The bay of Brunei

After the battle at Manilla, the Olivier van Noort sailed the Mauritius to Borneo to find fresh supplies and possibly trade at Brunei, which he calls the city of Borneo. After arriving Van Noort sent an Chinese envoy to the shore to seek permission of the sultan to trade. At first, it seemed cordial relations were established and the Dutch traded for and bought fresh food supplies from locals who came up the ship in prows. An attempt was made to trade for pepper with Chinese merchants from Patani, but in the end this came to nothing. Meanwhile, the Dutch began to suspect that the sultan may be preparing an assault on the ship. Convinced that they were in an unsafe situation and seeing little opportunity to profitably trade at Brunei, a decision was made to sail to Java, to the city of Bantam.

The image shows the bay of the city of Brunei on the island Borneo. We see the Dutch ships in the bay surrounded by many prows from the port. To the left are fishers and the sultan’s fleet. A large fishing net lies in the bay with prows nearby.