31-538: 28°54′30″S 113°49′0″E / 28.90833°S 113.81667°E / -28.90833; 113.81667 The Zeewijk (or Zeewyk ) was an 18th-century East Indiaman of the Dutch East India Company ( Dutch : Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie , commonly abbreviated to VOC) that was shipwrecked at the Houtman Abrolhos , off the coast of Western Australia , on 9 June 1727. The survivors built
62-499: A Blackwall Frigate was built for the trade as the need to carry heavy armaments declined. East Indiamen vessels carried both passengers and goods, and were armed to defend themselves against pirates. Initially, the East Indiamen were built to carry as much cargo as possible, rather than for speed of sailing. The British East India Company had a monopoly on trade with India and China , supporting that design. East Indiamen were
93-708: A 3D model of the ship and observe the crew's activities. Empire: Total War features Indiaman as the primary Trading Ship for the European, Indian as well as the United States faction in game. Players move one or several of these ships to "trade nodes" in West or East Africa , Brazil or the East Indies to gain significant trade profit. [REDACTED] Media related to East Indiamen at Wikimedia Commons Leendert Hasenbosch Too Many Requests If you report this error to
124-567: A cannon on the leeward side of the Half Moon Reef. After an elephant tusk found two years earlier put him on the trail, in March 1968 journalist and diver Hugh Edwards led divers Max Cramer, Neil McLaghlan and Museum staff Harry Bingham and Dr Colin Jack-Hinton to the seaward side of the reef to find the main wreck site. The Western Australian Museum subsequently conducted several expeditions to survey
155-689: A second ship, the Sloepie , enabling 82 out of the initial crew of 208 to reach their initial destination of Batavia on 30 April 1728. Since the 19th century many objects have been found near the wreck site, which are now in the Western Australian Museum . The shipwreck itself was found in 1968 by divers. The Zeewijk was built in 1725 with a tonnage of 140 lasten, that is 275.8 tonnes (271.4 long tons; 304.0 short tons), and dimensions 145 feet (44 m) long by 36 feet (11 m) wide. It carried 36 iron and bronze guns, and 6 swivel guns. A new ship of
186-481: A vessel to carry them to Batavia; the Sloepie . On 7 November, the keel of the Sloepie was laid down. Utilising materials from the wrecked Zeewijk (including two swivel mounted cannon to protect the treasure from pirates) and local mangrove timber she became a 20 m (66 ft) long by 6 m (20 ft) wide sloop , resembling a North Sea fishing vessel. Constructed in 4 months and launched on 28 February 1728,
217-601: The Austrian , Danish , Dutch , British , French , Portuguese or Swedish East India companies . Some of the East Indiamen chartered by the British East India Company (EIC) were known as clippers . The EIC held a monopoly granted to it by Elizabeth I in 1600 for all English trade between the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn . This grant was progressively restricted during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, until
248-485: The Battle of Pulo Aura . Due to the need to carry heavy cannon, the hull of the East Indiamen – in common with most warships of the time – was much wider at the waterline than at the upper deck, so that guns carried on the upper deck were closer to the centre-line to aid stability. This is known as tumblehome . The ships normally had two complete decks for accommodation within the hull and a raised poop deck . The poop deck and
279-559: The Brouwer Route to cross from the Cape to Batavia, enjoying the prevailing westerlies by travelling eastwards until turning north. Turning north too late from a miscalculation in the longitude risked being wrecked on the coast or reefs of Australia. However, wishing to call into Western Australia, skipper Jan Steyns ignored VOC directorate and protests from his steersman and headed east-northeast . In darkness at 7:30 p.m. on 9 June 1727
310-646: The Sloepie was the first ever European ship built in Australia. On 26 March, 88 men set off on the one-month journey to Batavia. Six died on the way, leaving 82 of the initial 208 to arrive in Batavia on 30 April 1728. Batavia's High Court of Justice prosecuted skipper Jan Steyns for losing the Zeewijk and falsifying the ship's records. He lost his position, and salary and property to the VOC. In 1840 HMS Beagle found relics at
341-572: The British, along with other ships, including warships. Notable among them were Surat Castle (1791), a 1,000-ton (bm) ship with a crew of 150, Lowjee Family , of 800 tons (bm) and a crew of 125, and Shampinder (1802), of 1,300 tons (bm). Another significant East Indiaman in this period was the 1176-ton (bm) Warley that John Perry built at his Blackwall Yard in 1788, and which the Royal Navy bought in 1795 and renamed HMS Calcutta . In 1803 she
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#1732869212665372-664: The Broadhurst and McNeil phosphate company, catalogued the finds, initially thinking they were from the VOC ship Batavia and ended up donating most to the Western Australian Museum in Perth. In 1952, during a visit to Geraldton, Lieutenant Commander M.R. Bromell of the Royal Australian Navy learned that rock lobster fisherman Bill Newbold had found a cannon on the sea-bed, and during a subsequent visit, Bromell located
403-549: The Zeeland Chamber of the VOC, her maiden voyage was from Vlissingen (Netherlands) to Batavia (now Jakarta , Indonesia) departing in November 1726. Upon departure 208 seamen and soldiers were aboard, as well as a cargo of general building supplies and 315,836 guilders in 10 chests. Jan Steyns from Middelburg was the skipper, in his first command, replacing Jan Bogaard who was too sick to sail. The VOC required ships to utilise
434-517: The Zeewijk . Pettifer describes the incident as "the beginning of Australia's European queer history". In a similar case two years earlier, Dutch East India Company sailor Leendert Hasenbosch was marooned on Ascension Island in the Atlantic for sodomy, and is presumed to have died of thirst, though his diary was recovered. On 29 October 1727 the ship's log mentions the intentions of the crew to construct
465-543: The camp site, including a VOC cannon and two coins dated 1707 and 1720 which helped to confirm that the site belonged to the Zeewijk . They named the Zeewyk Channel after the wreck. In the 1880s and 1890s a large amount of material was recovered during guano mining. Items including bottles, coins, wine glasses, jars, pots, spoons, knives, musket and cannonballs, tobacco and pipes were found. Florance Broadhurst, son of entrepreneur Charles Edward Broadhurst and director of
496-512: The confusion for military ships seeking merchant ships as prizes of war. In some cases the East Indiamen successfully fought off attacks by the French. One of the most celebrated of these incidents occurred in 1804, when a fleet of East Indiamen and other merchant vessels under Commodore Nathaniel Dance successfully fought off a marauding squadron commanded by Admiral Linois in the Indian Ocean in
527-411: The critical commodity of fresh water was available, as well as vegetables, birds and seals that were combined with the ship's goods to sustain the survivors. While the Zeewijk did not break up immediately and goods, including the treasure chests, were transferred to Gun Island, it was obvious to the crew that the ship could never be floated from its position locked into the reef. A rescue group of 11 of
558-403: The deck below it were lit with square-windowed galleries at the stern. To support the weight of the galleries, the hull lines towards the stern were full. Later ships built without this feature tended to sail faster, which put the East Indiamen at a commercial disadvantage once the need for heavy armament passed. According to historian Fernand Braudel , some of the finest and largest Indiamen of
589-588: The desire to build such large armed ships for commercial use waned, and during the late 1830s a smaller, faster ship known as a Blackwall Frigate was built for the premium end of the India and China trades. The last of the East Indiamen was reputed to be the Java (1813–1939) that became a coal hulk, then was broken up. A ship named Lalla Rookh , involved in an incident in November 1850 off Worthing , West Sussex , in which many local men died after their rescue boat capsized,
620-440: The fittest survivors and First Mate Pieter Langeweg set off for Batavia in the longboat on 10 July, but were never heard of again. On 1 December 1727 three of the ship's company reported to the captain that they had found two of the ship's boys, Adriaan Spoor from Sint-Maartensdijk and Pieter Engelse from Ghent , "engaged in the gruesome play of Sodom and Gomorrah " together the previous afternoon. After an unsuccessful attempt
651-636: The largest merchant ships regularly built during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, generally measuring between 1100 and 1400 tons burthen (bm) . Two of the largest were the Earl of Mansfield and Lascelles being built at Deptford in 1795. The Royal Navy purchased both, converted them to 56-gun fourth rates , and renamed them Weymouth and Madras respectively. They measured 1426 tons (bm) on dimensions of approximately 175 feet overall length of hull, 144 feet keel, 43 feet beam, 17 feet draft. In England, Queen Elizabeth I granted an exclusive right to
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#1732869212665682-472: The late 18th and early 19th centuries were built in India, making use of Indian shipbuilding techniques and crewed by Indians, their hulls of Indian teak being especially suitable for local waters. These ships were used for the China run. Until the coming of steamships, these Indian-built ships were relied upon almost exclusively by the British in the eastern seas. Many hundreds of Indian-built Indiamen were built for
713-469: The monopoly was lost in 1834. EIC East Indiamen usually ran between Britain, the Cape of Good Hope and India, where their primary destinations were the ports of Bombay , Madras and Calcutta . EIC East Indiamen often continued on to China before returning to England via the Cape of Good Hope and Saint Helena . When the EIC lost its monopoly, the ships of this design were sold off. A smaller, faster ship known as
744-401: The sea. Heavy sea conditions saw at least 10 men drown at the first attempt to launch a boat. After one week a long boat was launched. Later, most of the remaining crew was ferried on the long boat to what would be later known as Gun Island ; a flat, rocky, 800 by 350 m (2,620 by 1,150 ft) limestone island located 4 km (2.5 mi) off the reef. From Gun and surrounding islands,
775-460: The ship crashed heavily into Half Moon Reef on the western edge of the Pelsaert Group of the Houtman Abrolhos island group, 60 km (37 mi) west of the future site of Geraldton . The impact dislodged the rudder and snapped off the mainmast, but the ship did not break up immediately. The lookout spotted breakers half an hour before the impact but dismissed them as moonlight reflecting off
806-490: The site and to recover artefacts, the most notable in 1976 by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg, who also completed a catalogue of all the finds from the site. East Indiaman East Indiaman was a general name for any merchant ship operating under charter or licence to any of the East India companies of the major European trading powers of the 17th through the 19th centuries. The term is used to refer to vessels belonging to
837-777: The trade to the East India Company in 1600, a monopoly which lasted until 1834. The company grew to encompass more than the trade between England and India, but the ships described in this article are the type used in the 17th to the early 19th centuries to carry the trade. During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars , East Indiamen were often painted to resemble warships; an attacker could not be sure if gunports were real or merely paint, and some Indiamen carried sizable armaments. The Royal Navy acquired several East Indiamen, turning them into fourth rates (e.g., HMS Weymouth and HMS Madras , described above), maintaining
868-463: Was described as an East Indiaman bringing sugar and rum from Pernambuco , Brazil. Several East Indiamen have been reconstructed in recent decades. Some of these are (semi) permanently moored and can be visited as part of a museum collection. The 2018 video game Return of the Obra Dinn features an East Indiaman as the fictional title vessel, with gameplay requiring players to thoroughly explore
899-575: Was employed as a transport to establish a settlement at Port Phillip in Australia, later shifted to the site of current-day Hobart , Tasmania by an accompanying ship, the Ocean . French forces captured Calcutta in 1805 off the Isles of Scilly . She grounded at the Battle of the Basque Roads in 1809, and was burned by a British boarding party after her French crew had abandoned her. The 1200-ton (bm) Arniston
930-522: Was likewise employed by the Royal Navy as a troop transport between England and Ceylon . In 1815, she was wrecked near Cape Agulhas with the loss of 372 lives after a navigation error that was caused by inaccurate dead reckoning and the lack of a marine chronometer with which to calculate her longitude . With the progressive restriction of the monopoly of the British East India Company
961-506: Was made to elicit a confession from the two by putting burning fuses between their fingers, the captain and his council found the boys guilty of having committed sodomy together. They were sentenced to death and marooned, each boy on a separate island, on 2 December. This event was commemorated by a 2020 exhibition and publication by artist Drew Pettifer at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery , entitled A Sorrowful Act: The Wreck of