Maarten Gerritszoon Vries orFries, also referred to asde Vries, (18 February 1589 inHarlingen,Netherlands – late 1647 at sea nearManila) was a 17th-centuryDutchcartographer and explorer, the firstWestern Europe to leave an account of his visit toEzo,Sakhalin,Kuril Islands and theSea of Okhotsk.

Not much is known about the life of de Vries. He was probably born inHarlingen, Netherlands, in 1589 and spent many years inTaiwan.^[1] He is best remembered for his 1643 expedition to the north-westernPacific Ocean to discover the coast ofTartaria, on account ofAnthony van Diemen, the governor inBatavia. This was the second expedition to look for legendary gold and silver islands in thePacific, which nobody had discovered, after a failed expedition in 1639 under command ofMatthijs Quast.

The two ships, theCastricum under De Vries and theBreskens underHendrick Cornelisz Schaep leftBatavia, the capital of DutchJava, in February 1643. After a stop inTernate in theMoluccas they continued their journey on April 4. On May 20 the two ships lost touch with each other in a storm, while offHachijo Shima, an island some 290 km south ofEdo, which, due to this setback, was christenedOngeluckich, or "Unlucky", Island by the Dutch.

TheBreskens arrived in a promising bay and was received in a friendly manner by the population ofYamada onTohoku,Japan.^[2] Six weeks later theBreskens again sailed to Yamada, probably while they had a good time. In the evening they organized a party with asamurai and most probably some Japanese women. (It is not known what exactly happened, because the diary got lost in 1692, afterNicolaes Witsen received it.) The next day, July 29, ten members of the crew, including the captain were invited by the women to come to a farm where they would receive fresh vegetables and fish. The unarmed crew was offeredsake and rice, but captured, and sent toMorioka andEdo forinterrogation. The Japanese feared Portuguese / SpanishJesuits had come to land. As a result,bakufu officials were extremely anxious about the problem of coastal defenses. However, after it was understood that the crew were Dutchmerchants and not Catholics, the problem to be solved became one of deciding by which procedure the Dutch should be released.^[3] AfterJan van Elserac had arrived, theshōgunTokugawa Iemitsu sent them in December toDeshima. The crew had to wait nine months for the next ship toTaiwan while theBreskens had left Honshu already at the end of July (without a captain) searching for the gold and silver Islands.

In the summer of 1643, theCastricum sailed by the southernKuril Islands, visitingKunashir,Iturup (which they named "Staten Island", although nowadays this name is only used to refer toStaten Island, inNew York City), andUrup, where they met with theAinu, and which they named "Company Island" and claimed for the Netherlands.

TheCastricum passed between the islands of Iturup and Urup, the strait between the islands being later namedVries Strait after its discoverer, and entered theSea of Okhotsk.

The Dutch sailed north, without encountering any land, until being driven south-west toward the northern shores ofHokkaido. Then they sailed north again, visitingCape Aniwa (the southeastern tip ofSakhalin Island), theGulf of Patience (where they indeed had to be patient, waiting for the fog to clear), andCape Patience east of it. At these places they met and communicated through sign language with the indigenous Ainu people of the island.

After another excursion, now east into the Pacific, theCastricum returned to Japanese waters and managed to meet with theBreskens offKyushu. The two ships sailed toFort Zeelandia (Taiwan) and returned to Batavia in mid-December 1643.

Sometime in late 1647, Maarten Gerritsz Vries died on board from disease after leading anunsuccessful attempt to invade the Philippines.

• Spate, Oskar Hermann Khristian (1983).Monopolists and Freebooters. Taylor & Francis. pp. 40–41.ISBN 0-7099-2371-6.