By 1620 the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC - United Dutch East India Company) had established a Dutch-Asian and associated intra-Asian shipping network linking the Netherlands to lucrative spice trading areas in Persia, India, the southeast Asian archipelago and Japan.

The VOC's main Asian trading and cargo exchange post was Batavia (today's Jakarta) and it was there that the Batavia (1629), Vergulde Draeck (1656), Zuytdorp (1712) and Zeewijk (1727) were headed before they were wrecked off the rough Western Australian coast. Their skippers had been instructed to use the roaring forties to sail east across the Indian Ocean and head north before the Australian coast. Remarkably, these four VOC ships and one English vessel are the only known ships of this period to be lost there.

The discovery of the wreck sites in the 1950s and 1960s could not have been possible without the availability of scuba diving gear. That opened up a new world under water, one for which no appropriate protective legislation was in place.

In rapid sequence the wrecks of the four VOC ships were discovered or identified: Vergulde Draeck (1963), Batavia (1963), Zuytdorp (1964) and Zeewijk (1968). Subsequently, both the Vergulde Draeck and Batavia were damaged so badly by looters that the Western Australian Museum (WAM) decided to excavate them starting in 1972. Later the other shipwrecks followed.

These events were not only instrumental in the creation of ANCODS, it also lead to the development of the Western Australian Maritime Museum (WAMM) with its leading maritime archaeology research and restoration facilities, as well as Maritime Archaeology as a discipline in Australia.

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Vergulde Draeck (Gilded Dragon)

Batavia

Zuytdorp

Zeewijk

Zuytdorp cannon
Image courtesy
WA Maritime Museum