Drake, in the course of his voyage round the world, crossed the Indian Ocean in 1580. Lancaster's voyage to India (1591-4) led to the formation in 1599 of the East India Company. The first fleet sent out was commanded by. Sir James Lancaster, with John Davis as pilot-major, but did not proceed further than Achin. The first landing on the coast of India was made at Surat by Hawkins, in command of the Company's fleet. The English were soon followed by the Dutch, who formed an East India Company in 1602, and possessed themselves of Java and other islands of the Indian Ocean. From Java discoveries were gradually made to the south, and in 1601 Godinho seems to have sighted the north western coast of Australia, then vaguely known as Great Java, which was again visited by the Dutch ship Dove in 1606. Ten years later Dirk Hartog sailed along the west coast of New Holland as far south as Shark Bay ; the largest of the three islands at the mouth of which is still called after him, Dirk Hartog's Island. In 1622 the Dutch vessel Leeuwin ap proached the south-western extremity of Australia (Cape Leeuwin) and five years later another Dutch vessel doubled this point, and skirted the western portion of the Great Australian Bight. Abel Tasman left Batavia in August, 1642, and on November 24th, Van Diemen's Land was first seen.
Thence Tasman proceeded eastward to Staten Land (New Zealand). Cook, on his voyage home in 1770, passed from the Pacific into the Indian Ocean through Torres Straits, and having touched at Batavia, sailed thence to the Cape and England. Kerguelen, in 1771, discovered the island which bears his name, but which at first was more appropriately called the Island of Desolation. In 1797 Mr. Bass explored the strait between Victoria, and Tasmania ; and in 1801 Captain Flinders was sent out, and surveyed the Australian coasts from King George's Sound, by Bass Strait, to the Gulf of Carpentaria. Two French vessels—the Geographe and Naturaliste—also explored the West Australian coasts at the same time. Now the work of discovery in the Indian Ocean was complete, and its shores, islands, reefs, and shoals have since been accurately mapped out for the guidance of the vast fleets that constantly cross and recross it. The operations in connection with submarine telegraphy in the north, and the Challenger expedition in the south, have furnished data which enables the geographer to supplement his knowledge of the horizontal configtuution of this ocean by pretty accu rate ideas of the conformation of its bed and the temperature and movements of its waters.