page_title: Schouten Islands
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Schouten Islands / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of Cenderawasih Bay from Wichmann, Carl Ernst Arthur (1917) Nova Guinea&#160;: résultats de l'expédition scientifique néerlandaise à la Nouvelle-Guinée en 1903. Vol. IV: Bericht über einde im Jahre 1903 ausgeführte Reise nach Neu-Guinea, Leiden: Brill
context_page_description: The Schouten Islands are an island group of Papua province, eastern Indonesia in the Cenderawasih Bay 50 km off the north-western coast of the island of New Guinea. The group consists of the main islands of Biak, Supiori and Numfor, and numerous smaller islands, mostly covered in rain forest.
context_section_description: The first recorded sighting by Europeans of the Schouten Islands was by the Portuguese navigator Jorge de Menezes in 1526. On the voyage from Malacca to Maluku, via northern Borneo, he was further carried eastward by a storm and strong winds. Jorge de Menezes landed at Biak, where he was forced to winter. Inspired by Malay, Moluccan or local Papuan names, he named the archipelago, and eventually the coasts of western Papua "Islands of Papuas". Biak was thenceforth called in Portuguese maps Ilha de Dom Jorge or Ilha onde invernou Dom Jorge, and Ilha de S. Jorge.
  The archipelago was also sighted by Spanish navigator Álvaro de Saavedra who landed on Yapen on June 24, 1528, when trying to return from Tidore to New Spain. The islands were named Islas de Oro (Golden Islands in Spanish). In 1545 they were visited by Íñigo Órtiz de Retes on board the galleon San Juan.
  The archipelago was first mapped in the Portuguese charts of Gaspar Viegas (c. 1537), an anonymous map of 1540, and on the maps of João de Lisboa and of Bartolomeu Velho (c. 1560), and by other Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch maps.
  The Schouten Islands were eventually named after Dutch explorer Willem Schouten, who explored them in 1615.
caption: 1917 map of Cenderawasih Bay (then Geelvink Bay) including the Schouten Islands (in German)
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