intended to head for the Vaigatch Strait but became stuck within the many icebergs and floes.
Stranded, the 16-man crew was forced to spend the winter on the ice, along with their young cabin boy. After a failed attempt to melt the permafrost, the crew used lumber from their ship to build a 7.8x5.5 metre lodge they called Het Behouden Huys (The Saved House).
Dealing with extreme cold, the crew realised that their socks would burn before their feet could even feel the warmth of a fire – and took to sleeping with warmed stones and cannonballs. In addition, they used the merchant fabrics aboard the ship to make additional blankets and clothing.
The ship bore salted beef, butter, cheese, bread, barley, peas, beans, groats, flour, oil, vinegar, mustard, salt, beer, wine, brandy, hardtack, smoked bacon, ham and fish. Much of the beer froze, bursting the casks. By 8 November Gerrit de Veer, the ships carpenter who kept a diary, reported a shortage of beer and bread, with wine being rationed four days later.
In January 1597, De Veer became the first person to witness and record the atmospheric anomaly known as the Novaya Zemlya effect.
Proving successful at hunting, the group caught 26 arctic foxes in primitive traps, as well as killing a number of polar bears.
When June arrived, and the ice had still not loosened its grip on the ship, the scurvy-ridden survivors took two small boats out into the sea on 13 June. Barentsz died at sea on 20 June 1597, while studying charts only seven days after starting out. It is not known whether Barentsz was buried on the northern island of Novaya Zemlya, or at sea. It took seven more weeks for the boats to reach the Kola Peninsula where they were rescued by a Russian merchant vessel, and by that time only 12 crewmen remained. Ultimately, they did not reach Amsterdam until 1 November. Sources differ on whether two men died on the ice floe and three in the boats, or three on the ice floe and two in the boats. The young cabin boy had died during the winter months in the shelter.

The wooden lodge where Barentsz' crew sheltered was found undisturbed by Norwegian seal hunter Elling Carlsen in 1871. Making a sketch of the lodge's construction, Carlsen recorded finding two copper cooking pots, a barrel, a tool chest, clock, crowbar, flute, clothing, two empty chests, a cooking tripod and a number of pictures. Captain Gunderson landed at the site on 17 August 1875 and collected a grappling iron, two maps and a handwritten translation of Pet and Jackman's voyages. The following year, Charles L.W. Gardiner also visited the site on 29 July where he collected 112 more objects, including the message by Barentsz and Heemskerck describing their settlement to future visitors. All of these objects eventually ended up in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, after some had initially been held in The Hague.
The amateur archaeologist Miloradovich 's 1933 finds are held in the Arctic and Antarctic Museum in St. Petersburg Dmitriy Kravchenko visited the site in 1977, 1979 and 1980 – and sent divers into the sea hoping to find the...

Tien-Hou is the Chinese Goddess of fishermen. She was once a mortal woman named Lin Moniang with four brothers who were all sailors, each with his own ship. One day while they were at sea, Tien-Hou fell into a coma. Her mother tried to revive her and eventually succeeded. Tien-Hou protested that she had been awakened too soon. Later that day, three of her brothers returned home, saying that their ships had nearly been destroyed in storms at sea, but that a vision of Tien-Hou had appeared to them and led them to safety. The fourth brother never returned, for Tien-Hou had been awakened before she could save him.
Tien-Hou was still young when she died, and the people named her Princess of Supernatural Favor. She watches over all fishermen, and there are many temples in her honor along the coastline of China. Tien-Hou means “Empress of the Sky”, but she is known by many names throughout China.
Micronesia 1997 32c sg532, scott261b
http://www.goddessaday.com/southeast-asian/tien-hou

Toyotama-hime (Japanese for "luminous jewel"), better known as Otohime is a goddess in Japanese mythology, and is featured in the Kojiki as well as Nihon Shoki. She is the beautiful daughter of Ryūjin, the god of the sea. She married the hunter Hoori and gave birth to a son, who in turn produced Emperor Jimmu the first Emperor of Japan. After giving birth, she turned into a dragon or a wani and flew away.
Micronesia 1997 32c sg534, scott261f
Wikipedia

The Junkgowa Sisters are marine goddesses of the Australian Aborigines who live in the Dreamtime. Like other sister trios around the world, the Junkgowa Sisters represent the triple aspect of the Great Goddess: maiden, mother and crone.
The Junkgowa Sisters created all the creatures of the oceans and rivers, as well as the first people. To explore the ocean waters, the sisters built a canoe and set out, singing as they paddled. Everywhere they dipped their oars, the creatures of the sea appeared.
When the Junkgowa Sisters reached land, they began a walkabout. Every place they touched their staffs to the ground, a water hole appeared, releasing the waters of a sacred spring. These openings are seen as portals into the world of the spirits.
The sisters are still imagined as traveling together in a canoe above their watery domain. They appeared in this way on a postage stamp in the Sea Goddesses of the Pacific series.

Micronesia 1997 32c sg536, scott267d

http://www.enricophil.it/tales/Oceania/ ... isters.htm

Built as an inland passenger ship by DGT Óbudai Hajógyára in Obuda, Hungary.
Launched as the ZAR BORIS III. Two sisterships.
Dim. 78.50 x 16.00 x 8.80m, draft 1.60m.
Powered by two MWM diesel engines each 460hp. speed 25km/h
Passengers 1,000
1941 completed.


1945 Renamed GEORGI DIMITROV.
1983 scrapped.

Bulgaria 1981 25st sg?, scott? (Have not any info on the PORDIM stamp on the top of the SS)

Source: Internet

The autumn of 1758 saw Britain and France locked in a struggle for empire. Following the loss of Fort William Henry in 1757, the allied British, Iroquois and American provincials suffered a devastating defeat in their assault on Fort Carillon (later named Fort Ticonderoga) in July 1758. Undeterred, the British and their allies constructed new fortifications and warships, including two radeaux to serve as floating gun batteries to dislodge the French from Lake George and Lake Champlain. One of these was the LAND TORTOISE.
The LANDT TORTOISE appears to be the sole survivor of a class of military vessels unique to Lake George and Lake Champlain in the eighteenth century. Constructed in 1758 by provincial troops under the supervision of Captain Samuel Cobb, the radeau (French for raft) was just over 50 feet long and 16 to 18 feet wide. The flat-bottomed vessel was propelled by 26 oars. The LAND TORTOISE has seven cannon ports in her sides and her angular lines and sloping bulwarks protected her crew from enemy fire. Never fully rigged out, the radeau lacks masts, artillery and other hardware.
The construction of the LAND TORTOISE and its deliberate sinking to store it underwater are described in soldiers' journals. The soldiers worked hard into the night of October 22, 1758 to sink the LAND TORTOISE. It settled in much deeper water than intended and was not recovered the following spring. Another radeau, the INVINCIBLE, had to be built by the British for the 1759 campaign.
The fate of the LAND TORTOISE was unknown until 1990, when its peculiar seven-sided shape appeared during a side-scan sonar survey of the lake by members of a group that later became known as Bateaux Below, Inc. Archaeological and historical research identified the vessel as an eighteenth century radeau. From 1991 to 1994, the LAND TORTOISE was studied by a team of volunteer divers under the direction of a professional archaeologist. In 1995, the LAND TORTOISE shipwreck was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1998, the LAND TORTOISE was listed as a National Historic Landmark, only the sixth shipwreck in the nation with that designation. It also has been designated by the Smithsonian Institution as "the oldest intact war vessel in North America."
This site is located in the south basin, nearly two miles north of Lake George Beach, and the wreck is in a depth of 105 to 107 feet.
Turks & Caicos Islands 1996 60c sg?, scott1194h

http://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/5076.html