This engraving first appeared in the African section of Caert-Thresoor, the compact, pocket-sized atlas first published in Dutch in 1598 under the imprint of Barent Langenes of Middelburg, with copies offered for sale through the Amsterdam publisher Cornelis Claesz. Conceived as an affordable and portable alternative to large-format atlases, Caert-Thresoor brought together terrestrial, maritime, and cosmographical material for both learned readers and a wider public.
The maps and illustrations of the atlas were engraved chiefly by Pieter van den Keere (including the present plate, #383), with substantial contributions by Jodocus Hondius (#294, #295,#296) The authorship of some plates, such as the East Indies map (#388), remains uncertain and may involve either engraver.
After its first appearance in 1598, the atlas was expanded and standardised under Claesz’s direction and developed into a multilingual series. A Latin edition appeared in 1600 under the title Tabularum geographicarum contractarum, with the text revised by Petrus Bertius. This was followed by the expanded libri quinque edition of 1606, from which this illustation derives. French and later German versions further extended the atlas’s circulation well into the seventeenth century.
Engraved by Pieter van den Keere, the scene depicts the Portuguese carrack Santiago running aground on the reefs of Baixos de Iudia, a low coral atoll between Mozambique and Madagascar, while en route to the East Indies in 1585. The composition combines an account of a real maritime disaster with dramatic and moralising elements: as the crew scramble onto the jagged rocks, they are shown under attack by monstrously large lobsters, one of which grasps a sailor around the waist.
Contemporary accounts suggest that the reality of the disaster was even more harrowing than the image implies. Baixos de Iudia is largely submerged at high tide and offers little refuge to shipwrecked crews. Only about fifty survivors are recorded as having reached Mozambique in a small tender. The site of the wreck was confirmed in 1977, when remains of the Santiago were identified and part of its cargo of silver coins and trade goods was recovered.
Peter van der Krogt, ed., Koeman’s Atlantes Neerlandici, vol. 3 (’t Goy-Houten: HES & De Graaf, 1997–), 376-381, no. 341:53.
Günter Schilder, Monumenta cartographica Neerlandica, vol. 7 (Canaletto, 2003), 457