Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [234]
Lort Stokes John Lort Stokes entered the Royal Navy in 1826 and served in South American waters, joining Darwin’s Beagle as a midshipman, and rising to command the ship from 1841 to 1843 (this was after the naturalist had left her). In addition to his work in the Abrolhos, Stokes conducted the first survey of New Zealand since Cook’s day, and was the author of Discoveries in Australia 1837–1843. Despite a lifetime in the hydrographical service, he was passed over for the position of Hydrographer of the Navy in 1863 in favor of Captain (later Vice Admiral Sir) George Richards, the pioneer oceanographer. See G. S. Ritchie, The Admiralty Chart: British Naval Hydrography in the Nineteenth Century (London: Hollis & Carter, 1967), pp. 180, 190, 307, 313.
Stokes in the Abrolhos Malcolm Uren, Sailormen’s Ghosts: the Abrolhos Islands in Three Hundred Years of Romance, History and Adventure (Melbourne: Robertson & Mullens, 1944), pp. 238–43; Drake-Brockman, op. cit., pp. 278–9. He conducted the survey under the orders of Commander John Wickham.
“. . . published by a Perth newspaper . . .” It appeared in the Christmas 1897 edition of the Perth Western Mail. The translation was by Willem Siebenhaar; it has since been reprinted by Philippe Godard as part of his The First and Last Voyage of the Batavia (Perth: Abrolhos Publishing, nd, c. 1993).
Gun island as Batavia’s Graveyard Uren, op. cit., pp. 244–5.
Identity of the wreckage The debris was described by the Zeewijk’s crew as noticeably old, while the Aagtekerke had vanished only the previous year and the Fortuyn three years earlier. This seems to make an identification with the Ridderschap van Holland, lost in 1694, at least possible. See also Graeme Henderson, Maritime Archaeology in Australia (Nedlands, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 1986), pp. 26–7.
Drake-Brockman and the Broadhurst collection Hugh Edwards, Islands of Angry Ghosts (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1966), pp. 93–5; The ANCODS Colloquium, pp. 106–7; Drake-Brockman, pp. xxi–xxii; 279n. The Broadhurst Collection is now in the Western Australian Maritime Museum, Fremantle. Henrietta Drake-Brockman was the author of a historical novel, The Wicked and the Fair (Sydney: Angus & Roberston, 1957), which was based on the Batavia’s story and identified present-day Goss Island as Batavia’s Graveyard. She died, in her mid-60s, in 1968.
“. . . an article published in 1955 . . .” Henrietta Drake-Brockman, “The Wreck of the Batavia,” Walkabout Magazine 21, no. 1 (1955).
The first artifacts Edwards, Islands of Angry Ghosts, pp. 98–101; The ANCODS Colloquium, pp. 107–8.
Discovery by Johnson and Cramer Edwards, Islands of Angry Ghosts, pp. 111–2, 116–7.
“The sea had dug a grave . . .” Ibid., pp. 134–5.
The Batavia artefacts Jeremy Green, The Loss of the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie Retourschip Batavia, Western Australia 1629: An Excavation Report and Catalogue of Artefacts (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1989), pp. 37, 45, 55–60, 83, 90–1, 95–6, 99–101, 178, 183–5, 197–200; Edwards, Islands of Angry Ghosts, pp. 149–51. The mortar bears the—in the circumstances ironic—inscription AMOR VINCIT OMNIA: “Love conquers all.”
Wiebbe Hayes’s dwellings Robert Bevacqua, “Archaeological Survey of Sites Relating to the Batavia Shipwreck,” Early Days Journal 7 (1974): 64–9; Jeremy Green and Myra Stanbury, “Even More Light on a Confusing Geographical Puzzle, Part 1: Wells, Cairns and Stone Structures on West Wallabi Island,” Underwater Explorers’ Club News (January 1982): 1–6; The ANCODS Colloquium, p. 10. There is considerable doubt that these structures are now as they would have been several hundred years ago. There is anecdotal evidence of extensive reconstruction, as well as general “tidying,” particularly by film crews filming reconstructions of the events of 1629.
The Batavia reconstruction The ship can be seen at the Bataviawerf in Lelystad, to the east of Amsterdam. Philippe Godard, The First and Last Voyage of the Batavia (Perth: Abrolhos Publishing, nd, c. 1993), pp. 246–73;