Expert seafarers, years of individual, collective and corporate navigational seafaring experience, and access to the best and most up-to-date available charts simply could not save a cargo ship that ran afoul of commercial shipping’s oldest threat: bad weather.
Concerns had been raised about whether the master, Marinus Wijsvliet, or his senior crew had made an error of navigation and incorrectly fixed their position, or heading, or both.
However, having retraced the incident, having examined ships’ logs, corporate standing instructions, and weather logs, investigators have concluded that a violent squall likely blew up out of nowhere, and the desperate act of the crew in dropping an emergency anchor did nothing to save the vessel. It was then wrecked on Western Australia’s rocky shores.
While several persons may possibly have survived ashore for some time after the wreck, ultimately all aboard have perished.
A cargo ship of a very (in)famous shipping group
This is not the recounting of a modern incident. The wreck took place in the year 1712. The vessel was the Zuytdorp (alternative spelling “Zuiddorp”, both of which translate into English as “South Village”).
It was a cargo ship of Dutch East Indies Company, commonly known by its Dutch acronym, VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie).
The VOC was a company of particular historical – possibly macro-historical – significance. It ran for nearly 200 years from 1602 to 1799, transporting millions of tons of cargo, up to one million slaves, and sending a million Europeans to work in Asia. The Company founded an outpost that later became Cape Town and the Company had governmental powers including setting up colonies, negotiating treaties, the right to imprison and execute convicts, to field private armies and even to wage war!
The VOC was a key combatant in the near 70-year global conflict that is now known as the Dutch-Portuguese War which ran between 1598 and 1663. It was also involved in the Franco-Dutch war from 1672-1678. And, if that wasn’t enough, it was also involved in (as in, it fielded troops and navies in battle) in the Anglo-Dutch wars, which were just so much fun that they had four of them between 1652 and 1784.
On top of being the most powerful company in history, it is likely also one of the first examples of an internationally oriented joint-stock company in a modern form i.e. a company with liability limited by shares that can be bought and sold by shareholders. The shares of the VOC were tradeable on what is now the Amsterdam Stock Exchange. Even its corporate logo, a “V” superimposed over an “O” and a “C” was one of the first examples of the use of a logo by a company to brand itself. Modern day corporate life, capitalism, and modern civilisation have the shadow of the VOC lurking somewhere in their antecedents.
About the Zuytdorp
Anyway, back to the Zuytdorp. The 1701-built ship was constructed of wood at either the Middleburg VOC shipyard or the Vlissingen shipyard – sources vary and, as Middelburg and Vlissingen are adjacent, the various sources may be referring to the same place. Some sources report that the Zuytdorp was reportedly carrying about 200 “passengers” whereas other sources report 250 crew heads. All sources agree the vessel was carrying a substantial cargo of silver coins. The vessel had a length of 160 feet (approximately 49 metres) although sources, again, vary and some say it had a length of 178 feet (54 metres) and a cargo capacity of 576 “loads” (reportedly about 1,152 tons).
The Zuytdorp arrived at what is now known as Cape Town, South Africa, in March of 1712. Back then, it was a much-needed re-supply post set up by a VOC employee. The area as a whole was known as the Cape of Storms – which tells you everything you need to know about the challenges of sailing in that area. The region was later renamed, for somewhat obvious reasons, the Cape of Good Hope, and the outpost seeded the city of Cape Town.
The Zuytdorp resupplied at the outpost, and it departed shortly thereafter in April 1712 for Batavia (the forerunner to modern-day Jakarta, Indonesia).
And it was never heard of again.
Well, almost.
Rumours of a shipwreck
Jump forward a couple of centuries and, after a tip-off from Aboriginal peoples in Western Australia, employees at Murchison House Station, a large piece of private land used for producing livestock, began to investigate reports of a shipwreck.
Station hands announced in 1927 that a wreck had been found in shallow seas, just off from a series of rocky cliffs, about 62km north-north-west of the West Australian coastal town of Kalbarri (which is, itself, about 500km north-north-west of Perth).
The wrecked ship was found at the base of high-steep cliffs, and was “nowhere near a low-lying offshore reef,” which was quite unlike a series of other wrecks, such as the famous wreck of the Batavia. Those other wrecks had had happened unexpectedly, suddenly, on shallow reefs, and away from the mainland.
There wasn’t much actual wreckage left at the site as the ship was exposed to the open ocean and high-energy waves. Much of the site was and is comprised of scattered, non-perishable objects, such as items belonging to the crew, metal fastenings and the like.
Jump forward another thirty years and, in 1958, the wreckage was identified as the Zuytdorp based on its cargo of silver coins. Since then, more objects have been found by archaeologists including a cannon, an anchor, cargo items such as lead ingots and glassware.
But where was the big anchor?
A key point about the wreckage site – and remember this bit because it will come up later and it’s key to unravelling the mystery of what happened to the Zuytdorp – is that VOC ships of the time carried nine (9) anchors of varying sizes.
But two of the Zuytdorp’s anchors are unaccounted for. A big one (which would have been in the range of 3,100 lbs to 3,600 lbs (1,542 kg to 1,633 kg), and a small one of 180 lbs (81.6kg). Perhaps the small anchor was transported away by the natural movements of the water. But the big one?
So, the key point: one big and heavy missing anchor. Got that? Good. Remember it.
Researchers Ruud Stelten and Wendy van Duivenvoorde of Flinders University carried out a meticulous investigation into the final voyage of the Zuytdorp, by searching through a range of ships logs, sailing instructions, weather records / observations, and charts from the time to produce a likely outcome of events.
The Brouwer Route
Stelten and van Duivenvoorde report that the Zuytdorp was following the Brouwer Route, from Cape Town to Batavia. VOC ships formerly used to sail north from Cape Town, past Madagascar, and then headed east to Batavia. In 1611, VOC Captain Hendrik Brouwer headed east using the Roaring Forties (winds that swirl around the bottom of the globe in a west-to-east direction) south of latitude 35 degrees turning north in the vicinity of St Paul and Amsterdam Islands, roughly 5,200km (2,800 nautical miles) distant from Cape Town. Then it’s another 4500-ish km (2,400ish nautical miles) north-east-by-north to the Sunda Straight.
The Brouwer Route became the mandated route as it was quicker, there was less hardship and ill-health for the crews who spent less time sailing across the hotter parts of the Indian Ocean and, as a bonus, VOC ships on the Brouwer Route went absolutely nowhere near any of the bases controlled by any of their enemies, particularly the Portuguese.
A tricky turning point
Although the St Paul and Amsterdam Islands were the key markers to turn north on the Brouwer Route, they were difficult to spot. They are tiny flecks of land in an otherwise vast, open, and monotonous sea. They might not be spotted because of bad weather or, more likely, because the navigation system of dead reckoning is / was notoriously prone to developing inaccuracies in working out a ship’s position.
When the islands were not sighted, the VOC had issued standing instructions for its ship-captains to continue sailing east. VOC captains were under instructions to sail to what is now Western Australia and then sail north as the more westerly points of WA are roughly 2100-2150 km south-by-east of the shores of the island of Java. Batavia was located on the north-west coast of Java, i.e. where Jakarta is now.
After reviewing a wide range of historical evidence – manuscripts, charts, letters, reports and the like, researchers Stelten and van Duivenvoorde have pieced together the most likely explanation.
Following standing instructions
After leaving Cape Town in April 1712, the Zuytdorp somehow missed the St Paul and Amsterdam Islands – probably because of failures in dead reckoning – which were the marks to head north. Capt Wijsvliet presumably followed standing instructions to head toward what is now Western Australia, and this journey probably took about 49 days, likely arriving around mid-June-ish.
Taking advantage of the VOCs proprietary, detailed, and up-to-date charts (previous expeditions had revealed passages of clear, deep, seas off the Australian coast) the Zuytdorp presumably headed north in what we would likely regard today as a good, deep, and wide natural shipping channel.
Based on what was known then about local visible light, and working backwards from what is known today, it was extremely likely that the vessel had good visibility of the Australian coast – even at night-time owing to moonlight, star-light, and the silhouetting of the cliffs against the night sky… something that the expert seafarers would have known to look for.
Following long-standing corporate policy, its likely Capt Wijsvliet navigated north, hugging the coast of Western Australia, heading towards a known location (Red Corner) where fresh water could be found.
An expert captain? A highly capable ship? A highly expert crew? In a channel between rocks near cliffs? What possibly could have driven the Zuytdorp aground?
A sudden violent squall; a final resting place among the rocks
Locally, the seas in that area are subject to sudden violent squalls.
Remember those missing anchors? Well, in the event of drifting due to bad weather towards rocky cliffs, it’s likely that Captain Wijsvliet would have given the emergency order: “Let go anchor!”*
The anchor might have caught on a rocky ledge and was lost (which would explain why it cannot be found at the wreck site).
The researchers have speculated upon what happened then: “Zuytdorp was now dangerously close to shore. Before another anchor could be dropped, the ship ran aground. Battered by violent seas, it found its final resting place along the Western Australian coast”.
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Do you want to know more?
Read about the fascinating investigation into the likely fate of the Zuytdorp in “Mishaps in the Land van Eendracht: Exploring the cause of Zuytdorp’s Wrecking,” Journal of Maritime Archaeology (2024) 19:407–426, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11457-024-09424-4, by Ruud Stelten and Wendy van Duivenvoorde.
Access the paper online (open access): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11457-024-09424-4
