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(CNN) – Under the rough seas on South Australia’s coast, marine archaeologists say they discovered Willem de Tudes, a Dutch merchant ship that had sank nearly 170 years ago. This shipwreck captures a tragic moment in maritime history during the Australian gold rush of the 19th century.
According to a news release from the Australian National Maritime Museum, the 800-ton sailing ship had begun its journey to the Netherlands in June 1857. Two-thirds of the crew owned and died.
A few days ago, 400 Chinese immigrants headed to a gold mine in Victoria and disembarked from the ship. According to James Hunter, the museum’s proxy maritime archaeology manager, the crew carried the workers as “side hustles” for extra money. He said the practice was a common but questionable legal voyage of the time.
The captain lived to tell the story and litigate his losses, but the bodies of his crew remain lost in the sand dunes of Long Beach.
However, on March 10, after searching for the site of Wreck for three years, a team of divers, supported by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency, discovered that what they say was a wreck.
“There’s always a bit of luck with what we’re doing,” said Hunter, the first diver to see the ship underwater. “The sand had just discovered a small bit of that shipwreck, so we could see it and actually put our hands down and say, ‘We’ve finally got it.’ ”
Expedition members say they are confident that Willem de Tuide has been found based on a historical account of the shipwreck and location matching the length of the metal fragments detected. A 19th century Chinese ceramic fragment was also found in 2023 on a beach near a shipwreck.
“The ships were important and expensive, so they were often well documented,” said Patrick Morrison, a maritime archaeologist at the University of Western Australia. “Therefore, if the material is found, it can match the description of the sinking and the construction of the ship, such as size, material, fitting.”
Currently, the museum, affiliated with the Silent World Foundation, the Ministry of Environmental Water and Water in South Australia, and the Flinders University in Adelaide, searches, recovers and saves artifacts from the wreckage that may reveal details of the 19th century shipbuilding, crews and their passengers.
Due to its long history as a global maritime trade mecca, Australia is a hot spot for shipwrecks, with an estimated 8,000 wrecks and aircraft lying near the coast. According to the Australian government’s climate change, energy, environment and water, some vessels in the 1700s when the colonies first began date back to the 1700s.
The discovery of gold mines in Victoria led to the migration of Chinese workers in the 1850s, leading the Victorian government to collect £10 tax, worth more than $1,300. (£1,000) About all the migrants who entered the port today, according to the Australian Cultural Centre in the Netherlands.
To avoid this tax, Chinese agents often pay European merchant ships to transport immigrants to other Australian ports, according to the Australian National Museum. Upon arrival, the migrants encountered discriminatory treatment, many of whom were not successful in the mines.
Koning Willem de Tweede was intended to make a deal between the Netherlands and the Netherlands East Indies. However, just before returning home, the crew picked up Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong and dropped them down in Robe, a community about 365 miles (400 km) west of Victoria’s main port. To date, police reports, crew accounts and courts have not recorded whether the voyage was approved by the ship’s owner.
What’s clear, however, is Roeb’s renowned community of commitment to answering questions about Reck and the lost crew, he added.
As a massive wave torn the ship apart, Indigenous men on the land attempted to swim ropes into the ship to save the captain, but were unable to surge it, Hunter said. “So the captain hurt the line around a small barrel, and he threw it into the water, and the townspeople gathered on the beach grabbed the line, pulling him in a surge and he survived.”
If the crew’s bodies were recovered, the Hunter said it was likely that the Robe community would create a suitable burial site for them.
“The wreck reveals Australia’s long-standing connections between the sea and the rest of the world, and today’s towns and cities reflect the connections,” Morrison said. “I’ve heard that the team is coming back. I’m sure each visit will reveal a new part of the story.”
What remains on the ship?
It’s still too early to tell, but Hunter said that most of the ship’s hull structure appears to be intact beneath a layer of sand.
Using metal detectors and magnetometers, the team was able to find a large amount of steel and iron projecting from the seabed, which turned out to be part of the frame and Windras. According to Hunter, a long timber plank from the ship’s upper deck is nearby.
“The (hull) could tell us a lot about how these ships were built and designed, because with that information there is not much detail in the historical record,” Hunter said.
According to Hunter, Koning Willem de Tweede sank hundreds of yards from the coast, so the crew could not retrieve personal items, so researchers could find coins, bottles, broken pottery, weapons and tools.
Heather Berry, Maritime Archaeological Protector of the SilentWorld Foundation, said in an email that items recovered from the shipwreck must be carefully retrieved.
“As usual, shipwrecks rarely occur in calm waters,” Berry said. “Surge in sites often require you to protect something sturdy, so you have to keep something sturdy to prevent it from escaping, so you need to avoid mistakenly grasping what’s fragile.”
The recovered artifacts are placed in a bathtub full of seawater and then gradually desalinated to reduce the corrosive effect of salt upon drying.
