Maritime Shipwrecks

The Rapid was an early 19th-century American China trader wrecked on the north-west coast of Western Australia in 1811.

China traders were the pride of the American fleet: they had to be large, well-founded, speedy vessels built specially for lucrative, but competitive and rigorous trade.

Rapid is the first example of an outward-bound American China trader to be given archaeological attention, so aspects of that trade can now be re-examined from an archaeological perspective

Rapid departed Boston for Canton on 28 September 1810. After rounding the Cape of Good Hope the vessel sailed across the southern Indian Ocean and then north-east towards North-West Cape on the Australian coast.

It looked like being a fast voyage, but disaster struck on the 98th day when Rapid hit a reef at Point Cloates. The next day, a storm was raging and the crew set fire to the ship, sacrificing everything so that the wreck would not appear above water and attract other ships to the scene before the Captain could return to save the 280,000 Spanish silver dollars carried on board.

In 1978, a spearfishing group discovered the wreck. During three seasons of excavation between 1979 and 1982 archaeologists from the Department of Maritime Archaeology surveyed the ship’s timbers, and removed the artefacts from within the hull, including 20,000 remaining Spanish eight-real coins.

The excavation provided a unique insight into the life on board one of these fast ships. The ship’s fittings, provisions and the personal possessions of the crew members had survived in reasonable condition on the site.

The hull survey provided sufficiently comprehensive data for the lines of the vessel to be reconstructed and gave vital information about a vessel type that had been frequently referred to in the literature, but never comprehensively described.

The entire crew of the Rapid reached Java alive, though a number died afterwards. Captain Henry Dorr, his clerk and three sailors survived 37 days of deprivation in the 16-foot, very leaky jolly boat with only limited rations.

They found rats and crabs to eat on Christmas Island en route to Bencoolen, but no water other than rainwater that they collected in the sails. Six weeks after arriving in Batavia (Jakarta) the opportunity of a passage home presented itself.

The American schooner General Greene had lost its captain and most of its crew at Batavia, so Henry Dorr and part of the Rapid’s crew offered to navigate the schooner to America, arriving in Philadelphia on 27 July 1811.

Salvage of the wreck’s money was a matter of immediacy for the owners. The town of Boston was already suffering commercial distress, added to which were the deteriorating relations between America and Britain that eventuated in war in 1812.

Most of the specie (coins) was salvaged during the months after the wreck, the ship Meridian transported c. $91,000 to Canton in 1813, with more held by salvagers at Madras and Java.

SS Xantho was an iron-hulled paddle steamer built in 1848 for use in Scottish waters. In 1871 it was refit with screw propulsion and was then purchased by Charles Broadhurst for us a transport in the north-west Australian pearling industry.

Broadhurst also intended to use the vessel as a ‘tramp steamer’ picking up ‘Malay’labourers for the pearling industry, passengers and cargoes on its voyages from Fremantle to Batavia via intervening ports and pearling havens.

Overloaded with lead ore and worn out, in November 1872 Xantho sank at Port Gregory, on the mid Western Australian coast.

In 1979, an iron wreck at Port Gregory was located, which was revealed to the SS Xantho and in 1983 the site was classified as a new type of underwater site, and conservators and biologists from the Western Australian Museum were invited to join the archaeologists in its investigation ab initio.

This was the first full pre-disturbance study of any wreck’s biological and electrochemical state, providing concrete insights into the wreck, its status and predicted sea life if left undisturbed on the sea bed.

The underwater corrosion study showed that the engine, which was found to be intact, had a limited life on the sea bed.

The inspection also revealed that it was engineered not as expected, with a new condensing, two-cylinder compound engine, but with a ten-year-old, 60 hp, noncondensing, double-acting, double-trunk engine, exhausting to the atmosphere.

Subsequent research showed that the ageing SS Xantho was sold to a Glasgow scrap metal merchant Robert Stewart who, in 1871, had replaced the paddle machinery with a second-hand, ex-RN screw engine, new boilers and pumps, and offered the revamped hybrid lot for sale. It appeared the Steward had been perhaps been a shady or dishonest dealer.

The excavation of the stern section of the wreck, which was completed in 1984, revealed the unit to be the first mass-produced, first high pressure and first high revolution marine engine.

The treatment and ‘excavation’ of the engine, begun in a conservation laboratory soon after it was raised in 1985, and was completed a decade later with the opening up of the last of the internal spaces and the freeing of all working parts.

Even in the disassembly of the engine in the conservation laboratory, where over 2,000 kg of concretions were removed, evidence was discovered of the way Charles Broadhurst, the owner, operated the ship. Of additional importance, all the threads on the engine were of the British Standard Whitworth type.

The engine has been conserved and rebuilt in the exhibition galleries, where the entire Xantho/Broadhurst program is presented to the public as a ‘work-in-progress’.

For more information about the Xantho and the Broadhurst family, view the Broadhurst website.

On 7 November 1726, the VOC ship Zeewijk left the Netherlands bound for Batavia (modern Jakarta), with a complement of 208 seamen and soldiers.

Zeewijk was a Zeeland ship, 40.6 m (145 ft) long with a draught of 5.53 m (19.75 ft) in the stern and 4.9 m (17.5 ft) forward. The vessel was registered at 140 lasten (278 tonnes) and armed with 36 cannon and six small, breech-loading, swivel guns.

On its maiden voyage, Zeewijk carried heavy ironwork, bricks and cash money in ten chests amounting to 315,837 guilders.

During the voyage Captain Steyns made an unfortunate decision that led to wrecking of the site. Despite the protests of the steersman (helmsman), the ship’s log of 21 May 1727 reads:

‘It was decided unanimously to steer ENE, if there [was] an opportunity, in order to, if feasible, call at the land of Eendracht (Western Australia)’.

This decision contravened the strict sailing orders of the Directorate of the Dutch East India
Company. As a result, at 7.30 p.m. on 9 June 1727, Zeewijk ran aground on the northern edge of Half Moon Reef, opposite Gun Island, in the Houtman Abrolhos on Western Australia’s mid-west coast.

In 1840, officers and crew of the British survey ship HMS Beagle landed on the island where the marooned sailors from the Zeewijk had camped and found numerous relics, which they believed to be from the Batavia, thus confusing later searches for this wreck.

Subsequent colonial visitors and guano miners further located artefacts left by the survivors. In the 1950s and 1960s, visitors continued to discover material on the island and in the shallows.

In 1968, the outside of the reef was searched for the main wreck site. During March of that year, the major wreckage was discovered consisting of anchors, cannons and a large mound of conglomerate (items concreted together).

A combined underwater and land survey was conducted by the Underwater Explorers Club (UEC) in 1972, under museum supervision. Following a feasibility study of the archaeological sites by the Department of Maritime Archaeology in 1974, plans were made to undertake more intensive investigations. In 1976, the Department commenced the Zeewijk Project - a combined land and underwater survey of the Zeewijk site. Several expeditions were performed over following years.

On 4 October 1655, Vergulde Draeck of the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch United East India Company (VOC) set sail from Texel, on what was to be its second and final voyage to Batavia (modern Jakarta) in the East Indies.

The jacht Vergulde Draeck carried a cargo of trade goods worth 106,400 florins, together with eight chests of silver coin worth 78,600 florins, and the crew consisted of 193 men.
Following Brouwer’s route, the vessel made use of trade winds before making a northward turn to the East Indies. The vessel was lost on 28 April 1656 on a reef off the coast off Western Australia, north of Yanchep, near Ledge Point.

The vessel began to break up immediately and two of the ship’s boats were launched. Subsequently, a boat was dispatched to Batavia to get help. Arriving on 7 June they reported that 75 people of the 193 people on board had reached the shore and the other one of the ship’s boat had been driven ashore and damaged. Several vessels were dispatched to try and find the survivors but no one was found.

When the site was discovered in 1963, it had been looted and damaged. The wreck’s original finders approached the Western Australian Government suggesting that they transfer their rights as finders of the site to the Government on the condition that the site was protected under legislation.

In late 1963 the site was protected by law and the WA Museum’s Department of Maritime Archaeology was called in to assess and excavate the site in 1971. In 1972, the Department conducted its first major excavation. Over several months a very large collection of artefacts was systematically excavated from the site. Finds included beardman jugs, clay tobacco pipes (including a box of complete pipes), bronze and brass utensils, tools, accessories, glass bottles, various armaments, over 8,000 bricks from the Netherlands (presumably used as paying ballast on the ship) and over 8,500 silver coins, mostly Spanish reales.

The 1972 fieldwork was the first major underwater archaeological excavation undertaken in Australia and saw the commencement of a series of major archaeological excavations by the Department in the 1970s and 1980s. Subsequent visits to the site were made in 1981 and 1983.

The objectives in 1981 were to excavate the main wreck site areas that had been left at the end of 1971–72. This proved to be extremely difficult because of the bad weather and limited time.

The 1983 season was a great success due to long periods of unusually calm weather. During the excavation period, on the 19 days when diving took place, a total of 332 diving hours were recorded. Finds included a Southeast Asian smoking pipe (a very unusual find for the mid-17th century), several beardman jugs and an astrolabe.

In 1621 the English East India Company dispatched the ship Trial to the Indies. During the vessel’s outward voyage in May 1622 the vessel was wrecked on a then unknown reef off the coast of Western Australia (now known as Ritchie’s Reef, which contain the infamous ‘Trial Rocks’). This wreck was found in 1969 and is Australia’s earliest known shipwreck.

Trial was lost as a result of a navigational error from the ship’s Master, who was following a new course (Brouwer’s Route) to the Indies charted by the United Dutch East India Company (VOC) a few years earlier. Following this course, some VOC ships had sailed too far to the east and, as a result, in 1616 the coast of Western Australia was discovered.

Navigators of the time were faced with several problems, both because of uncertainty of the position of the land and the related difficulty in determining the ship’s longitude.

In the debacle that followed the Trial’s wrecking, more than 100 men were lost, as well as most of the Company’s goods. Subsequently, there were serious allegations against the Master: that he was negligent, that he had stolen some of the Company’s goods, and, that he was an incompetent navigator.

Examination of historical records seems to indicate that the Master falsified the location of the rocks to make it appear that he had been following orders. Because of this falsification, Trial Rocks remained undiscovered for over 300 years, simply because they were not where they were said to be.

The Master’s subsequent career interestingly reflects on his honesty. He was acquitted by the Company of any blame, and was then given the command of the East Indiaman Moone, that returned home in 1624. In 1625, the Moone was wrecked off Dover. The Master was immediately imprisoned in Dover Castle for purposely wrecking the ship. The court case dragged on for two years.

By the 18th century, there was complete confusion of where Trial Rocks were located. At least four groups of non-existent islands were charted in the area, and it was not until the advent of accurate longitude determination and the Admiralty Hydrographic Surveys in the late 18th and early 19th century that these anomalies were finally sorted out.

Initially, the Admiralty officially declared Trial Rocks non-existent. Later, their position was arbitrarily assigned to a group of islands in the general area. In 1934, Lee published the Master’s letters, which showed that a reef known as Ritchie’s Reef was in fact the reef where the Trial was lost. The Australia Pilot was amended and so finally Trial Rocks were officially and correctly located 314 years after their first tragic discovery.

In 1969 an expedition was mounted to locate the wreck site of Trial. On the first day of the search around the rocks, a wreck site was located and tentatively identified as that of Trial. Although four museum expeditions have visited the site since, no evidence has been found to identify the site conclusively, although circumstantial evidence indicates that the wreck site is that of the Trial.