24 May 1622
The 17th-century Dutch East India Company sailing ship (fluyt ), t Wapen van Hoorn, was built in the Dutch Republic in 1619.
This ship was the second to be shipwrecked, temporarily, in Australian waters, near Shark Bay, Western Australia.
t Wapen van Hoorn was eventually refloated and arrived in Batavia (present-day Jakarta) on 22 July 1622.
4 June 1629
The Dutch East India Company ship, Batavia, sailed on her maiden voyage for Batavia on 29 October 1628.
On 4 June 1629, Batavia was wrecked on the Houtman Abrolhos, a chain of small islands some 70 kilometres off the Western Australian coast.
Commander Pelsaert and about 45 others took a longboat to search for water on the mainland. The water search was unsuccessful and so Pelsaert sailed to the city of Batavia to get help.
Pelsaert returned to the shipwreck in mid-September and found mutiny, murder and horrific cruelty. Jeronimus Cornelisz, the man he had left in charge, had murdered 115 men, women and children.
28 April 1656
The Vergulde Draeck (Gilt Dragon) sailed from Texel (Holland) bound for Batavia (Jakarta) in the East Indies, under Pieter Albertsz, with a crew of about 193 men.
The route followed the Roaring Forties east towards the Southland, then north to Batavia.
On 28 April 1656, the ship struck a reef midway between what are now the coastal towns of Seabird and Ledge Point, Western Australia.
Of the 193 people on board, 118 are known to have perished.
Of the survivors, 75 people made it to shore alive.
The Gilt Dragon carried two small boats, but one boat was lost in the waves. The second boat was sent to Batavia (Indonesia) with 7 sailors.
Sixty-eight Gilt Dragon survivors were left on the coast and never seen again.
A number of rescue attempts were conducted by the Dutch East India Company but no survivors were ever found.
In March 2015, Steve Caffery, of Gilt Dragon Research Group, claimed that copies of two letters carried by the seven survivors to Batavia in 1656, had been found. The letters, dated 5 and 7 May 1656, were said to indicate there were two separate campsites.
The wreck was discovered by five spear-fishermen (John Cowen; Jim, Alan and Graeme Henderson; and Alan Robinson ) in April 1963.
July 1656
The ships Goede Hoop and Witte Valke were sent from Batavia by the Dutch East India Company to rescue survivors of the Vergulde Draeck.
A strong wind was blowing with a "terribly high sea’".
After 5 February 1694
In the largest class of the company's ships, she sailed from the Cape with a crew of around 300, and two passengers, including Admiral Sir James Couper.
Remains of a shipwreck were found on Pelsaert Island in 1727.
The WA Shipwrecks Museum
Australia's oldest known shipwreck is Tryall (or Trial), a British East India Company-owned sailing ship (East Indiaman), which departed Plymouth on her maiden voyage for Bantam on 4 September 1621.
At the time, there was intense rivalry between the Dutch and the English East India Companies and the commander of Tryall, John Brookes, was instructed to sail a faster route, discovered in 1611, by a Dutch captain called Brouwer.
Instead of sailing diagonally across the Indian Ocean from the Cape of Good Hope, Brooks was instructed to sail due east into the Roaring Forties (strong westerly winds). Then turn north for several hundred nautical miles before reaching the Great Southern Land. This could save up to six months' travel.
Brookes made a navigational error and sailed too far east (a common problem at the time). The calculation of longitude was fraught with difficulty and error.
On 25 May 1622, between 10 and 11 p.m, Tryall was wrecked on the Tryal Rocks (Ritchie’s Reef), north of the northern tip of Barrow Island, off Western Australia.
The crew were the first Englishmen to sight or land on Australia.
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| Assumed to be Australia's oldest known shipwreck, Tryall (or Trial), found in 1985 |
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| Assumed to be the cannon from Australia's oldest known shipwreck, Tryall (or Trial), found in 1985 from the shipwreck |
June 1622
25 January 1628
Travelling instead, through the Strait of Balamboan, the ship was blown so far south by strong headwinds, that the ship ran aground in the vicinity of Barrow Island (Western Australia),
Vianen, however, was also refloated and arrived at the Cape of Good Hope on 24 May.
The Dutch East India Company (VOC) ship Vianen sailed from Batavia on 6 January 1628.
The monsoon had set in, however, and so the ship could not take the usual route through the Sunda Strait
The following year, the ship was shipwrecked in the Sunda Strait and sunk.
Batavia's shipwreck was found in 1963 by fisherman and divers.
A Batavia ship replica was built from 1985 to 1995, using the same materials and methods utilized in the early 17th century.
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| The reconstruction of the Batavia was the brainchild of master shipbuilder Willem Vos. |
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| The remains of the Batavia Shipwreck, at the Shipwrecks Museum in Fremantle, WA. |
Of the 193 people on board, 118 are known to have perished.
Of the survivors, 75 people made it to shore alive.
The Gilt Dragon carried two small boats, but one boat was lost in the waves. The second boat was sent to Batavia (Indonesia) with 7 sailors.
Sixty-eight Gilt Dragon survivors were left on the coast and never seen again.
A number of rescue attempts were conducted by the Dutch East India Company but no survivors were ever found.
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| In 1931, a boy named A. Edwards found a skeleton and some old coins on a ledge of rock known as Eagle's Nest close to the Moore River. The coins were dated between the years 1618 and 1648 and were associated with the wreck of the Dutch ship "Vergulde Draeck" (Gilt Dragon). Sunday Times; 8 February 1931 |
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| The "Vergulde Draeck or "Gilt Dragon", one of the Dutch East India Trading Company's trading vessels, embarked from the Netherlands on 4 October 1655 bound for the East Indies with eight chests of silver coins on board. |
A search party was sent ashore in Goede Hoop's boat, but the boat was smashed against rocks and sunk. Sadly, 8 sailors drowned and 3 more disappeared ashore.
22 March 1658
The ships Waeckende Boey and Emerloort were sent and 14 men were sent ashore in the Waeckende Boey's jawl (sailboat).
More ships were sent by the Dutch East India Company, from Batavia, to search for the Vergulde Draeck.
The jawl was driven northward and was wrecked on an island.
Giving the 14 men up as lost, the Waeckende Boey returned to Batavia. The ship was repaired and sailed north but was wrecked again on the coast of Java. The four survivors walked overland to Jepara, for five weeks through the dense jungle.
In 1834 an anonymous article by an English explorer appeared in a Perth newspaper, telling about a "lost white tribe" living in a walled settlement in the interior of Western Australia. No evidence of such a village has ever been found.
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| In 1834 an English newspaper (Leeds Mercury) reported that a secret English expedition in Central Australia in 1832, found a small colony descended from Dutchmen shipwrecked on Australia’s west coast in the early eighteenth century. |
After 5 February 1694
On 11 July 1693, the ship, Ridderschap van Holland, departed Wielingen (Holland) on a voyage to Batavia, arriving at the Cape of Good Hope on 9 January 1694.
The ship did not reach her destination and was never found. It is believed that Ridderschap van Holland was actually wrecked in the Pelsaert Group of the Houtman Abrolhos Islands off the coast of Western Australia.