File talk:Hendrick van der Borcht, Navigator with Globe and Dividers.jpg

William Baffin?

For some reason, people seem to think that this picure shows William Baffin, English navigator and explorer at the beginnin of the 17th century. Is there any proof, any trusted source, anything that justifies this assumption? I will cite what User:Jonathandore wrote about this on the English wiki's discussion page in 2008:

"Why is this picture from the National Maritime Museum attached to the William Baffin article. It's *not* of him. As the caption in the NMM makes clear, it's a Dutch painting, probably of an (anonymous) Dutch gentleman (as evidenced by the flag on the ship visible through the window in the painting). Their page on the painting (http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/explore/object.cfm?ID=BHC3132) also shows that the person in it was 23 years old when it was painted, in 1624. Well, Baffin died in 1622, at considerably older than 21 years of age (an age that would have made him 11 years old during his first recorded voyage to Greenland, as pilot, in 1612). The Dictionary of National Biography article on Baffin also makes clear that there is no known image of him. This image simply has nothing to do with Baffin and should be removed.

Similar concerns also arose on the German wiki page, that is why it has been removed from there.--Kompakt (talk) 14:27, 8 July 2013 (UTC)