Download our K-12 education pack - ARC Centre of Excellence for ...

stories for teachers & students 2013
Supporting Resources
Dutch Lives in the World
stories by winthrop professor susan broomhall
Shipwrecked on the Great Southland
The Dutch knew with certainty about a southern land from the
time of the Duyfken’s landing in 1606. After Dirk Hartog’s 1616
investigations in the Eendracht, the west coast was commonly
referred to as Eendrachtsland by fellow Dutch seafarers within
the VOC. Trialling the new Brouwer’s route, a quicker, southerly
route to Batavia which could return profits even faster for the
company, placed many ships on a direct path to the west coast of
Australia, but knowing when to turn to the north was difficult.
This led to a series of near-misses which were duly reported
back to the VOC directors with pleas that instructions should be
altered to turn earlier than the official recommendations. These
included the Batavian Governor-General Coen himself, who had
been travelling with the Galias, Utrecht and Texel in 1627 when
they perceived breakers offshore the continent. Coen urged the
Directors to amend instructions as ‘a matter of the highest
importance, which if not properly attended to involves grievous
peril to ships and crews (which God in his mercy avert).’
The Batavia which struck Morning Reef near Beacon Island
(1629), the Vergulde Draeck wrecked off Ledge Point, just over
100 kilometres north of Perth (1656), the Zuytdorp destroyed in
the remote coast between Kalbarri and Shark Bay (1712) and the
Zeewijk which hit Half Moon Reef in the Houtman Abrolhos
islands (1727) were less fortunate. Some 40 drowned on the
Batavia, 118 on the Vergulde Draeck, 106 on the Zeewijk, while the
number on the Zuytdorp is unknown. Not all those who
experienced shipwrecks lived to tell the tale, but those who did
recorded their fear and despair. François Pelsaert, on the
Batavia, recorded how people were transferred from the vessel to
the land amid ‘the loud lamentations raised on board by women,
children, sick people, and faint-hearted men’. Once on land, he
left the greater part of the crew to search for water before
deciding to sail directly for the colony in search of help.
dual interests, although the Governor General and Councillors
confessed in their instructions, ‘there remains for us, in view of
the long lapse of time, very little hope that these people will still
be found alive’. They revealed their darkest fears ‘that they have
perished through hunger and misery or have been beaten to
death by savage inhabitants and murdered’ but also their own
feelings of responsibility to send yet more searches ‘so as not to
fail in any duty that could be demanded of us in searching for
these poor souls in case they should be alive, or any of them.’
They made clear to the captains of the Waekende Boei and
Emeloordt in December 1657 that although they should salvage
what they could from the wreck, ‘our opinion however is that in
view of the great peril and danger this will not happen, since we
deem human life more precious than goods.’
Hopes were high for both captains. When Samuel Volkersen,
Waekende Boei’s captain, saw a large fire on the coast, he ‘hoped
it was lit by Christian people’. Aucke Pieterszoon Jonck likewise
spotted fires ashore and, ‘rejoicing in our hearts’, sent a boat
to the spot, sailing off ‘in God’s name’. Although many shipboard
items and timbers were recovered, neither ship located
survivors. Yet the VOC had still not given up. Ships from the Cape
were advised to keep a look out for Draeck survivors for many
years as they passed by the west coast, as was Vlamingh some
forty years later in 1696-7.
Emotions ran high at the news of Batavia’s loss. Coen sent
Pelsaert back immediately in the Sardam to recover the
‘250 souls altogether, men, women, as well as children, left on
certain islands or rocks … in the uttermost misery to perish of
thirst and hunger’. Coen’s disbelief at Pelsaert’s abandonment
of his crew was palpable: he was ordered to proceed ‘most
hastily at the place where you have lost the ship and left the
people’. Pelsaert had dishonoured the reputation of the VOC
by his actions, with senior councillor Antonie van Diemen
describing the ship and its people as ‘shamefully left’ by
Pelsaert’s group who had taken more provisions with them
than they had left for the remaining passengers.
When the Vergulde Draeck was likewise wrecked in 1656, a group
of its crew sailed north to Batavia in search of assistance, having
watched others attempting to refloat the boat on the shore, from a
distance at which they could not be themselves boarded. Selfpreservation
was high on the agenda, but this was mixed with guilt
at survival and duty to those 68 who had been left behind. Certainly
the VOC councillors perceived their responsibilities to these
passengers, upon hearing the ‘sorrowful news,’ it sent three
further ships over the next year to seek out survivors ‘in their
sorrowful state … anxiously awaiting all needed comfort and help
from here’, at a futher loss of 11 men.
Instructions for these vessels were ‘to save the unhappy persons
and the Company’s cash and goods’. The Vergulde Draeck had
held an estimated 185 00 guilders’ worth of cargo including 8
chests of silver coins. Further attempts at recovery served these
FAR FROM HOME: ADVENTURES, TREKS, EXILES & MIGRATION
59