350th Anniversary Commemoration of the 

Vergulde Draeck shipwreck.

Shipwreck's Plinth at Seabird

Joan Ward

Marie Taylor

Tom Vanderveldt

George Gifford

A portion of the assembled crowd

Plaque inscription.

Click on image to see an enlargement.

Photographs courtesy of Earle Seubert.

On Saturday 29 April 2006, exactly 350 years after the Vergulde Draeck shipwrecked off Western Australia’s coast, the VOC Historical Society, in conjunction with the Gingin Shire Council and the Seabird Progress Association, commemorated the incident in the coastal town of Seabird. The highlight of the ceremony was the unveiling of a plaque in memory of those that died and those that were marooned in New Holland to survive as best they could in pre-colonial Western Australia.

The commemoration took place at the Shipwreck’s Plinth in the town of Seabird - a small community three kilometres south of Eagle’s Nest. The memorial looks out over ocean and the reef where the Vergulde Draeck – also known as the Gilt Dragon – was wrecked.

Joan Ward, a Society committee member and resident of Seabird, opened the official ceremony as MC. She was the Society’s liaison officer on the project and mainly responsible for its success.

Marie Taylor, on behalf of the Nyungar community, welcomed us all to their land speaking in both English and their traditional language. She teaches Nyungar Cultural Studies at Murdoch University and Kulbardi Aboriginal Centre. She ended her talk with a blessing and the words: I am, You are, We are Australians!

Tom Vanderveldt, the Society’s President, outlined the role and objectives of the VOC Historical Society. He spoke about the plight of the survivors as they tried to live in this, for them, completely foreign land.

The President of the Shire of Gingin, George Gifford, emphasized the importance of the occasion, the need to maintain our cultural heritage and then unveiled the plaque.

The commemoration remembered the occasion when the Vergulde Draeck ran onto a reef about 100 kilometres north of Perth, Western Australia on the night of 28 April 1656, 350 years ago.

The Dutch ship, belonging to the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) or United East Indies Company in the Netherlands, had 193 crew and passengers on board. She was also carrying cargo, trade goods and silver coins worth 185,000 guilders. Only 75 people made it on to the shore of the mainland at a place now known as Eagle’s Nest.

The ship’s Captain, Pieter Albertszoon, was amongst the survivors. He decided to stay with them and to appoint his understeersman (second officer) to lead a party of 7 to Batavia to report the tragedy and ask for a rescue vessel to be sent He was probably influenced in his decision, to stay behind, by the events following the wrecking of the Batavia on the Abrolhos Islands some 27 years earlier. On that occasion senior officers, including the Captain, abandoned the survivors to sail to Batavia, leaving many survivors to be killed by mutineers.

On 7 June 1656 the understeersman arrived  in Batavia, having sailed a small boat which had been saved from the wreck,  and reported the loss of the Vergulde Draeck  to the Commander of the Council of the VOC. Over several months and years several ships were sent out by the VOC Council to look for survivors. They and their treasure were never found.

There were about 60 people present at the commemoration and the consensus was that of a moving experience and an important one in recognizing our maritime cultural past. Comment was made that much more could be done to highlight this era and to promote it to visitors and tourists. Much enthusiasm was expressed to explore this notion further.

Talk also speculated on the fate of the survivors. Would they have survived any length of time in this strange environment?

It was agreed that it was fair to assume that, as a matter of survival, this large group of reluctant settlers would have tried to mix in with the local population.

It was hypothesized that the natives most probably would have regarded the white people as the spirits of their ancestors who had returned from the Spirit World across the sea and that this would have been a bonus surprise for the survivors of the Vergulde Draeck., one that, hopefully, allowed for peaceful cohabitation to be established.

That this interaction in fact happened and has added to their gene pool is evidenced by reports of Aborigines with blond hair and blue eyes, a light skin tone, a European build, taller and more robust as reported by Daisy Bates, George Grey, A.C. Gregory, Mary Durack and Bishop Salvado.

It was suggested that further research should be pursued into this ancestry, as the technology was now available. Whilst indigenous people did not have a recorded history for the 200 years before settlement, these days it is possible to get an insight into one’s genealogy through DNA testing. There is little doubt that both the Aboriginals and the Dutch (and other Europeans) would acknowledge, even value, an ancestral link through those lost survivors.

Attendees expressed dismay that such anthropological research had not been undertaken to date to any great extent. Hopefully a commemoration such as this will encourage more interest in this part of Australian history and stimulate research into this ancestral connection.

A movie of the commemoration has been made. See it below.