Under the bustling waters of the southern Australian coast, marine archaeologists claim to have discovered lost Dutch merchant ship Koning Willem from Tweeda, who w scroured almost 170 years ago. The wreck captures a tragic moment of maritime history during the 19th century Australian gold race.
The 800 -ton sailboat was starting his trip back to the Netherlands in June 1857 when a strong storm became the vessel near the port city of Robe, according to a statement from the Australian National Maritime Museum. Two thirds of the crew drowned.
Days earlier, 400 Chinese migrants to Victoria’s gold mines landed from the ship. The crew transported workers as a “parallel activity” to make extra money, according to James Hunter, interim manager of maritime archeology of the museum. The practice was common but legally questionable at the time, he said.
While the captain survived to tell the story and litigate his losses, the bodies of his crew remain lost in the Long Beach sand dunes. However, on March 10, after three years of searches for the wreck site, a team of divers supported by the Dutch Foreign Ministry and the Netherlands Cultural Heritage Agency spotted what they claim to be the wreck vessel.
“There is always a little luck in what we do,” said Hunter, who was the first diver to see the submerged ship. “The sand had discovered only a small piece of wreck so we could see it and really put our hand on it and say” we finally find it. “
The expedition team claims to be confident of having found Tweed’s Koning Willem based on its location, which corresponds to the historical reports of the wreck, and the length of the detected metal parts, which corresponds to the documented length of the 140 -foot (43 meters) ship. Pieces of nineteenth -century Chinese ceramics were also found in 2023 at the beach near the wreck site.
“The ships were important and expensive, so they were often well documented,” said Patrick Morrison, a maritime archaeologist at the University of Western Australia, who was not involved in the discovery. “So when material is found, it can be compared to reports of ship wreck and construction such as size, materials and accessories.”
Now, the museum, which has partnered with the Silentworld Foundation, the Australia do Sul Environment and Water Department and the Flinders University in Adelaide, will seek, recover and preserve artifacts of wreckage that can reveal more details about 19th century naval construction, crew and its passengers.
A discovery anchored by history
Due to its long history as a global maritime trade center, Australia is an important point for wrecks, with about 8,000 ships and aircraft sunk near its back. Some of the ships date from 1700, when colonization began, according to the department of climate change, energy, environment and water of the Australian government.
The discovery of gold mines in Victoria caused a migration of Chinese workers in the 1850s, leading the government of Victoria to charge a rate of £ 10, which would now be worth more than $ 1,300, over each migrant entering its port, according to the Dutch-Australian cultural center.
To avoid this rate, agents in China often paid European merchant ships to transport migrants to other Australian ports, according to the Australian National Museum. Upon arrival, migrants were received with discriminatory treatment, and many were unsuccessful in the mines, still owing much of their gains to the agents.
Tweede’s Koning Willem should trade between the Netherlands and the Dutch Oriental Indies, a former colony that today is Indonesia. However, shortly before returning home, the crew caught the Chinese migrants from Hong Kong and left them in Robe, a community about 365 miles (400 kilometers) west of the main ports in Victoria, where migrants walked land to the gold mines, Hunter said. To date, it is unclear in police reports, crew reports and judicial records if this trip was authorized by the owner of the ship.
What is evident, however, is the historical dedication of Robe’s community to answer questions about the wreck and the lost crew, he added.
When giant waves fell to the ship, an Australian indigenous man on land tried to swim with a rope to the ship to save the captain, but could not overcome the strength of the waves, Hunter reported. “Then the captain wrapped a line in a small barrel, threw it into the water, and the residents who had gathered on the beach took the line and pulled it through the hangover, and he survived.”
If the bodies of the crew are recovered, Hunter said that the Robe community will probably create an appropriate place for burial. “The wrecks reveal the ancient maritime connections of Australia with the rest of the world, connections reflected in our cities today,” Morrison said. “I heard that the team plans to return. I’m sure each visit will reveal a new part of the story.”
What is left of the ship?
It is still early to say, but Hunter stated that most of the ship’s hull structure seems to be intact under sand layers. Using metal detectors and magnetometers, the team was able to locate large pieces of steel and iron that projected from the bottom of the sea, which turned out to be parts of the structure and the reel, the machine used to collect the anchor. Long wooden boards, which are believed to be the top deck of the ship, are close, Hunter said.
“(The hull) could teach us a lot about how these ships were built and projected, because this kind of information is scarce in historical records,” said Hunter. Since Tweede’s Koning Willem sank hundreds of meters from the coast, the crew could not return to recover their personal belongings, so it is possible for researchers to find coins, bottles, broken ceramics, weapons and tools, according to Hunter.
The recovered wreck items should be carefully removed so that they do not immediately disintegrate when reaching the surface, said Heather Berry, a maritime conservative Silentworld Foundation in an email. “As always, wrecks rarely occur in calm waters,” said Berry. “The hangover on site is so strong that you often need to hold on to something sturdy so as not to be taken by the current, so we need to ensure that we do not accidentally grab in something fragile.”
Recovered artifacts are placed in seawater containers that are then gradually desalinated to reduce the corrosive effects of salt during drying.
This content was originally published on a wrecked Dutch ship 170 years ago is found on the Australian coast on CNN Brazil.
Source: CNN Brasil
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