The Brouwer Route was a 17th-century route used by ships sailing from the Cape of Good Hope to Java, it was the eastern part of the Cape route. The voyage time to Indonesia was shortened from over a year to five or six months under ideal circumstances.

The Dutch sailor and explorer Hendrik Brouwer discovered the route for the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in 1611 when he avoided the intertropical convergence zone from the Cape of Good Hope and sailed southwards until the 'Roaring Forties' with its strong westerly winds. Between 35 and 40 degrees south he sailed eastwards and turned towards the north at the height of the Sunda Strait.

In 1620, a ship of the British East India Company (EIC) under captain Humphrey Fitzherbert sailed this route for the first time and they called it the southern route.

The problem with this route is that there was no accurate way to establish longitude, because of which ships regularly turned north too late, causing them to founder on the coast of Australia. This happened to various VOC ships and also with the Tryall, the second English ship to sail this route in 1622, causing the EIC to avoid the route for 20 years.

This route also played an important role in the European discovery of Australia, because expeditions were organised to look for the lost ships.