NAME OF VESSEL: Zeewijk
The story of the wreck of the ZEEWIJK in 1727, although not as dramatic as that of the BATAVIA, is nevertheless one of the most remarkable sagas in the annals of the sea, as the survivors constructed a small ship from the wreckage and sailed it successfully to Java.
The
ZEEWIJK departed from Vlissingen (Flushing), on its maiden voyage, on
7 November 1726, under the command of Jan Steyns, carrying a rich cargo
that included 315.836 guilders in cash, stored in ten chests. The ship
arrived at the Cape of Good Hope on 26 March 1727 and departed for Batavia
on 21 April. Seven weeks later, at about 7.30 in the evening of 9 June,
the ZEEWIJK ran violently onto Half Moon Reef, which skirts the western
side of the Pelsaert Group, the southernmost reefs and islands of the
Houtman Abrolhos.
There was never any doubt that the ship had been lost. Big waves swept
the deck, 2.5 metres of water soon filled the holds, and the main mast
came crashing down. With the arrival of daylight, those on board were
relieved to see several islands behind the reef, but they could not leave
the wreck because of the height of the surf. Six days later, they were
still confined to the wreck, and by then some of the crew had broken into
the liquor stores and were brought under control only under threat of
death.
On the seventh day, it was decided to risk using the longboat, which was
successfully launched and taken to the shallow part of the reef with twelve
men. Next day, it was rowed to the nearest island (Gun Island), returning
with the good news that water had been found there. The weather was fine
for the following two days, and many people successfully made the trip
from the wreck to the reef crest, and from there to the island. However,
some refused to leave the wreck, remaining on board under precarious conditions
for several months.
On 10 july, the longboat set sail for Batavia under the command of the
uppersteersman, with eleven others who were generally regarded as the
most capable of the seamen. They were never heard of again.
The ship's officers remaining on Gun Island found it impossible to maintain
shipboard standards of discipline, and there was an ever-present threat
of mutiny among the crew. Fortunately, they had sufficient food from the
ship's cargo and from the surrounding sea and islands, in the form of
seals, fish and birds. Kegs of food were periodically obtained from the
wreck, some of them floating to the reef crest. But water was soon a problem.
Although it had been found on the island when they arrived there in june,
the well had become salty by August, and drinking supplies were then dependent
on periodic rainfall. Fortunately, this shortage was alleviated at the
end of September when a good supply was found in a shallow well on a nearby
island.
The survivors managed to salvage all ten money chests from the wreck,
taking them to Gun Island. This was a remarkable feat, given the disintegrating
state of the wreck and the fact that the total weight of the chests was
more than 3 tonnes.
By the end of October, the ZEEWIJK castaways concluded that the longboat
could not have reached Batavia, as otherwise a relief ship would have
appeared before then. They made the courageous decision to construct a
small ship from the wreckage of the ZEEWIJK, with the objective of sailing
it to Batavia. The keel of this new vessel, which they named the SLOEPIE
(Little Sloop), was laid on 7 November. It had to be large enough to carry
eighty-eight men, over 3 tonnes of coinage, and several tonnes of water
and provisions, as well as being sufficiently seaworthy to make the voyage
from the Houtman Abrolhos to Batavia.
The carpenter and his mates worked hard in their little shipyard on Gun
Island, using materials recovered from the wreck of the ZEEWIJK plus timber
from mangroves on one of the larger islands. Skipper Steyns's drawing
of the vessel, on his map of the area, shows that it had a single mast,
with two square sails and a jib, and flags flying bravely from the mast,
bow and stern. The Sloepie was completed in a little over four months,
an amazing achievement, considering the extraordinarily difficult circumstances.
This little vessel deserves fame as the first ocean-going ship to be built
in Australia, and it testifies to the remarkable courage, perseverance
and resourcefulness of the VOC seamen of that time. Of the 208 men who
had departed from the Netherlands on the ZEEWIJK, and the 158 who had
left the Cape, 88 remained alive to sail from the Houtman Abrolhos on
the Sloepie. Stores and money chests were loaded, and the little sloop
set sail on 26 March 1728, some 10 months after the ZEEWIJK had been wrecked.
It completed a speedy voyage to Sunda Strait, arriving there on 21 April,
and reaching Batavia on 30 April with 82 survivors.Captain Jan Steyns,
however, was accused by the High Court of Justice at Batavia of the ZEEWIJK
disaster by having ‘approached the “Zuydland” too recklessly
contrary to the known orders’.
In 1840, 113 years after the ZEEWIJK was lost, the British survey ship
HMS BEAGLE landed on the island where once the marooned survivors had
camped. They found a brass four pounder swivel gun, with a breech block
and the Dutch East India Company’s details VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische
Compagnie) engraved on it; thus the island was named Gun Island. They
also found ornamental brasswork for harnesses, the gilding still well
preserved; two Dutch coins dated 1707 and 1720; clay pipes; and a number
of stout Dutch wine bottles.
In 1879 Deputy Surveyor-General John Forrest went ashore on Gun Island
to locate and evaluate guano deposits. He found scarcely any guano and
stated that there were only a few tons to be procured. In the same report
he mentions the remains of the ZEEWIJK survivors’ campsite: ‘Found
the old encampment of the ZEEWIJK party in 1727. Number of broken bottles,
iron, a cannon ball, broken wine glass, number of clay pipes in perfect
preservation and also two coins, one of copper about the size of a half
penny with “Hollandia 172 ” on it and the opther the size
of a four penny with “Zeelandia 1722” on it.
In 1884, after having tested the quality of the guano on the islands,
Charles Edward Broadhurst formed the partnership of Broadhurst and McNeil
Guano Contractors. The firm leased Gun Island and nineteen other islands
in the area for five years, a lease which was to be renewed several times
during the following years. The guano diggers cleaned the topsoil of many
islands and at times up to ninety vessels were chartered to transport
the guano to various places throughout the world. The deposits on Gun
Island had been one of the most heavily mined in the Pelsaert group, and
as result a large amount of the ZEEWIJK relics were encountered. Fortunately
the Broadhursts were interested in their discoveries and any artefact
found during the coarse was carefully collected and listed. Among the
finds were musket and cannon balls, fish hooks and lead weights, kettles,
jars, pots, bottles, wine glasses, tobacco boxes and clay pipes, and different
types of silver and copper coins.
In 1952, Lieutenant Commander M.R. Bromell of the Royal Australian Navy
learned, during a visit to the Houtman Abrolhos, that a crayfisherman
had discovered a number of cannon on Half Moon Reef. During a subsequent
visit, as commander of HMAS Mildura, he reported finding six guns, three
cylindrical pieces of iron, and two bundles of iron bars at this location.
There are also some masses of nails, now welded together by rust in the
shape of the barrels that originally contained them, at the site. Three
of the cannon, one 12-pounder and two 8-pounders, were later raised by
crews of the Mildura and the Fremantle and transported to Perth.
It is clear that these relics found on top of the reef were derived from
the wreck of the ZEEWIJK, as the remains of the ship were subsequently
located nearby the position of the cannon, as quoted by Bromell, is 28°52.6'
south, 113°49.7' east. The uppersteersman's position of the ZEEWIJK
wreck quoted in the ship's journal is 28°50' south, 128°19' east,
which gives a measure of the accuracy of navigation at that time.
The longitude measurement given in the journal needs to be adjusted to
take account of the fact that the prime meridian (0°) used at that
time is not the same as that of today. Indeed, the Dutch prime meridian
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries varied from map to map. Most
navigators used either Tenerife or Ferro (Hierro) in the Canary Islands,
but others used Corvo, Flores or Sao Miguel in the Azores, Boa Vista in
the Cape Verde Islands, Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands, or Cape Verde.
However, it is clear from the logs of the BELVLIET in 1711-12 and the
ZEEWIJK in 1726-27 that they had adopted the peak of Tenerife (Pico de
Teide) as the prime meridian. This peak rises to an elevation of 3.718
metres, and seamen at that time commonly thought of it as the highest
mountain in the world. Its longitude today, in relation to the prime meridian
of Greenwich, is 16°39' west. Thus, the longitude of the ZEEWIJK wreck
given in the ship's journal should be corrected to 111°40', for comparison
with present-day coordinates. This means that the wreck's position as
determined by the ship's navigators was only 2.6' (about 5 kilometres)
too far north, but a massive 2°10' (about 208 kilometres) too far
west.
Several expeditions have investigated the archaeology of Gun Island and the ZEEWIJK wreck. Most have been sponsored by the WA Museum and the WA Maritime Museum, and have returned rich collections of artefacts. Several skeletons of persons from the ZEEWIJK who perished during their sojourn on the island have also been exhumed.
The ZEEWIJK was the last VOC vessel to be wrecked on the Western Australian coast. Even though hundreds of company ships sailed past that coast during the rest of the eighteenth century, none are known to have been lost there, and no new observations or maps of the area have been reported from company records of that period.
The wreck of the ZEEWIJK and the voyage of the SLOEPIE brought to an end the remarkable era of Dutch discovery and shipwreck on the Western Australian coast, which had begun more than a century before, with Dirk Hartog and the EENDRACHT.
Bibliography and Sources:
Bruijn,
J.R., Gaastra, F.S., Schöffer, I. Dutch-Asiatic Shipping In
The 17th and 18th Centuries (3 Vols). The Hague, 1979, 1987
Edwards, Hugh. The Wreck on the Half-Moon Reef: the True Story of
the Wreck of the Dutch East India Ship Zeewyk. New York, 1970
Playford, Phillip. Carpet of Silver, the Wreck of the Zuytdorp.
Perth, 1996
Sigmond, J.P., Zuiderbaan, L.H. Nederlanders ontdekken Australië.
Scheepsarcheologische vondsten op het Zuidland. Bussum, 1976
Wilson, Derek. The World Atlas of Treasure. London, 1981
Muckelroy, Keith. Archaeology under Water. An Atlas of the World's
Submerged Sites. New York, 1980
Delgado, James
P. Encyclopaedia of Underwater and Maritime Archaeology.
London, 1997