Shipwreck site of 19th-century Dutch vessel rediscovered

Excited maritime archaeologists have confirmed the location of a long-lost shipwreck in South Australia.

The Koning Willem de Tweede was found in relatively shallow waters 400m offshore of the main beach in Robe, in the south east of the state.

Project lead and Acting Manager of Maritime Archaeology at the Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM), Dr James Hunter, told Cosmos: The wreck is in the middle of the bay, 400 metres offshore, in relatively shallow water: “which was where we thought we’d find it after our initial evaluation in 2023.”

The conditions made by the ever swirling silt in the bay make finding the vessel tricky. “I nearly rammed my face into the windlass. We were searching with metal detectors in terrible visibility and I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

“That winch is attached to timber. We potentially have a lot of the vessel buried there.

“It’s exciting because while we have a lot of knowledge about 17^th Century Dutch vessels, from the wreck of the Batavia, relatively little is known about 19^th Century vessels. I’ve yet to find any detailed documents that show its construction and design.”

Koning Willem de Tweede, an 800-ton Dutch merchant sailing ship, from Hong Kong arrived in South Australia in June 1857 with 400 Chinese miners destined for the Victorian goldfields. It arrived safely in Guichon Bay in the state’s southeast to discharge its passengers in the port of Robe.

Then, while the miners began their overland trek to the Goldfields, the ship remained harbour-bound due to the weather. Guichon Bay is exposed to the west, so it is battered by strong winds and swell during inclement weather.

On June 30, a severe south-westerly storm and gale-force winds damaged the ship. To save it and the crew, the captain made the call to run the ship around into the sandy shallows – but the ship was broken apart by the swell. Unfortunately, 16 of the 25-man crew were drowned when their lifeboat overturned.

Despite breaking up so close to shore, the shipwreck has never been located.

In 2022, 165 years later, researchers from the Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM), Silentworld Foundation, South Australia’s Department for Environment and Water, and Flinders University teamed up to form the Koning Willem de Tweede Shipwreck Project. Their aim was to find and survey the ship’s remains – and they may have just located it.

With a combination of a marine metal detector and a magnetometer (which detects concentrations of iron objects), the team located iron components that they believe were once part of the windlass, the winch used to hoist the ship’s anchors. The windlass is partially protruding from the seabed, along with an iron frame.

A timber plank was also found below the windlass. This may mean more of the ship remains buried under the sand.

Other anomalies were detected by the magnetometer, suggesting that other large iron artefacts and hull components may also be buried.

When mapped out, the anomalies match the known length of the Koning Willem de Tweede (42.7 metres long).

Shipwreck id

Since the Koning Willem de Tweede is the only ship to have wrecked in that area, and since the location of the iron components match historic accounts of the shipwreck, the team believe this wreck to be the correct one.

Other evidence comes in the form of pottery fragments: 19th-century Chinese coarse earthenware ceramics were found on a nearby beach in March 2023.

Next, the team will return to the shipwreck site to assess the wreck’s condition and document the remains and the artefacts that may be exposed. If the ship is completely buried, they will use a tool to dredge sand off the site.

Hunter talked at length to Cosmos reporter Drew Rooke, last year when the wreck was first identified and said that while the wreck isn’t particularly famous, it has “mind-blowing” potential:

“The wrecking event was catastrophic and very sudden, so we’re very likely to find a lot of artefacts. No one had time to grab anything. Pretty much everything was lost – and is all probably still in the wreck, which can tell us so much about the ship’s crew and its passengers.”