Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [199]
The Eendracht She was skippered by Dirck Hartog of Amsterdam, who engraved a pewter plate commemorating his discovery and left it on a wooden post atop a cliff on the island at the north end of Shark Bay that now bears his name. The plate was rediscovered by a latter skipper, William de Vlamingh, in 1696, and taken to Batavia. It is still preserved today, in Amsterdam. Schilder, op. cit., pp. 60–1, 294–5.
The Zeewolf The skipper’s name was Haeveck van Hillegom. Heeres, op. cit., pp. 10–13; Estensen, op. cit., p. 130.
“. . . long before she could turn away . . .” Dutch retourschepen had an estimated turning circle of about five and a half miles, could not use their rudder to maneuver, and were unable to steer more than six points off the wind. Phillip Playford, Carpet of Silver: the Wreck of the Zuytdorp (Nedlands, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 1996), pp. 69–70.
The Vianen Schilder, op. cit., p. 105; Estensen, op. cit., pp. 155–6.
The loss of the Tryall Brookes escaped blame for the Tryall’s loss and the death of the majority of the crew and was soon appointed to command another English East India Company ship, the Moone. He proved his dangerous incompetence by running her aground off Dover in 1625, and on this occasion was imprisoned for purposely wrecking his vessel.
The location of the Tryall’s wreck remains a matter of some dispute. Most historians and maritime archaeologists concur that she ran aground in the Monte Bello Islands, and in 1969 divers found 10 old anchors, five cannon, and some granite ballast from an old ship on Ritchie Reef, a little way to the northeast of the Monte Bellos. These were identified as coming from the Tryall. Recovery of the majority of the artifacts was rendered impossible by appalling local conditions, and more recently it has been suggested that the materials that were salvaged may not be consistent with an English East Indiaman of the 1620s. Green, Australia’s Oldest Shipwreck, pp. 1, 16–7, 21, 48–51; Graeme Henderson, Maritime Archaeology in Australia (Nedlands, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 1986), pp. 20–1; J. A. Henderson, Phantoms of the Tryall (Perth: St. George Books, 1993), pp. 24–45, 76–92; Estensen, pp. 140–1.
Latitude The sun was shot with one of a variety of navigational instruments carried by East Indiamen—astrolabes, cross-staffs and back-staffs. A VOC equipment list of 1655 suggests that a wide variety of instruments would have been carried for the use of the skipper and the upper steersman. The manifest includes three round astrolabes, two semicircular astrolabes, a pair of astrolabe catholicum (the “universal astrolabe,” used for solving problems of spherical geometry), a dozen pairs of compasses, four Jacob’s Staffs, four Davis’s quadrants and many charts and manuals.
The astrolabe, which was perfected by the Portuguese, was the most primitive of the three principal navigational tools. The Batavia carried at least four—the number that have been recovered from the wreck site. Almost certainly Ariaen Jacobsz would have taken another with him in the longboat for his voyage to Java. Green, The Loss of the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie Retourschip Batavia, p. 83.
Navigational problems The skipper of an East Indiaman was primarily responsible for navigation, but as a document dated 1703