'Vergulde Draeck' (Gilt Dragon) Shipwreck
Built in 1653 by the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), the Vergulde Draeck was a 260-tonne, 42-metre 'jacht'. On 4 October 1655 the Vergulde Draeck sailed from Texel in the Netherlands on only her second voyage, bound for the East Indies (now Indonesia). She was carrying, apart from passengers and crew, cargo, trade goods and silver coins worth 185,000 guilders. She reached the Cape of Good Hope on 9 March 1656 and four days later set sail for Batavia. She never reached her destination.
Having adopted the Brouwer route, ie. followed the Roaring Forties east from the Cape, but obviously miscalculating his easting and possibly the latitude, Captain Pieter Albertszoon drove her onto a reef off the western coast of the Southland between the present day towns of Seabird and Ledge Point in Western Australia on 28 April 1656.
On board was a crew of 193 and eight chests of silver coin to be used in the purchase of spices. On striking the reef the Vergulde Draeck burst open and only a few provisions were saved. When the 75 survivors had gathered ashore Albertszoon decided to send a party of sailors to Batavia, in the one schuyt (small boat) which had been saved from the wreck, to report the tragedy and ask for a rescue vessel to be sent. Albertszoon decided to stay with the survivors and to appoint his under steersman (second officer) Abraham Leeman to lead the party of seven. He was probably influenced in his decision by the events following the wrecking of the Batavia on the Abrolhos Islands some 27 years earlier. On that occasion senior officers abandoned the survivors to sail to Batavia, leaving many survivors to be killed by mutineers.
In a truly epic journey, Leeman and his crew reached Batavia on 7 June 1656 - 6 weeks later. A most remarkable and impressive feat of seamanship and endurance!
Vergulde Draeck Wreck Site Artefacts found on adjacent coastRescue Attempts
Almost immediately after hearing the news of the wrecking from Abraham Leeman, the Commander of the Council of the VOC dispatched the yacht Goede Hope and the flute Witte Valk to the Southland to search for the wreck and survivors. Both ships failed miserably. The Witte Valk could not approach land due to furious storms and rough seas. The Goede Hoop was more persistent and managed to land a search party at the appropriate latitude. Three members of the party got lost in the bush whilst going inland and were never seen again. Subsequently, a longboat with 8 searchers was smashed on inshore reefs by pounding surf and were also never seen again. The Goede Hoop returned to Batavia soon after this event leaving the 11 men, possibly stranded and marooned, having found no trace of the Vergulde Draeck or its survivors. She reached Batavia on 14 October 1656.In April 1657 another vessel, the flute Vink, sailed from the Cape to Batavia with instructions to call at the Southland and search for survivors. Once again there was no success, primarily due to bad weather and high seas. The Vink reached Batavia on 27 June 1657. The experiences of the rescue ships with inclement weather along the coast of the Southland, convinced Governor-General Maetsuijker in Batavia, that June and July were not the best months for rescue missions. Still concerned about the fate of the survivors, the next expedition was mounted during the summer.
On New Year's Day 1658 the fluit Waeckende Boei and the galjoort Emmeloort, under the command of Captains Samuel Volkersen and Aucke Pieters Jonck respectively, left Batavia in search of survivors of the Vergulde Draeck and the lost 11 crew from the Goede Hoop. They were instructed to rescue survivors and to salvage as much merchandise - especially coins - as possible and to chart the coast carefully. Furthermore, they were to find out if the land was inhabited and, if so, to try and establish trade with the inhabitants. They were also instructed to take formal possession of all the places they discovered.
Volkerson and Jonck were unequal to the task. Not long into the voyage Volkerson complained that the Emmeloort was too slow and he was having difficulty keeping the vessels together. On February 14 they separated and acted independently although they met up on several occasions on the coast of the Southland.
The Emmeloort sighted the Southland on 24 February 1658 at 33° 12' S - at about Bunbury - and then sailed north charting the coast. On March 8 at about 30° 25' S fires were seen on the shore. Next day a boat was sent ashore late in the day to discover that the fires had been extinguished. Next day another search party was dispatched and they met up with a group of aborigines who had been responsible for the fires. The party also reported seeing crops of grain growing and land under cultivation.
Sailing north they reached Rottnest Island on 19th March 1658. Abraham Leeman van Santwits, who was now the Waeckende Boei's first officer and navigator, led a party of 13 ashore in the ship's boat, whilst the Emmeloort was careened (removal of barnicles etc). Moving on, Captain Volkerson sighted the Southland at 31° 40' S (near present-day Two Rocks) on 23 February 1658 and made further landings at 31° 14' S and 30° 40' S but no wreckage was sighted. After fifteen days of bad weather the search had proved relatively fruitless. Captain Volkerson and the Emeloordt turned around and headed back to Batavia.
A few days later, Leeman and 12 sailors came ashore in the vicinity of Wanneroo Beach where they found wreckage from the Vergulde Draeck but no sign of survivors. On their return to the Waeckende Boey in the afternoon, the weather, by Leeman's account, was blowing a strong wind with a 'terribly high sea'. The captain, by now stressed and frustrated, called Leeman a coward for returning and sent the small boat back out to resume the search. It was a fateful decision. As it turned out, Leeman was right and that night the weather was so bad he could not land the small boat.
While Leeman managed to land the next morning, the foul weather prevented the small boat from returning to the Wackende Boey. Over the next seven days, the ship was apparently unable to locate the landing party on the shore. The captain would later claim he looked for as long as was viable, while Leeman would claim the captain ignored their signal fires. Either way, the outcome was the same. Leeman and his crew - by now dehydrated, hungry and desolate - were left stranded by the Waeckende Boey, which sailed back to Batavia without them.
Leeman knew what needed to be done - after all, he'd already done it before, two years earlier! The resources available to him were dire and his men had given up all hope of survival, Leeman managed to patch up their damaged boat, gather up their supplies that had been washed up on the beach and headed off in the open boat for Batavia. Towards the end of April, three of the men on Leeman s boat died in great pain and distress. The remaining crew became too weak even to hoist a sail, yet Leeman had to constantly force them to keep bailing as the small boat disintegrated around them. Upon reaching Batavia on 23rd September 1658, that there were even four men still alive after such an ordeal at sea and over land was remarkable, and a testament to the extraordinary leader Abraham Leeman had proved himself to be.
When Leeman finally reached Batavia and reported his experience to the Governor-General and his councillors, they decided not to mount anymore expeditions to search for the survivors of the Vergulde Draeck. Meanwhile, 68 people had to survive in this foreign land. What happened to them remains a mystery to this day.
Today there is a small town named in Abraham Leeman's honour on the Western Australian coast near the Green Islands, where the marooned crew first realised their fate. A memorial at Two Rocks honour Leeman and his great achievement.
What Became of the Survivors?
A range of objects and features have turned up over time, providing tantalising clues regarding their fate. For example, an upright with planks around it was encountered by searchers near the Vergulde Draeck wreck site in 1658. Unexplained uprights and poles were chanced upon in the mid-19th century at three points along the coast, and a spectacular incense urn was handed over to the New Norcia Mission in 1846 by some indigenous people who had found it at a well about 20 kilometres south of where the Vergulde Draeck was wrecked. A curious Circle of Stones with one or two radiating lines, first seen in 1875 in very inhospitable country to the north of the Vergulde Draeck site, is thought to possibly be associated with the survivors.That the sailors were present for an extended period on the coast of Western Australia and had had interaction with Aboriginal groups appears to have entered indigenous oral traditions or become the stuff of legends and mythology. An example, and not the only one, recorded during the early years of British colonisation and referencing all the Aboriginal tribes from the Moore River to Shark's Bay, referred to "two tribes living on the banks of a large river, one (black) ... and the other (whites) residing on the opposite shores.
"For many years the two tribes were on amicable terms until ... a change in the sentiments of the northmen [whites] took place. ... [and] these northmen refused to hold any intercourse with their southern [black] neighbours ... ...one day it began to rain, and poured incessantly for many months, and the river overflowing its banks the blacks were forced to retire ... The flood was long in ebbing ... and thus is was long before they regained their old hunting grounds ......[but] to their astonishment ...in place of a fordable river they had left ...the impassable sea rolled to the north of them, and their late haughty neighbours had entirely disappeared".
Photo: WA Museum
Finding the Wrecksite
When the secluded and pretty little township at the mouth of the Moore River was finally formally gazetted in 1951, the historian Henrietta Drake-Brockman recommended that it be named Guilderton in honour of the 'Gilt Dragon' and the thousands of guilders worth of silver coins it was carrying. While the wreck had not yet been discovered, there was already speculation that it was somewhere in the vicinity, as in 1931 a young boy who was playing in some sandhills uncovered about 40 Dutch coins. They were all dated between 1619 and 1655, indicating that they could have been from the Vergulde Draeck, given that it was wrecked in 1656. Another thirty-two years went by before the wreck was found.The wreck was found was on 14 April 1963. Its discovery was widely reported upon and generated genuine excitement. While it was known that five VOC and English East India Company vessels had come to grief along the Western Australian coast during the 17th and 18th centuries, none of these wrecks had previously been located.
Photo: WA Museum
The discovery of the Vergulde Draeck and the other significant pre-colonial wrecks was the catalyst for the development of maritime archaeology in Western Australia. One of the discoverers of the Vergulde Draeck, Graeme Henderson became the director of the WA Maritime Museum, a globally acknowledged centre of excellence in maritime archaeology. Now retired, Mr Henderson fondly remembered diving on the wreck in the weeks after the discovery. "We were picking up brass candlesticks, jugs and elephant tusks, all sorts of exotic things," he said.
It was an experience Mr Henderson largely credits with inspiring his passion for history, which in turn drove a career that has been littered with awards and prestigious appointments, including tenures as senior curator and director of the WA Maritime Museum.
Photo: WA Museum
On the day of discovery, 15-year old Graeme Henderson, his father Jim (a reporter with the Daily News who later wrote articles on the find), Graeme's older brother Alan, and family friend John Cowen, wrested an elephant tusk from the deep and onto their boat, where another diver - refrigerator salesman Alan Robinson - who had claimed to have found the wreck in August 1957, but in a different location, was not present. Robinson had not been able to locate the wreck again.
Once silver coins began to be brought up, Robinson claimed the wreck as his own. He set up camp on the beach and later, using gelignite, blasted away at the wreck to plunder its treasure. According to Mr Henderson, one day when he was diving on the wreck, Robinson set off an explosive that could have killed him if it had been closer. Shortly after, Robinson allegedly attacked Jim Henderson while he was in the water, punching him and screaming, "it's mine, all mine".
"He was trying to tell us, in no uncertain terms, that from that point on the wreck belonged to him," Mr Henderson said. "During the late 60s and 70s there was a great deal of lawlessness in the area of shipwrecks, Alan Robinson being the main pirate. I'd been diving with him (Mr Robinson) before that," Mr Henderson said. "He seemed like a reasonable chap. He probably was a reasonable chap, until the treasure blinded him to everything else."
This, the first discovery in Australian waters of a 17th-century wreck and its treasure sparked heated debate about who was entitled to reap the riches from sunken ships. With extensive looting of the wreck site taking place, often involving the use of explosives, State legislation (the Museum Amendment Act 1964) was quickly enacted to protect it and other historic wreck sites, including that of the Batavia (1629) which was discovered several months later.
The legislation deemed these wrecks to be archaeological sites; it was later revised and expanded under the Maritime Archaeology Act 1973, followed by the Commonwealth in 1976. A parliamentary select committee later credited the discovery of the Vergulde Draeck to the Henderson family and Mr Cowan, in stark contrast to claims made by Alan Robinson. The controversial treasure hunter was never far from a courtroom in the decades after. In 1983, he was found hanged by his bed sheet in Sydney's notorious Long Bay Jail while facing charges of allegedly conspiring to kill a former lover.
Photo: WA Museum
Wrecksite Excavation
The Western Australian Museum has undertaken extensive excavation work at the Vergulde Draeck site and has painstakingly removed and conserved a wide range of material. The collection includes African elephant tusks, ballast bricks, beardman jugs, ceramic masks and medallions, clay tobacco pipes, bronze and brass utensils, various tools, glass bottles, an astrolabe and many silver coins. Many of these artifacts are on display at the Western Australian Museum Fremantle Shipwreck Galleries.