Treeless, almost uninhabited, buffeted by winds and ocean swells, the 100 islands and coral reefs known as the Houtman Abrolhos, off Australia’s west coast, is a hazard that sailors have tried to avoid for four centuries. The islands teem with sea lions, wallabies, lizards, and seabirds. Trawlers today ply the waters nearby to scoop up fish and lobster by the ton. Yet as scores of sea captains have learned the hard way, the archipelago’s coral reefs can rip the bottom off a wayward ship. Sitting as monuments to hubris, or at least carelessness, remains of a few of these wrecked vessels can still be seen shifting in the waves.
Before dawn on June 4, 1629, with just over 300 people aboard, the Dutch merchant ship Batavia struck a reef near the northern end of the archipelago, becoming the first known European vessel to meet its end on the Houtman Abrolhos. In the final weeks of a nine-month journey to the Dutch entrepot of Batavia, on Java, the ship carried 12 chests packed with silver coins and treasure that merchants of the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC), or Dutch East India Company, planned to trade for the spices, porcelains, and silks coveted by Dutch burghers. The cargo was worth about 250,000 guilders, or about $15 million today. Wealthy, self-confident Holland was in the process of throwing off the rule of the Spanish Habsburgs, and of creating its own commercial empire, which already extended to the far side of the Indian Ocean.
did not sink immediately. She listed in the swells for nine days, her wooden hull slowly disintegrating, giving time for all on board—crew-men, cooks, soldiers, and passengers, of whom about 20 were women, mostly wives of VOC merchants or administrators—to flee on boats and flotsam to two tiny islands. A rash few tried to swim and drowned. Once ashore, the survivors faced the immediate problem of
