• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 348 0

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,