View source for Zuytdorp

{{Short description|Dutch trading ship wrecked in Australia in 1712}}
{{Use Australian English|date=January 2014}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2014}}
{{CS1 config |mode=cs1 }}
{|{{Infobox ship begin|display title=ital|infobox caption=''Zuytdorp''}}
{{Infobox ship career
|Ship country=[[Dutch Republic]]
|Ship flag=[[Image:Flag of the Dutch East India Company.svg|60px]]
|Ship name=Zuytdorp
|Ship owner=[[Dutch East India Company]]
|Ship completed=
|Ship fate=[[Shipwreck|Wrecked]] at the [[Zuytdorp Cliffs]] in 1712
}}
|}
[[File:Zeeland hoedjesschelling 1711 VOC Zuytdorp.jpg|thumb|Recovered coins struck in 1711]]
'''''Zuytdorp''''', also ''Zuiddorp'' (meaning 'South Village', after [[Zuiddorpe]], an extant village in the south of [[Zeeland]] in the [[Netherlands]], near the Belgian border) was an 18th-century trading ship of the [[Dutch East India Company]] ({{lang|nl|Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie}}, commonly abbreviated VOC).<ref name="vsn-zui01">{{cite web |url=https://www.vocsite.nl/schepen/detail.html?id=11249 |title=Zuiddorp (1701) |date=2020 |website=De VOCsite |language=nl |access-date=2020-03-06 |archive-date=2 July 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190702000658/https://www.vocsite.nl/schepen/detail.html?id=11249 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

On 1 August 1711,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.voc.iinet.net.au/zuytdorp.html |title=zuytdorp.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120717004231/http://www.voc.iinet.net.au/zuytdorp.html |archive-date=2012-07-17 }} {{author missing |date=October 2025}}{{date missing |date=October 2025}}{{title missing |date=October 2025}}{{publisher missing |date=October 2025}}</ref>{{full citation needed |date=November 2025}} ''Zuytdorp'' was dispatched from the Netherlands to the trading port of [[History of Jakarta|Batavia]] (now [[Jakarta]], [[Indonesia]]) bearing a load of freshly minted [[silver coin]]s.<ref name="huygens-zuiddorp">{{cite web |url=http://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/das/voyages?clear=1&field_voynameship=ZUIDDORP |title=Zuiddorp |website=The Dutch East India Company's shipping between the Netherlands and Asia 1595-1795 |date=2 February 2015 |publisher=Huygens ING |access-date=2020-03-06 }}</ref> Many trading ships travelled the [[Brouwer Route]], using the strong [[Roaring Forties]] winds to carry them across the [[Indian Ocean]] to within sight of the west coast of Australia (then called [[New Holland (Australia)|New Holland]]), whence they would turn north towards Batavia.

''Zuytdorp'' did not arrive at its destination and was never heard from again. No search was undertaken, presumably because the VOC did not know whether or where the ship wrecked or if it was taken by pirates. Previous expensive attempts were made to search for other missing ships, but these failed even when an approximate wreck location was known.

In the mid-20th century, ''Zuytdorp''{{'}}s wreck site was identified on a remote part of the [[Western Australia]]n coast between [[Kalbarri, Western Australia|Kalbarri]] and [[Shark Bay]], approximately {{convert|40|km}} north of the [[Murchison River (Western Australia)|Murchison River]]. This section of coastline, subsequently named the [[Zuytdorp Cliffs]], was the preserve of [[Aboriginal Australians|Aboriginal]] people and had been one of the last uncolonised areas until sheep stations were established there in the late 19th century. It has been speculated that survivors of the wreck may have traded with or intermarried with local Aboriginal communities between Kalbarri and Shark Bay.<ref name="selectcommittee">{{cite web
 |url          = http://parliament.wa.gov.au/Parliament/commit.nsf/(Report+Lookup+by+Com+ID)/FB48F049FAD871ED48256602000663A5/$file/fnl-rpt.pdf
 |work         = Western Australian Legislative Assembly
 |date         = 1994-08-17
 |access-date   = 2008-02-21
 |title        = Select Committee on Ancient Shipwrecks
 |archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20080229140748/http://parliament.wa.gov.au/Parliament/commit.nsf/(Report+Lookup+by+Com+ID)/FB48F049FAD871ED48256602000663A5/$file/fnl-rpt.pdf
 |archive-date = 29 February 2008
}}</ref>

{{maplink
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|text=The location of the wreck of the ''Zuytdorp'' off the coast of [[Western Australia]]
|zoom=5
|type=point
|marker-colour=#C60C30
|title=Zuytdorp
|description=wrecked 9 June 1712
}}

There was news of an unidentified shipwreck on the shore in 1834 when Aboriginal people told a farmer near [[Perth]] about a wreck{{snd}}the colonists presumed it was a recent wreck and sent rescue parties who failed to find the wreck or any survivors. In 1927, wreckage was seen by an Indigenous-European family group (including Ada and Ernest Drage,  Tom and Lurleen Pepper, Charlie Mallard) on a clifftop near the border of Murchison house and Tamala Stations. Bertie and Pearl Drage, Jack Brand and Mrs Brand and two Aboriginal workers including a man named Nyarda are also understood to have been involved. Tamala Station head stockman Tom Pepper reported the find to the authorities, with their first visit to the site occurring in 1941. In 1954 Pepper gave [[Phillip Playford]] directions to the wreckage. Playford identified the relics as from ''Zuytdorp''.

== First dives and salvage attempts ==
The first dive in May 1964 and the sighting of a massive silver deposit in 1967 resulted in successful salvage attempts by teams led by Tom Brady of Geraldton, and Perth-based Alan Robinson who utilised the services of Clive Daw (who had visited the site by land on other occasions) in order to facilitate his work.  
    
== Western Australian Museum's work ==
Harry Bingham and his chief diver Geoff Kimpton were successful in recovering silver and other materials in 1971, as was a team led by Jeremy Green in 1976 and on other occasions. On his successful dives Green noted that  looting had occurred just prior to his visit and a watchkeeper was installed  in a caravan near the  wreck. The Museum's salvage work ceased in 1981 due to the perceived dangers of working the site, near accidents while using the bush airstrip  and the burning of the caravan. Thereafter a watch-keeper was appointed to guard the site.

The site, one of the few restricted zones under the Commonwealth ''[[Historic Shipwrecks Act 1976]]'' and ''[[Underwater Cultural Heritage Act 2018]]'', required a permit to visit and was under regular surveillance. A permit is still required.

When work recommenced in 1986 led by Michael McCarthy (with the museum's chief diver Geoff Kimpton) it was found that the silver deposit had all but disappeared. 

Soon after the program entered its multi-disciplinary phase, becoming the first of the  [[Western Australian Museum]]’s VOC studies to embrace the practice.  Geologist-historian [[Phillip Playford]] joined the team, as did pre-historians [[Sandra Bowdler]], [[Kate Morse]], terrestrial historical archaeologists including Fiona Weaver and Tom Pepper Jr., (representing  station and Indigenous interests), surveyors, the [[Landgate|Department of Land Administration]], and artists.  Oral histories were recorded with station identities, including relatives of the Pepper, Drage, Blood, Mallard and other Indigenous families involved with the wreck. Foremost in this new phase was the attention paid to the possibilities of European-Indigenous interaction and the movement of survivors away from the wreck. 

Phillip Playford's book, ''Carpet of Silver: The Wreck of the Zuytdorp was'' produced as part of the museum's research.  The book won the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards when it was first published in 1996.<ref>{{cite Q |Q134879530 |last=Playford |first=Phillip |author-link=Phillip Playford }}</ref>

The museums in both [[Fremantle]] and at [[Geraldton]] presented exhibitions on the wreck, a website, and reports.{{cn |date=October 2024}} An exhibition was also produced for the Kalbarri heritage centre. Due to the logistical difficulties and the advent of Health and Safety legislation, the Zuytdorp in-water program ceased in 2002, though work on land and in the laboratory remains active. 

Historian [[Bill Bunbury]] reviewed the wreck and consequences in the chapter ''A Lost Ship – Lost People: The Zuytdorp Story'' in the book ''Caught in Time: Talking Australia History.''<ref>{{cite book |last=Bunbury |first=Bill |year=2006 |title=Caught in Time - Talking Australian History |publisher=Fremantle Arts Centre Press |isbn=1-921064-84-6 }}</ref>{{pn |date=November 2025}}

== Dutch-Aboriginal intermarriage theory and rock inscriptions ==
In 1988, an American woman who had married into the Mallard family contacted [[Phillip Playford]] and described how her husband had died some years before from a disease called [[variegate porphyria]]. Playford found that the disease was genetically linked and initially confined to [[Afrikaner]]s and that all cases of the disease in [[South Africa]] were traceable to Gerrit Jansz and Ariaantjie Jacobs, who had married in [[Cape of Good Hope]] in 1688.

''Zuytdorp'' arrived at the Cape in March 1712, where it took on more than 100 new crew. One of the Jansz' sons could have boarded the ship at this time and thus become the carrier of the disease into the Australian Aboriginal population. In 2002 a [[DNA]] investigation into the hypothesis that a variegate porphyria mutation was introduced into the Aboriginal population by shipwrecked sailors was undertaken at the [[Queen Elizabeth II Medical Centre]] in [[Nedlands, Western Australia]], and the [[Stellenbosch University]] in South Africa.<ref>{{Cite journal |date=September 2002 |title=Variegate porphyria in Western Australian Aboriginal patients |journal=Internal Medicine Journal |volume=32 |issue=9–10 |pages=445–450 |doi=10.1046/j.1445-5994.2002.00274.x |pmid=12380696 |last1=Rossi |first1=E |last2=Chin |first2=CY |last3=Beilby |first3=JP |last4=Waso |first4=HF |last5=Warnich |first5=L |s2cid=34572600 }}</ref> The research concluded the mutations were not inherited from shipwrecked sailors.

The presence of similar European genetic maladies in the Aboriginal population (such as [[Ellis–Van Creveld syndrome]]) as from VOC shipwreck survivors is also doubtful. Dutch–Indigenous links via the VOC wrecks are rendered less certain because of the movement of hundreds of divers to the [[Pearling in Western Australia|Western Australian pearling field]] in the mid-to-late 19th century. Incorrectly called [[Malays (ethnic group)|Malays]], these indentured labourers came from the islands north of Australia, many via the port of Batavia. One vessel, the {{SS|Xantho||6}} for example, brought 140 Malay boys aged 12–14 for the pearling field. They boarded at Batavia where diseases (including genetic diseases) had been introduced by VOC personnel into the local population since 1600. In addition, many Malay pearlers remained on the coast and some intermarried with Aboriginal people at Shark Bay. Therefore, it is equally possible that genetic links between [[Aboriginal Australians]] and the Dutch can be traced to those sources. The [[Makassar people|Macassans]], who frequented northern Australian shores for centuries and who mixed with the coastal Aboriginal people and even took some of them back to Macassar, are another possible source.<ref name="car24" /> 

The possibility Aboriginal groups joined survivors from ''Zuytdorp'' or mutineers from ''Batavia'' inspired the [[Walga Rock]] ship painting was another popular belief. This theory has been challenged as new evidence points to the image being a steamship, possibly ''Xantho''.<ref>{{Cite web | url=https://museum.wa.gov.au/explore/broadhurst/ss-xantho | title=SS Xantho - Early life | website=museum.wa.gov.au | access-date=2024-08-23}}</ref>

There was also renewed interest in the authenticity of rock inscriptions, predominantly one reading "Zuytdorp 1711" that was once visible on a rock-face adjacent to the reef platform at the site. Post-dating Phillip Playford's first visits in 1954–55, when photographs of the same area show no inscription. Now known to be a modern artefact, the inscription was erased.<ref name="museum-wa">{{cite web |url=http://www.museum.wa.gov.au/maritime-archaeology-db/wrecks/zuiddorp-zuytdorp |title=Zuiddorp (Zuytdorp) |publisher=Western Australian Museum |access-date=21 July 2018 }}</ref>{{cn |date=October 2024}}

== Commemorative plaque ==
In June 2012, the [[Shire of Northampton]] unveiled a commemorative plaque in Kalbarri commemorating the 300th anniversary of ''Zuytdorp''{{'}}s wreck.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://zestfest.experiencekalbarri.com/events/official-unveiling-of-the-zuytdorp-commemorative-plaque|title=Official Unveiling of the Zuytdorp Commemorative Plaque|publisher=Kalbarri Development Association|access-date=2012-06-28|url-status=usurped|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120411162836/http://zestfest.experiencekalbarri.com/events/official-unveiling-of-the-zuytdorp-commemorative-plaque|archive-date=11 April 2012}}</ref><ref>{{Citation | title='Zuytdorp' Memorial | publication-date=2012-06-02 | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/173249931 | access-date=18 June 2022}}</ref> The plaque also mentions ''Batavia'' and {{ship||Zeewijk||2}}, two other VOC ships that were wrecked in the area.

[[Ernie Dingo]] visited the site to learn more about his estranged father Tom Pepper Jr and his grandparents Tom Snr and Lurlie Pepper. This investigation appeared in a 2018 edition of [[Who Do You Think You Are? (Australian TV series)|Who Do You Think You Are]].

== Recent research ==
Playford's book ''Carpet of Silver'' was reprinted unaltered in 1998 and 2006. The Western Australian Museum's account of this period appears as a chapter in a commemorative book about the VOC from 1606-2006 and a report produced in 2009.<ref>{{cite book |last=McCarthy |first=Michael |year=2006 |chapter=The Dutch on Australian Shores: the Zuytdorp tragedy—unfinished business |editor1-last=Shaw |editor1-first=L. |editor2-last=Wilkins |editor2-first=W. |title=Dutch Connections—400 years of Australian-Dutch maritime links. 1606-2006 |pages=94-109 }}</ref><ref>{{cite report |publisher=Department of Maritime Archaeology, Western Australian Museum |number=256 |url=https://museum.wa.gov.au/maritime-archaeology-db/sites/default/files/no._256_zuytdorp1.pdf |title=Zuytdorp: Unfinished business |first=Michael |last=McCarthy |year=2009 }}</ref> 

After retiring from the Western Australian Museum in 2019, McCarthy sought to fill what he considered an information gap by providing a report compiling all that is known about the ship, the wreck and its aftermath. Presented in April 2024 to the Department of Maritime Heritage at the Western Australian Museum as an electronic report designed to be made available (subject to Aboriginal cultural requirements regarding images and the names of deceased), this roughly 500-page work contains McCarthy's research and links to all other known sources, databases and archives including those of the VOC, early explorers, salvage divers, Aboriginal families, scientists, linguists, the Western Australian Museum and other researchers and enthusiasts, including Playford whose archive was recently donated to the [[State Library of Western Australia]].<ref name="car24">{{cite report |last=McCarthy |first=Michael |year=2024 |title=The Zuytdorp Research Compendium |publisher=Maritime Archaeology, Western Australian Museum |number=348 }}</ref>

==See also==
* [[ANCODS]], the Australian Netherlands Committee on Old Dutch Shipwrecks
* [[List of shipwrecks]]
* [[Concordia (1696 ship)]]
* [[Maritime archaeology]]
* [[Shipwrecks of Western Australia]]
* [[VOC ship Amsterdam]]
* [[Protected areas of Australia]]

==Notes==
{{Notelist}}

==References==
{{Reflist |30em}}

==General references==
{{Refbegin |30em}}
*{{cite book |last=Gerritsen |first=Rupert |author-link=Rupert Gerritsen |year=1994 |title=And their Ghosts May Be Heard |publisher=Fremantle Arts Centre Press |isbn=1-86368-063-2 }} 
* McCarthy, Michael (comp), 2002 Chronological Precis of events occurring in Stage 3 of the WA Museum at the Zuytdorp site(s). For the ANCODS meeting December 2002. Stage 1 – The Bingham/Kimpton era: 1969–71; Stage 2 – The Green era: 1971–1985; Stage 3 – The McCarthy/Kimpton era. With assistance from many expert practitioners and volunteers, including Prof [[Sandra Bowdler]], Dr Richard Cassells, Mr Stanley Hewitt, Dr [[Kate Morse]], Dr Phillip Playford, Mr Bob Sheppard, Staff of the Department of Land Administration, Mr Ross White, Ms Fiona Weaver. 1986–2002. Report – Department of Maritime Archaeology. Western Australian Maritime Museum, No. 173
*{{cite journal |last=McCarthy |first=Michael |year=2004 |title=Zuytdorp |page=65 |editor1-last=Green |editor1-first= J. |editor2-last=Gainsford |editor2-first=M. |editor3-last=Stanbury |editor3-first=M. |department=Department of Maritime Archaeology, Western Australian Maritime Museum |journal=A Compendium of Projects, Programs and Publications |publisher=Australian National Centre of Excellence for Maritime Archaeology |number=9, ''Special Publication'' }}
{{Refend}}

==Further reading==
{{Refbegin |30em}}
*{{cite web |title=Zuytdorp |publisher=VOC Historical Society |url=http://www.voc.iinet.net.au/zuytdorp.html |access-date=2012-06-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120717004231/http://www.voc.iinet.net.au/zuytdorp.html |archive-date=17 July 2012 }}{{date missing |date=November 2025}}
*{{cite web |title=300-year Anniversary of Zuytdorp Shipwreck |publisher=Netherlands Missions, Australia |url=http://australia.nlembassy.org/cultural-heritage/zuytdorp-1712-2012.html |access-date=2012-06-29 }}{{date missing |date=November 2025}} {{Dead link|date=January 2019 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}
*{{cite web |title=Zuytdorp History |publisher=Kalbarri Development Association |url=http://zestfest.experiencekalbarri.com/zuytdorp-history |access-date=2012-06-29 |url-status=usurped |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130123061553/http://zestfest.experiencekalbarri.com/zuytdorp-history |archive-date=23 January 2013 }}{{date missing |date=November 2025}}
*{{cite web |title=Zuytdorp |publisher=Western Australian Museum |url=http://museum.wa.gov.au/research/collections/maritime-archaeology/maritime-shipwrecks/zuytdorp |access-date=2012-06-29 }}{{date missing |date=November 2025}}
{{Refend}}

==External links==
* [http://museum.wa.gov.au/maritime-archaeology-db/wrecks/id-811 Western Australia Museum]

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{{Subject bar |auto=0 |portal1=Western Australia |portal2=Modern history }}
{{Australian historic shipwrecks with a protected zone|state=collapsed}}

[[Category:Merchant ships of the Netherlands]]
[[Category:Maritime incidents in 1712]]
[[Category:Shark Bay]]
[[Category:Ships of the Dutch East India Company]]
[[Category:Shipwrecks of Western Australia]]
[[Category:Australian Shipwrecks with protected zone]]