Zeewijk was constructed for Zeeland Chamber of the Dutch East India Company in 1725. The vessel, commanded by Jan Steyns and a crew of 212, departed for Batavia on November 7th 1726, with a cargo of 315,836 guilders in ten chests. Zeewijk reached the Cape of Good Hope on March 1727 and departed across the Indian Ocean on April 21st. At 7 p.m. on June 9th, Zeewijk struck the reef skirting the western side of the Pelsart Group of Houtman’s Abrolhos Islands. The sailor on lookout had sighted the surf breaking a full half-hour earlier, but thought it to be a reflection from the moon. Following the wrecking the crew accused the skipper of going too close to the coastline, not listening to the steersmen and disobeying orders from The Company. The vessel did not break up immediately, but due to the heavy swell washing over the ship it was more than a week before the longboat could be launched.
After the boat was wrecked a camp was set up on a nearby island (later to be named Gun Island), the crew begun salvaging from the wreck. Soon afterwards the longboat was put in order and eleven of the best seamen under the command of the 1st officer, Peter Langeweg, set sail for Batavia to obtain help, but they were never heard of again. A small vessel, named Sloepie, was constructed on the island out of the wreckage salvaged from the Zeewijk, and late in March 1728 the remaining survivors left for Batavia. 82 men arrived at Sunda Strait in this vessel on April 21. The skipper, Jan Steyns, was prosecuted for carelessness, and falsifying his journals to hide his mistake. 
The surveyor John Stokes, of the Beagle found relics from the survivors’ campsite in 1840. A breech loading 4-pounder brass swivel cannon found by Stokes on Gun Island was taken back to Britain. In the 1890’s, when guano was being mined on Gun Island and Pelsart Island by Messrs Broadhurst, Macneil and Company, a collection of bottles, cooking pots and other objects was assembled, and most of this is now housed in the Museum. In 1952 during a visit to Geraldton, Lieutenant Commander M.R. Bromell of the Royal Australian Navy learned that a crayfisherman had discovered a number of cannon on the reef skirting the west side of the Pelsart Group.
During a subsequent visit as commander of H.M.A.S Mildura Bromell located the cannon on the leeward side of the reef. He found about 6 guns, three cylindrical pieces of iron, and two bundles of what appeared to be iron bars. At low water the guns were partially exposed, but at high tide they were covered by about 1 metre of water. On a later expedition, crewmembers from the Mildura and the Fremantle were successful in raising three of the cannon. During the 1960’s newspaper-sponsored expeditions further examined the material on Gun Island and the leeward side of the reef, and in 1968 Hugh Edwardes led Museum staff over the reef to find cannon and anchors on the seaward side comprising the main wreck site. Edwards was given an ex gratia payment of $1,000 by the Museum.
Maritime archaeologists from the Museum paid a brief visit to Gun Island in 1974 to assess the archaeological potential of the Island and the wreck site, and extensive surveys have been scattered over a wide area. On Gun Island, the stratigraphy of the survivors’ campsite had been disturbed by generations of nesting terns, which burrowed into the sand each year. The Zeewijk was a ship of 47.5 metres in length and a carrying capacity of 140 lasten. She was fitted out with 36 cannon and 6 bassen. |
