East India Company Ship Research Articles

The Unlucky Voyage: Batavia’s (1629) Landscape of Survival on the Houtman Abrolhos Islands in Western Australia

The loss of the Dutch East India Company ship Batavia in 1629 on the Houtman Abrolhos off the west coast of Australia and subsequent mutiny is one of the most dramatic events in the history of European encounters with Australia, and was widely popularized in 17th-century publications. The archaeological remains surpass that of a shipwreck with its consequent jetsam and flotsam, and are the silent witnesses to a cultural landscape of survival created within a few months by a horrible sequence of events. Here we present archaeological evidence collected from 2014 to 2019 in a new research project that informs on these historical events. We discovered 12 victims in single and multiple graves, as well as evidence for survivors’ resistance to a band of mutineers and remains of the possible gallows site where 7 mutineers were executed. Together these sites contribute to the understanding of the survival landscape at one of the earliest European sites in Australia.

An English East India Company Ship's Crew in a Connected Seventeenth-Century World

AbstractThis contribution to the forum Gender, Intimate Networks, and Global Commerce in the Early Modern Period follows the career of a single late seventeenth-century English East India Company ship and her crew, in order to challenge the claim that long-haul ships were isolated spaces. Specifically, it looks at the many kinds of connections —intimate and otherwise—that characterised early modern ships and their crews. These included connections between and among sailors themselves, between ships at sea, and between ships’ crews and the diverse communities from which they came.

New Light on the Survivors of the Vergulde Draak, a VOC Ship Wrecked on the Australian Coast (1656)

This article introduces a document from the Amsterdam City Archive which sheds new light on the fate of the Vergulde Draak, or Gilt Dragon, a United Dutch East India Company (VOC) ship wrecked off Australia’s west coast in 1656. The document identifies one of the survivors of the wreck who made it on to the shores of the Southland, Hendrick Driessen of Ratingen, and supplies information concerning his background, vocation, and activities both before and after the incident. It reveals previously unknown details of the Vergulde Draak’s voyage and its aftermath, and highlights the value of searching non-VOC archives for documentary sources concerning Australia’s early modern history.

The Zeewijk Story and the Missing Second Wreck

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) ship Zeewijk was wrecked on Half Moon Reef in the Pelsaert (southern) Group of the Houtman Abrolhos islands off the Western Australian coast in 1727. The survivors were able to land on a nearby island, where they eventually built a rescue boat and finally reached their intended destination of Batavia (modern Jakarta) nine months later. At the time of the wreck, the survivors reported evidence of another shipwreck in the area. This paper describes these chronological events, the archaeological investigations and surveys of the site; and it attempts to analyse the veracity of the evidence of a second wreck.

Searching for <i>Haarlem</i> (1647 CE):A Ship that Made History

In 1647 CE, the United Dutch East India Company (VOC) ship Haarlem wrecked in Table Bay. The events that followed had far-reaching consequences, and this incident can be regarded as the catalyst that laid the basis for the modern multi racial South Africa. Since 1989, a project is underway to search for Haarlem . The present article provides a brief overview of work undertaken to date. This has resulted in the location of a site that, based on currently available evidence, probably contains the wreck.

Mixed Company in the Contact Zone: the “Glocal” Diplomatic Efforts of a Prussian East Indiaman in 1750s Cape Verde

Abstract This article takes a micro-historical actor-centered approach to study the encounter between the officers of a Prussian East India Company Ship and local elites in 1750s Praia, Cape Verde. Combining recent advances in New Diplomatic History and in Company Studies with insights from the study of Contact Zones and transculturation, it analyzes the diplomatic strategies marginalized and hybrid players could adopt to project themselves onto the early modern global stage and locally counterbalance the hegemonic Northern European Atlantic powers. It thus proposes an alternative model of nonprofessional diplomatic interaction in the early modern period.

The Wreck of the Dutch East India Company Ship Haarlem in Table Bay, 1647, and the Establishment of the ‘Tavern of the Seas’

On Sunday 25 March 1647, shortly after five o’clock in the afternoon, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) ship Nieuw Haarlem or Haarlem was wrecked in Table Bay, off the coast of South Africa. The events that followed had far-reaching consequences for the history of South Africa. Fifty-eight of the crew were repatriated by accompanying ships soon after the incident, but 62 men were left behind to try and salvage as much of the cargo as possible. They found refuge in a makeshift camp, where they lived for about one year. During their stay, the men from Haarlem came into contact with indigenous people. Although initially marked by apprehension and reservation, these contacts improved after some time. This led to regular bartering, visits to each other's abodes, basic exchange of language and appreciation of each other's cultures. Upon returning to the Netherlands, the men reported favourably of their experiences. As a result, VOC management decided to establish a much-needed stopover for their ships. This station, known as the ‘Tavern of the Seas’, later developed into the city of Cape Town. The wrecking of Haarlem can thus be regarded as the catalyst that created one of the roots of current multiracial and multicultural South African society.

‘& thus ended the buisinisse’: A buggery trial on the East India Company ship Mary in 1636

Not much archival information survives about buggery trials at sea in the seventeenth century. A trial aboard the East India Company's ship, the Mary, at Surat in 1636 is an exception and is well documented. This article provides a detailed account of the trial, placing it within the broader contexts of naval discipline, the judicial powers devolved to the East India Company by the monarch and, more generally, the question of same-sex relations both at sea and on land in seventeenth-century England.

Laurent Garcin, M.D. F.R.S.: A Forgotten Source for N. L. Burman'sFlora indica(1768)

Abstract. Laurent Garcin (ca. 1681–1751), a Dutch East India Company ship's surgeon, Fellow of the Royal Society and corresponding member of the Academie royale des sciences (Paris), has largely vanished from the annals of botanical and medical science. Yet data presented in this article demonstrate that ca. 1740 he gave some or all of his plant collections from his Asian travels in the 1720s to J. Burman, a correspondent in Amsterdam. Those collections in turn greatly enriched Flora Indica by N. Burman (hereafter Burman fil.) to the tune of 98 specimens. Burman's work is an important historical source for the botany not only of modern-day India, as the title suggests, but also of Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Iran—the “Indies” as they were understood in the eighteenth century. So far only a handful of Garcin's specimens have come to light (G-Burman). These few extant specimens testify to Garcin's collecting zeal and keen eye for materia medica.

Ship speeds during the Industrial Revolution: East India Company ships, 1770–1828

The duration of voyages to Asia by English East India Company ships fell by a quarter to a third between the 1770s and the 1820s. The adoption of copper sheathing was the main reason for faster passages and worked through two channels. The more direct was to increase sailing speed by about 11 percent. The indirect, but quantitatively more important, effect was to eliminate the need for a stop at or near the Cape. These results show that there were significant improvements in shipping technology well before the use of steam and iron.

Pigments from the Zuiddorp (Zuytdorp) ship sculpture: red, white and blue?

SUMMARY: The Dutch East India Company ship Zuiddorp (also known as Zuytdorp) met its demise in 1712 at the base of steep cliffs along the Western Australian coast. Material from the shipwreck includes an extraordinary example of a caryatid herm from the ship’s stern counter. A recent study of this sculpture and the pigments found on its surface demonstrates Zuiddorp’s archaic stern construction and adornment, which is more of a late 17th-century, than an early 18th-century, Dutch Indiaman. This paper discusses the results of this study and emphasizes how the smallest pieces of evidence can broaden our understanding of contemporaneous regional Dutch East India Company shipbuilding practices.

Calamitous Voyages: the social space of shipwreck and mutiny narratives in the Dutch East India Company

This article analyses four accounts of mutinies and wrecks of Dutch East India Company ships: those of the Nieuw Hoorn, Batavia, Blydorp and Nijenburg. These stories can be read as worst-case survival manuals, which support the Company’s discourse of discipline. They advise readers that the best option in the event of disaster is to obey the officers’ orders and the Company’s rules, linking this advice to moral and religious ideas of endurance and divine providence that were common in the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. The accounts also link shipboard spatial protocols with proper social order. The stories present the Indies as a dangerous physical and moral testing ground, from which the ship provides a vital protective barrier, but only if the crew acts with disciplined solidarity and shows seamanlike virtues of cohesion and perseverance. Disorder among the crew, especially the breaching of spatial boundaries between officers and men, invites the dangers of the Indies to penetrate the safe space of the ship. Such breaches threaten all the boundaries on which the lives of the ship and crew depend: between the ship and the sea, between moral and immoral behaviour, and between Europeans and the non-European world. Where spatial boundaries break down, the stories show chaos and calamity following. Where the stories have ‘happy endings’, these are brought about by the re-establishment of proper spatial and social hierarchies.

The Royal Yacht Henrietta of 1679: Identification and principal dimensions

In 2012 the attention of the authors was drawn to a pen-and-ink drawing in the style of the Van de Veldes. This paper sets out to identify the subject of this drawing as the Henrietta yacht of 1679. It then proceeds to define the main dimensions of Henrietta and in particular that she was built with a more upright stem than any other of the large royal yachts of her age. Based on these dimensions, a reconstruction of Henrietta's lateral elevation is presented. In addition, the process of identification throws light on the subject and the date of an important painting of East India Company ships at Deptford in the late seventeenth century.

Hoaxes And Folklore: Inscriptions Associated With The Vergulde Draak (1656) And Zuiddorp (1712) Shipwrecking Events

This article discusses two inscriptions thought to be associated with wrecks of the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie) ships Vergulde Draak and Zuiddorp, off the Western Australian coastline. We evaluate their authenticity using comparative studies with similar contemporaneous Dutch inscriptions, placing them within the broader context of pseudoarchaeology and the public preoccupation surrounding shipwrecks. The morphology and manufacture of the lettering argues against a 17th or 18th century provenance. Further, photographic records of the Zuiddorp site indicate that its associated inscription is modern. We argue these inscriptions were likely attempts by enthusiasts to ‘participate’ in the shipwrecking stories, or to claim some recognition with regards to the wrecks. Whatever the reasons, they have been used as evidence to support unorthodox hypotheses about the shipwrecks’ survivors, and serve to keep these theories alive in the public imagination.

The Lead Ingots from the Wreck of theZuiddorp(1712), Western Australia: a report on their provenance and manufacture

The Dutch United East India Company ship Zuiddorp vanished on its way to Batavia in 1712 – its last port of call was the Cape of Good Hope. After its wreck was found on the Western Australian coast, archaeological investigations resulted in the retrieval of 21 lead ingots. Recent study of this artefact assemblage, comprising both great pigs and pieces, suggests that they were of north English origin. Historical records indicate that the Dutch procured large quantities of lead from English sources and maritime trade links between English and Dutch ports were well established at the beginning of the 18th century. © 2012 The Authors

Commanders of Dutch East India Company Ships in the Eighteenth Century - By Japp R. Bruijn

Commanders of Dutch East India Company Ships in the Eighteenth Century - By Japp R. Bruijn

‘Dead to the World, and Almost to Ourselves’: William Mackay's Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Juno (1798)

ABSTRACT This article considers William Mackay's 1789 narrative of the wreck of the East India Company ship, Juno, in the light of recent studies of the genre of shipwreck narrative by Blackmore, Lamb and Thompson. It reads the narrative as reflecting the dynamics of symbolic abdication experienced by survivors during such catastrophes, but proceeds to identify Mackay's efforts to discover, in the language of sentiment that was so central to the eighteenth-century episteme, a rhetorical means to imagine the preservation of a threatened (existential and social) selfhood. The article is also centrally concerned with the intertextuality of Mackay's narrative, and its dissemination into a variety of works in the century following its publication.

The Illusion of Freedom in South Africa: Post-colonialism, Exploitation and Identity Crisis in Alan Paton’s Cry, The Beloved Country

Colonization of Africa began in 1488 when the Portuguese explorer Bartolemeu Dias first sailed along the cost of South Africa and eventually arrived at the north of South Africa. Then the British sailors stopped briefly in the southwest of Africa on their way to India in the 1600s. In 1602, the Dutch East India Company was established to expand trade relationship with colonies in Asia by entering into a fierce rivalry with Britain, and Jan van Riebeeck brought in 1652 three Dutch East India Company ships with around 100 people to establish a station, and these people, known as Afrikaners, were the first white settlers of South Africa. By the end of the seventeenth century, the white population, including Dutch, German, and French, increased considerably in South Africa by killing, driving out or enslaving the indigenous peoples, and then the slave trade started.

A Victim of Circumstance: The Timber Bill of 1772 and the East India Company

In 1771 a bill was brought before the British Parliament to limit the tonnage o f East India Company ships. The Admiralty claimed that construction of the large trading vessels consumed vital and dwindling supplies of English oak required by the Royal Navy. After convening for a year, the Committee organized to investigate the "timber" bill reported that the Company was not solely responsible for the shortage of timber. However, by 1772 the Company was in serious financial difficulty. In the face of mounting pressure for government control of the Company, the timber bill became another vehicle in t he debate of whether the Crown or the Company should control India. Although passed, the timber bill had less to do with the merits of preserving vital oak for the Royal Navy than it did with efforts to limit the powers of the East India Company.

ON HIZEN PORCELAIN AND THE MANILA - ACAPULCO GALLEON TRADE

Hizen porcelain was exported from Nagasaki by Dutch East India Company (VOC) ships and Chinese junks between the late 17th century and the middle of the 18th century. Many pieces of Hizen porcelain have been found at sites in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia and Indonesia, but there has been no evidence that Hizen porcelain was imported to Manila before our research. In March 2004, we examined sherds of porcelain unearthed at Intramuros in Manila and found several pieces of Hizen porcelain for the first time. Some of them were identical to the sherds of blue and white dishes unearthed in Mexico City and Guatemala. In March and May 2005, we examined sherds of porcelain unearthed in Taiwan and Southern China and found some pieces of Hizen porcelain. One sherd found in Taiwan is similar to those identified as Hizen porcelain in Manila. We can postulate that some Hizen porcelain was exported from Nagasaki to Manila via Taiwan and Southern China by Chinese junks. Some Hizen porcelain was consumed at the Intramuros in Manila; also, other Hizen porcelains were transported from Manila to Spanish colonies in the American Continent by Spanish galleon ships.