Batavia's Graveyard (66 page)

Early Dutch-Aboriginal relations
Noel Loos, “Aboriginal-Dutch
Relations in North Queensland, 1606–1756,” in Jeremy Green, Myra Stanbury, and
Femme Gaastra (eds.),
The ANCODS Colloquium: Papers Presented at the
Australia-Netherlands Colloquium on Maritime Archaeology and Maritime History
(Fremantle: Australian National Centre of Excellence for Maritime Archaeology, 1999), pp.
8–13.

“. . . look out keenly . . .”
“Instructions to Wouter Loos
and Jan Pelgrom de By van Bemel,” JFP 16 Nov 1629 [DB 229–30].

Gerrit Thomasz Pool
Heeres, op. cit., p. 66; Schilder, op. cit., pp.
129–37.

Abel Tasman
The relevant portion of Tasman’s instructions read as
follows: “. . . Continue your course along the land of d’Eendracht as far as
Houtman’s Abrolhos, and come to anchor there at the most convenient place, in order
to make efforts to bring up from the bottom the chest in which eight thousand rixdollars,
sunk with the lost ship
Batavia
in 1629, owing to half a brass cannon having fallen
upon it . . . and so save the same together with the said gun, which would be good service
done to the Company, on which account you will not fail diligently to attend to this
business. You will likewise make search on the mainland to ascertain whether the two
Netherlanders who, having forfeited their lives, were put ashore here by the
commandeur
Francisco Pelsaert at the same period, are still alive, in which case you will from them
ask information touching the country, and, if they should wish it, allow them to take
passage hither with you.” Drake-Brockman, op. cit., pp. 81–2; Schilder, op.
cit., pp. 139–94.

“. . . circumnavigating the continent . . .”
In 1642–3
Tasman actually sailed south from Mauritius, east across the Roaring Forties until he came
across Tasmania, east again to New Zealand, and then north through Polynesia, reaching the
Indies via the north coast of New Guinea. He saw no part of the Australian mainland
throughout the voyage. In 1644, he explored the northern coast and sailed down the west
coast to about latitude 23H south. Beacon Island (Batavia’s Graveyard) lies at lat.
28 28’, about 350 miles further to the south. Cf. Schilder, op. cit., p. 154; Sigmond
and Zuiderbaan, op. cit., pp. 72–85.

“The ‘mutineers’ hut”
De Vlamingh’s landing party
found five huts in all, but this was the only one regarded as worthy of
description—implying it was probably noticeably superior in construction and design
to the other four. Gerritsen, op. cit., p. 227; Playford,
Voyage of Discovery,
pp.
46–7. Gerritsen fails to identify this structure with the two mutineers, whom he
believes were marooned a little further south at Hutt River, preferring to suggest it was
built by Jacob Jacobsz, the skipper of the
Sardam,
and the crew of the boat
apparently lost in the Abrolhos on 12 October 1629. In any case, there is no real reason
to suppose it was not built by the Nanda people.

VOC losses
J. R. Bruijn et al.,
Dutch-Asiatic Shipping in the 17th and
18th Centuries
(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 3 vols., 1979–1987), I, pp. 75,
91.

The wreck of the
Vergulde Draeck James Henderson,
Marooned
(Perth:
St. George Books, 1982), pp. 42–155. The wreck site was rediscovered in 1963 by
Graeme Henderson, who is now the director of the Western Australian Maritime Museum; he
was then a schoolboy on a fishing expedition.

The three rescuers
R. H. Major,
Early Voyages to Terra Australis, Now
Called Australia
(Adelaide: Australian Heritage Press, 1963), p. 58. The real total
may have been higher than this; a second party of eight sailors sent after the first three
also vanished; their boat was found smashed to pieces on a beach, and it remains a matter
of some doubt whether the crew ever got ashore. The VOC nearly lost a third boatload two
years later, when another effort at rescue and salvage was made. Fourteen men from a
fluyt,
the
Waeckende Boey,
led by the steersman Abraham Leeman, were abandoned on the
coast and had to sail their small boat back to the Indies. Most of them survived the
voyage, but landed on the southern coast of Java many miles from Batavia. Only Leeman and
three other men eventually reached the city alive. Henderson, marooned, pp.
95–155.

Evidence of survival
Ibid., p. 96; Gerritsen, op. cit., pp.
48–63.

“. . . followed by the
Zuytdorp . . .” Two other ships, the
Ridderschap
van Holland
(1694) and the
Concordia
(1708) may have been lost on the
Australian coast before this date. C. Halls, “The Loss of the
Ridderschap van
Holland,” The Annual Dog Watch
22 (1965): 36–43; Playford,
Voyage of
Discovery,
pp. 4, 71n; Femme Gaastra, “The Dutch East India Company: A Reluctant
Discoverer,”
The Great Circle
19 (1997): 118–20. Halls’s view, that
the
Ridderschap van Holland
sprung her mast, limped north to Madagascar, and fell
victim to the pirate leader Abraham Samuel at Fort Dauphin on the southern coast, cannot
be correct; Samuel did not arrive at the port until some time after July 1697. There
certainly was a rumor that he had captured a Dutch ship and killed all her crew, but
contemporary documents date this supposed event to January 1699; the vessel concerned was
probably a small slaver. There were, however, plenty of pirate ships on the northern coast
of Madagascar, based on St. Mary’s, that could perhaps have accounted for a wounded
retourschip.
Jan Rogozinski,
Honour Among Thieves: Captain Kidd, Henry Every and the Story of Pirate
Island
(London: Conway Maritime Press, 2000), pp. 67–8.

The fate of the
Zuytdorp Without a boat—the
Zuytdorp
’s
pair must surely have been reduced to matchwood by the surf—their only real hope of
rescue was to attract the attention of another Dutch ship as she passed along the coast.
The cliffs offered good vantage points, and they had gone aground close to the spot where
VOC ships normally made their Australian landfall, but any experienced hands among the
survivors would have known that although fires were often seen along the shoreline, they
were routinely attributed to the local Aborigines and ignored. It must have been for this
reason that the
Zuytdorp
’s men went to the effort of hauling ashore eight
bronze breech blocks for the swivel guns mounted on the poop. In the right circumstances
these could have been loaded with shot and used to signal to passing ships. Unfortunately
for the survivors, however, none of the guns could be got out of the stern before it broke
up and drifted away. The breech blocks were then abandoned at the foot of the cliffs,
where they were eventually rediscovered more than 200 years later.

There was plenty of driftwood about, however, and the survivors evidently did
gather large quantities of it and built at least one huge bonfire on the cliffs
immediately above the wreck site. Up to seven other East Indiamen would have made their
way along the coast during the next two months, beginning with a ship called the
Kockenge,
which apparently passed the
Zuytdorp
survivors’ position only a week after
they came ashore, and the discovery of what appears to be the remains of a signal fire
next to the wreck site—a substantial layer of charcoal mixed with melted hinges,
barrel rings, and clasps—suggests that at least one of them came within view of the
shipwrecked sailors and that the
Zuytdorp
’s survivors hurriedly lit their
beacon and piled everything they had onto the fire—sea chests and barrels as well as
driftwood—in the desperate hope of being noticed. That they received no response is
suggested by another modern discovery along the cliffs: the smashed remains of many old
Dutch bottles that had once been filled with wine or spirits, which appear to have been
drained by men determined to drink themselves into oblivion.

The ship had run aground early in the southern winter, and there would have been
sufficient fresh water about to sustain a small group of survivors for some months. The
men could have collected large quantities of shellfish from along the cliffs, and if they
were able to salvage any firearms from the ship, it would have been possible for them to
hunt for kangaroos. In these circumstances, it seems likely that they stayed close to the
wreck site for as long as they could in the hope that rescue ships might be sent from Java
when their failure to arrive was noticed. By September or October, however, the rains
would have ceased, and any survivors would have had to move inland in search of water. The
only supplies available for miles in any direction were Aboriginal soaks—areas of low
ground where water ran and collected during the wet season, and which the local Malgana
tribe “farmed” by digging them out and covering them with stones to keep
wildlife away and prevent evaporation.

The
Zuytdorp
’s men would have required the help of the Malgana to
have located these rare spots, but there is some evidence that Dutch sailors did receive
assistance from the local Aborigines. The Malgana were certainly aware of the wreck; the
event made such an impact on them that 120 years later, when British colonists arrived in
the area, it was still talked of as though it had been a recent happening. Aboriginal
tradition suggested that the survivors had lived along the cliffs in two large and three
small “houses” made of wood and canvas, and exchanged food for spears and
shields. Playford,
Carpet of Silver,
pp. 68–77, 78–82, 115, 200–4;
The
ANCODS Colloquium,
p. 49; Fiona Weaver,
Report of the Excavation of Previously
Undisturbed Land Sites Associated with the VOC Ship
Zuytdorp,
Wrecked 1712,
Zuytdorp Cliffs, Western Australia
(Fremantle: Western Australian Maritime Museum,
1994); Mike McCarthy, “
Zuytdorp
Far from Home,”
Bulletin of the
Australian Institute for Maritime Archaeology
22 (1998): 52. The
Zuytdorp,
incidentally, was the same ship that lost a large proportion of her crew in the Gulf of
Guinea on the voyage out; see chapter 3.

The tobacco tin
Playford,
Carpet of Silver,
pp. 214–5;
McCarthy, op. cit., p. 53. It has also been argued that the lid could have been carried to
Wale from the
Zuytdorp
wreck site by an Aboriginal farm hand in more recent years;
no definite resolution of this conundrum is likely.

“The third and last . . .”
Two other
retourschepen
—the
Fortuyn
(1724) and the
Aagtekerke
(1726), the former from Amsterdam and the
latter a ship of the Zeeland chamber, both on their maiden voyages—disappeared
between Batavia and the Cape just before the loss of the
Zeewijk,
and may possibly
have deposited survivors on the Australian coast. C. Halls, “The Loss of the Dutch
East Indiaman
Aagtekerke,
”
The Annual Dog Watch
23 (1966): 101–7;
Graeme Henderson, “The Mysterious Fate of the Dutch East Indiaman
Aagtekerke,
”
Westerly
(June 1978): 71–8; Playford,
Carpet of Silver,
pp.
28–9.

The Zeewijk and her survivors
Hugh Edwards,
The Wreck on the Half-Moon
Reef
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970).

“. . . from New South Wales to China . . .”
David Levell,
“China Syndrome,”
Fortean Times
123 (June 1999): 28–31. The distance
between the two territories was supposed by these prisoners to be about 150 miles (it is
actually 5,565 miles from Sydney to Beijing). The first recorded attempt was made by 20
men and one pregnant woman in November 1791; the last around 1827.

Evidence of survival
Gerritsen, op. cit., pp. 70–81; Playford,
Carpet
of Silver,
pp. 217–32. Gregory’s recollection may not be entirely reliable,
as he recorded it only in 1885. Much of other evidence advanced by Gerritsen, such as the
presence of what appear to be Dutch loan words in Aboriginal languages, have been subject
to considerable criticism by specialists.

Unfortunately for the Aborigines of the western coast, the great majority died
out soon after the first Europeans arrived with their guns, diseases, and modern
agricultural practices, and evidence of the sort supplied by Daisy Bates and her
contemporaries can never be more than merely anecdotal. It is also true that relations
with passing sealers or the earliest settlers, or genetic mutation, could account for the
light-skinned individuals found in the areas where the
Zuytdorp
survivors and the
Batavia
mutineers came ashore. Only genetic evidence is likely to prove at all conclusive; but
since old Aboriginal skeletons are sometimes exposed by wind and water throughout Western
Australia, it may eventually be found.

One clue that intermarriage between Dutch and Aboriginals did actually occur may
already have emerged. In 1988 Phillip Playford, one of Australia’s leading experts on
the
Zuytdorp,
was approached by a woman whose part-Aboriginal husband apparently
suffered from porphyria variegata, a condition that can cause rashes, blisters, and
sensitive skin. This disease is an inherited one and can be passed to children of either
sex. It is also relatively rare, except among the white population of South Africa, where
an estimated 30,000 people carry the gene for the condition.

Geoffrey Dean, a British doctor based in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, became
aware of the unusual incidence of porphyria in the region in 1949 and devoted years to
researching the family trees of all the sufferers he treated. He claimed to have traced
all known cases of the disease to a single Dutch couple, Gerrit Jansz van Deventer and
Ariaantje van den Berg, who were married at the Cape in 1688. Van Deventer had settled
there in 1685, and his bride was one of eight orphans sent out to provide wives for the
early burghers three years later. The couple had eight children, half of whom Dean showed
must have carried the gene for porphyria variegata. Dean and Playford have suggested that
the disease may have been introduced to Australia by an Afrikaner signed on to the
Zuytdorp
at the Cape to help make good the extensive losses among the crew that had occurred on the
passage from the Netherlands, who survived the wreck and lived long enough to join an
Aboriginal community.