Shipwreck Databases Western Australian Museum

Inventory and analyses of archival sources in the Dutch East India Company (VOC) archives in the Netherlands in order to contribute to possible locations and identification of VOC shipwrecks off the Western Australian Coast

Author/s CIE-Centre for International Heritage Activities

Year of publication 2014

Report Number: No. 310

 

This report reciords an inventory and analyses of archival sources in the Dutch East India Company (VOC) archives in the Netherlands in order to contribute to possible locations and identification of VOC shipwrecks off the Western Australian Coast. Currently four VOC ships are known to be stranded on the Western Australian coast, namely the Batavia (1629), the Vergulde Draeck (1656), the Zuytdorp (1712) and the Zeewyk (1727). For decades however, there have been rumours of a possible fifth VOC wreck. The main instigator for these rumours has been the fact that in 1728, the authorities in Batavia reported that survivors of the VOC ship Zeewyk had seen shipwreck material in the Houtman Abrolhos that did not belong to their own ship. Over the years many possibilities for these sightings have been suggested, the rumour mill having been fed by differing interpretations of both archaeological finds and the known archival material. Both the lost VOC ships Fortuyn and Aagtekerke are mentioned as possible candidates for the ‘mythical fifth wreck’, and it is especially the possibility that the Aagtekerke stranded off the Houtman Abrolhos and that its wreck can therefore be located in this area, that has been the main reason for drafting this research report. 

This report was commissioned to the CIE-Centre for International Heritage Activities on behalf of the Western Australian Museum (WAM). Its purpose is to bring structure to the ongoing discussion and further (physical) research by means of collecting possible evidence about VOC ships lost on the Western Australian coast. In order to do so, the CIE has systematically reviewed and analyzed the relevant archival sources in the Dutch East India Company (VOC) archives in the Netherlands. In this report we present the results of that research.