Step into the depths of Western Australia’s maritime past. From the infamous wreck of the Batavia to the mystery of the Gilt Dragon and the ingenuity of the Zeewijk survivors, this highlights tour reveals extraordinary stories of adventure, disaster, and endurance. Discover rare artefacts, hear the human tales behind them, and explore the events that shaped our coastal history.

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The Infamous Wreck of 1629

Shipwrecks Gallery Entrance 

My name&#39;s Mark and I&#39;ll be, talking to you about some of the shipwrecks that have occurred on the West Australian coast and the Houtman Abrolhos island, which are approximately 60 kilometers off the coast. Before I start though, I&#39;d first like to acknowledge the, traditional owners of the land, the Southern Yamatji people, and pay respect to their elders past, present, and emerging.Now, the first ship I&#39;m going to talk about is probably the most infamous, it&#39;s the Batavia. So the Batavia was a ship of the Dutch East India company. The Dutches India company was heavily engaged in the spice trade in what is, Java , modern Indonesia now, in fact, where Jakarta is now, that was known as Batavia at the time.So Batavia, the ship left in 1628 in October, and, headed around the Cape of Good Hope. And then was heading for Java. Now, unfortunately, early on 4th of June, 1629, in the early hours of the morning, it ran into the Houtman Abrolhos Island specifically. It ran into the what is now known as Morning Reef.Houtman Abrolhos Islands, which are about 60 kilometers off the coast. There, there are a lot of coral sort of islands. This was a coral reef that it, it ran into. So Commander Pelsaert, who is in charge, which thrown from his bunk he went up onto the deck and surveyed the situation and immediately knew he was in the.The ship was in deep trouble. He was hoping that they were actually at low tide and they may be able to refloat the ship at high tide. What they did, he threw all the cannons overboard, try and reduce the weight. Two of those cannons are right here. So this is a bronze cannon. The Batavia carried six bronze cannon.Now the difference with these and the 22 cast iron cannons that were also carried by the Batavia is that these cannon do not interfere with your compass. they&#39;re positioned accordingly on, on the ship. now this cannon over here is a composite cannon, and they were somewhat experimental for the time, the Batavia carried two of these.They&#39;re an attempt to combine the reliability of bronze with the cheapness of iron. Now they&#39;re light cannon and they&#39;re not strong enough to shoot a cannon ball. What they&#39;re actually used for was to shoot anti-personnel ammunition. So we are talking about things like nails and stones.Anything that could do harm to the human body, they&#39;re particularly effective against anyone trying to board your ship. If you look above you here you have a photo of the actual wreck site of the Batavia, and it&#39;s approximately the correct depth as well, about five meters.What we&#39;ll do, we&#39;ll go inside and we&#39;ll continue.

From Africa to Java via the Roaring Forties

Ship Routes

Let&#39;s have a look at the roots, the Dutch East India company were taking. The original route is down the coast of Africa here, around and through the Mozambique channel, and then it would follow the coast around India and head for the East Indies head for Java.Now there&#39;s a few problems with this route. One of them in the Mozambique channel there is quite fast flowing. Currents, dangerous currents. And also there are shoals, which your ship can run into as well. Also, the Portuguese had quite a strong presence on the coast of Africa, and they were at war with the Dutch.Also, as you get closer to the equator, you can enter an area called the doldrums. The doldrums is an area where an area of the ocean where the wind can stop blowing for weeks at a time. Now, obviously in a sailing ship this is quite dangerous with limited stores of food and water.The Dutch, we are looking for a new route and a Dutch Explorer by the name of Brouwer. Found one and it became known as the Brouwer route. You followed the same route down to the Cape of Good Hope and then i nstead of hang clinging to the coast of Africa, you would head across, down to about 40 degrees latitude south, what is known as the roaring forties.These were strong, constant, winds that would push you ,across. And then the captain would turn north, northeast to head up Java parallel to the West Australian, Australian coast at the time. Now this route was much quicker and it became the default route for the Dutch East India company.Now it also has its dangers, though. Because in the period we are talking about the 16 hundreds and 17 hundreds they couldn&#39;t accurately calculate longitude. So there was somewhat guesswork as to when to turn north to head to Java. Now, if the captain got it wrong, and he was a bit, he was closer to the Australian mainland than he thought, then that could be highly dangerous.And this is what. Happened to the Batavia. The Batavia ran into the Houtman Abrolhos Islands off the coast here. And they attempted to refloat the ship, as I said, but they were unsuccessful because it wasn&#39;t low tide. It was actually high tide when it crashed.Commander Pelsaert, after trying to search for water and being unsuccessful in doing that they still had the ship&#39;s long boat and he decided to head north to the settlement of Batavia and get help. The long boat actually there is a replica that is positioned just behind the museum here.If it&#39;s not out sailing, and when you have a look at that just imagine 48 people jammed into that . it&#39;s quite extraordinary. Off they went and headed up to Java and after 30 days they made it. And as far as we know, everyone, a board survived. So Commander Pelsaert then got a rescue ship and headed back to the Houtman Abrolhos Islands. Unfortunately, due to bad weather and difficulty finding the exact location, it took 63 days to return. Now. In the meantime, the highest ranking official left behind was a man named Jeronimus Cornelisz. Now this was most unfortunate because Jeronimus had, along with other members of the crew, been planning a mutiny to take over the Batavia before it became shipwrecked. He had no interest in the welfare of those left behind. And in fact, his plan was to take over the rescue ship when it returned. So he and his co-conspirators proceeded to kill over 120 people.Now there was some resistance. And it was led by a man named Wiebbe Hayes, who was a soldier and there were about another 20 soldiers. They were originally sent to another island to look for water, and Jeronimus was hoping that they would die of thirst, but they actually found water. Jeronimus thought he had to deal with them. Because he&#39;s, worried that they would alert the rescue ship. And so they made many attempts to get rid of Wiebbe Hayes and his fellow soldiers. They were able to resist. And on one of the occasions when they were being attacked, a sail appeared on the horizon and it was the rescue ship.It was then a race to who could get to it first. Fortunately, Wiebbe Hayes got there first and alerted Pelsaert of the danger. Then they were arrested. Pelsaert arrested the conspirators. And over the next several weeks while they were trying to retrieve the cargo, Pelsaert also investigated as to what was going on. And trails were held and in the end, seven people were hung on the island. Two were also stranded on the mainland, and we don&#39;t know what became of those two people, the rest were taken back to Batavia, to stand trial.

Inside a Dutch East India Ship

Ship Cutaway

Now. If you look behind you, you can see we have a cutout of a Dutch East India ship Indian.As you can see, it&#39;s got a double hull, which was particular for the Dutch East Indian ships of the time. Here you can see the ballast. The ballast was important, of course, having a low center of gravity for a sailing ship. But something extraordinary happened as the museum staff were retrieving the ballast.They found that some of them were unusual shapes. Some they had mason marks on &#39;em, and some of them were numbered. Was a bit of a puzzle to the museum staff. They started trying to work out what this all meant. And it was a bit like a jigsaw puzzle, putting a jigsaw together.And eventually they worked it out. And what they came up with is what before you hear the portico. This is the portico for Batavia Castle, and that&#39;s where its destiny was.

A Monument That Never Arrived

Batavia Castle

Here you can see a picture of Batavia Castle during the period. . It weighs approximately 65 ton and in the middle you can see the keystone. that would&#39;ve had the symbol of the Dutch East India company, and you can see it over here behind you, the two lions.The Batavia castle doesn&#39;t exist anymore because a later governor wanted to use. The materials for other building projects. I guess all we have of Batavia Castle is the part that did not arrive.This was all done in the Netherlands. It was meant for the entrance of Batavia. Castle. in Fremantle, they have another, not the original. This is the original, but you also see this in Fremantle if you go there, this is the real one here.

Treasure from the Depths

Silver

This is silver recovered from the Batavia Wreck site. When Commander Pelsaert returned with the rescue ship. To recover the silver was obviously a very high priority and they managed to retrieve 10 of the 12 chest full of silver.Now, Dutch silver. Not as highly prized as Spanish silver. Spanish silver has a higher silver content, and the reason for that is they had great sources of silver from their mines in South America and in Mexico.

The Currency of the Seas

Pieces of Eight

Now, have you heard of pieces of eight pirates? Always after pieces of eight. Here we have two there. That is Spanish coin. That is eight real. now it&#39;s got the higher silver content, it&#39;s actually quite malleable and you could break parts off and pay for things.The Spanish coins were really almost like the, universal currency of its day, a bit like the US dollar is today. with the Dutch at one stage the Netherlands authorities had to step in because some of the provinces were seeing with how much little silver they could get away with in their coins.The Dutch authorities had to step in and stop that. &#39;cause that really devalues your coins.

A Wreck Shrouded in Mystery

Gilt Dragon

The Gilt Dragon is a very important wreck for a number of reasons. It is located between Ledge Point and Seagull down south. So going towards Perth.It was discovered about the same time as the Batavia in 1963, and both these wrecks had a problem in that there was a lot of looting occurring. And in fact, the Gilt Dragon had explosives used on it. For people attempting to loot it. If you like mysteries, the Gilt Dragon is a really good one.A bit like the Batavia, some of the survivors took a boat up to Batavia to get help. And they were able to make that journey. When they returned in the rescue ship, there was around about 70 survivors left. There was no sign of them. We are not really sure what happened to those survivors.After the looting occurred on both these wrecks, the West Australian government brought in the world&#39;s first underwater cultural heritage legislation to protect underwater wrecks that was a world first, and that the WA Museum was put in charge of protecting these wrecks, conserving them, and indeed sharing the information and stories about these wrecks as well.

Lost Without a Trace

Zuytdorp

The Zuytdorp was wrecked between Kalbarri and Shark Bay. To the north. It is a very dangerous area, high cliff faces. It can only be dived on certain times of the year due to how dangerous. It is. We know some of the survivors got to the top of the cliffs because as you can see, before you, they were able to find various artifacts. Now you saw what good condition the canons were out the front with the Batavia.When the museum staff were actually investigating these areas, diving on these areas. Some of the cannon were completely torn apart due to the rough conditions, which makes this item over here quite surprising that it&#39;s in one piece. This glass vessel was found at the wreck site, you can imagine the damage that was done to those cannons, those cast iron cannons torn about yet this glass beaker is in one piece, which is quite remarkable really, isn&#39;t it?The Zuytdorp is important for another reason because unlike the other ships wrecks we&#39;re talking about today, there are no known survivors, there&#39;s no one to tell their stories. The Dutch East India company never sent out a rescue vessel because they didn&#39;t know where they were.As far as we know, all hands were lost. I guess that&#39;s why it&#39;s important for the WA Museum to continue its research and try and tell the stories of these people that were lost at sea.

Survival and Ingenuity

Zeewijk

The last one I&#39;m going to share with you, and this is my favorite story of human survival.This is the Zeewijk. Now we&#39;re talking approximately a hundred years after the Batavia . The Dutch East India company had brought in many rules to try and not have a repeat of what happened to the Batavia. Unfortunately, with the Zeewijk, the original captain was unable to sail. So a much more inexperienced captain sailed and commanded.Unfortunately, that also ran into the Houtman Abrolhos Islands in a different location, but same result. They also, like the, Batavia had a long boat and they sent the long boat off to Batavia. Some of the senior crew members actually drew lots. To see who was going.Unfortunately, those men were never seen again. Because the long boat is really not designed for open sea journeys. It&#39;s more for transport between the ship and shore. So after about three months, the survivors realized no one was coming. They decided to build a ship.From the wreck of this ship and from materials they could find on the island they built a sloop and it was called sloopy or little sloop. It was a reasonable size because they needed to put 90 people on, plus, the silver they were carrying and they actually attached two of the smaller swivel cannons to the sloop as well for protection.They headed off, took them about five months to build it, and then they headed off to Batavia and they made it. And about approximately 82 of the 90 survived the journey. This sloop is the first European vessel to be made in Australia. It really is a remarkable tale of survival and how innovative people are to survive. They were lucky in that where they wrecked that they were able to find water in that location. &#39;cause that was a major contributor to death on the islands.The last thing I&#39;ll leave you with though is that. The WA museum has a very good free ebook on the Batavia that you can download from the website.

Shipwrecks Gallery Highlights Tour

One story at a time.

The story continues.