The Story of the Gilt Dragon 02/01/2010
 The Batavia wasn’t the only Dutch VOC ship to be wrecked on the West Australian coast. In all, four wreck sites have been found and a fifth ship is assumed to have met its fate on the Abrolhos. Not bad, that; of the five wrecks, three ships hit the Abrolhos. Every one of those wrecks has an intriguing story attached. Maybe not so blood-thirsty as the Batavia but fascinating, nonetheless. The Batavia sank in 1629. The next VOC ship to be lost was the Vergulde Draeck (Gilt Dragon) which sank in 1656 just north of Perth, capital of Western Australia. Seventy five survivors reached the shores of Australia in a boat. The ship’s captain sent the under steersman Abraham Leeman and six other men, in the ship’s boat to Batavia to seek help, while the rest remained on the continent. Once again showing the remarkable endurance and courage of these early sailors, the boat reached Batavia six weeks later. The governor (by then van Diemen) sent out two ships to search for the wreck and rescue the survivors. The expedition only compounded the disaster. Three of the men landed on the Southland to search became lost in the scrub and were never seen again; a longboat carrying eight men was smashed in the surf with no survivors. No sign was found of the sixty eight folk from the Vergulde Draeck. Van Diemen hadn’t given up. In 1658 other boats sailed along the coast both searching for survivors and mapping this unknown continent. Traces were found of the folk from the Vergulde Draeck on the beach in the vicinity of the wreck and some ships claimed to have seen signs of cultivated crops. During one such foray along the South Land, that same Abraham Leeman and a crew of thirteen men became stranded in a violent storm on one of the islands scattered not far off shore along the WA coast. The ship they’d been on, the Waeckende Boei, sailed off without them. They had been marooned. So Leeman did the trip again. Yes, that’s right. He sailed up along the coast and across the sea to Java in a small boat. This time, the trip took three weeks. Truly a most remarkable man. What happened to the survivors of the Vergulde Draeck remains a mystery. CommentsM.M. Bennetts Tue, 02 Feb 2010 12:27:52 am Whoa! It's such a remarkable story and so revealing--their devotion to finding their fellowmen in such impossible circumstances and with only the crudest of technology to help them, but also their conviction that they could master these wholly unyielding elements, the ocean and this unknown land. We send our chaps into space--but they have every provision we can think to send with them. These men had open boats, a rudder, some oars and a compass. As we say hereabouts over stories like this: "We don't know we've been born..." M Howard Morgan Tue, 02 Feb 2010 7:52:00 am Probably as long as I remember - and there are many years to reflect back over - I have been absorbed by stories of maritime courage, endurance, skill and sheer bloody-mindedness by mariners through the ages. As MMB has mentioned, the 'technology' of the time was crude in the extreme, yet these men found their way. The Dutch led that way across the oceans (although we now know the Chinese did far more than we ever knew) and carved routes across the globe for others to follow. An excellent tale, G and I commend your commitment to research of this interesting period. Sat, 06 Feb 2010 5:44:16 am Fascinating that, despite the perils of sea travel, so many still attempted it. Leave a Reply |
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