COSMOS MAGAZINE
Excited maritime archaeologists have confirmed the location of a long-lost shipwreck in South Australia.
Koning Willem de Tweede at Batavia, 1849. Watercolour by Jacob Spin. Courtesy Rotterdam Maritime Museum.
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.
The vessel was located using metal detectors and a magnetometer, which revealed iron parts and timber buried in the seabed.
Iron windlass components discovered during the search for Koning Willem de Tweede’s shipwreck site. Credit: Ruud Stelten.
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.
Koning Willem de Tweede at Batavia, 1849. Watercolour by Jacob Spin. Courtesy Rotterdam Maritime Museum.
While the miners trekked inland, the ship remained remained harbour-bound due to the weather due to rough weather in the exposed Guichon Bay.
Credit: Getty
On June 30, 1857, a violent storm forced the captain to beach the ship, but it broke apart in the swell and 16, of the 25 crew members drowned —yet the wreck was never found until now.
Credit: Getty
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.
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Acting Manager of Maritime Archaeology at the Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM), Dr James Hunter