The discovery of an octant at the beginning of the 1970s in the wreck of the Hollandia, which foundered off the Scilly Isles in 1743, is a tangible reminder of the standard of the art of navigation. The first mention of the octant, an instrument used to measure the altitude of a heavenly body, was in 1731 and this find raises the question of whether the most up-to-date instruments were made available to VOC commanders, and whether in their own day they were among the most modern seafarers. Were the Heren Zeventien aware of the most recent innovations in shipping and navigation and did they take steps to ensure that the most modern technology was used in their business?

Contemporaries only very sporadically made any comments about this in print. In his two travel accounts which were published posthumously in 1793 and 1797, Stavorinus was critical. In his account of his final voyage home in 1777–1778 he denounced the practice of following the sailing instructions without any deviation. On 26 April 1778, when they were in the waters around Ascension Island, five commanders who had sailed from Cape Town together on 3 April decided to follow what seemed to them to be the most efficient course rather than sticking to that stipulated. Leendert van Koopstad, Wopke Popta, Jan Och, Olke Hendrik Andringa and Stavorinus, who sailed for three different Chambers, falsified their logs until 8 May and noted down the obligatory courses, ones which they did not actually follow. Stavorinus claimed that their route was far shorter. The examiners did not pick it up and all the bonuses and perks were paid. Interestingly, other commanders who had sailed from Table Bay a month earlier had an even swifter passage home. Cornelius de Jong, who was a naval officer, was critical of the speed of the Company ships and questioned their officers’ skill in determining their position at sea. When he convoyed them from the Cape to the Dutch Republic in 1794, De Jong wrote later in his published travel accounts, they followed him unthinkingly.