‘DEN 25 OCTOBER IS HIER AEN GECOMEN HET SCHIP DEENDRAGHT VAN AMSTERDAM
DE OPPERKOPMAN GILLIS MIBAIS VAN LVIK SCHIPPER DIRCK HATICHS VAN AMSTERDAM
DEN 27 DITO TE SEIL GEGHM NA BANTVM DE ONDERKOPMAN JAN STINS
DE OPPERSTVIERMAN PIETER DOOKES VAN BIL ANNO 1616‘
“On the 25th October the ship Eendracht of Amsterdam arrived here. Upper merchant Gilles Miebais of Luick [Liege]; skipper Dirck Hatichs [Dirk Hartog] of Amsterdam. On the 27th October we sail for Bantum. Under merchant Jan Stins; upper steerman Pieter Doores of Bil [Brielle]. In the year 1616.”
“Dirk Hartog is an island off the West coast of Australia. In the language of the local Malgana people it’s called Wirrumana. It’s historically significant as the place where the oldest European artifact was found on the Australian continent. So……..suck it New South Wales.
Dirk Hartog was a 17th century sailor, merchant and explorer. The Dutch feature prominently in the exploratory, cartographic and……namefication history of Western Australia. Alas all they left were some place names, shipwrecks and kitchenware.
So who was he? We don’t know his precise birthdate but he was likely born in 1583. His name is the patronymic ‘Hartogsoon’ literally meaning ‘Hartogs son’, there are many different spellings of his name and while Dirk Hartog is technically incorrect it is the most common spelling found. He was raised in a nautical family and went to sea as a young man. In 1611 he purchased a small ship Dolfin and traded around the Mediterranean and Baltic with his first contract taking him to Dunkirk to collect 280 tonnes of French salt. In 1615 he was appointed Captain of the 700 tonne ship Eendracht, meaning ‘Concord’ or ‘Unity.’ This was a common name given to Dutch ships around this time, as it came from the motto of the Dutch republic in Latin: ‘Concordia res parvae crescent’ and Dutch ‘Eendracht maakt macht’ / “Unity makes strength”. It carried a crew of 200 men and 32 cannon. It was part of the fleet belonging to the United East India Company or VOC. VOC stands for Vereenigde OostIndische Compagnie (Henceforth I’ll refer to it as VOC or the ‘Company’. It was formed in 1602 and was the world’s first multi-national conglomerate. It came about because the merchant cities of Holland would individually send ships to the Far East with no collaboration or coordination. The government, the Staten Generaal, intervened in 1602 and forced all the companies to merge into one and granted them a 21 year trade monopoly, the power to wage war and to establish colonies with the aim of wresting the spice trade from the Portuguese.
This was the beginning of the Dutch Golden Age. Dutch poet Joost Van Den Vondel wrote in 1639:
“…wherever profit leads us, to every sea and shore; for love of gain the wide world’s harbours we explore …”
As Captain of a company ship, he was a man of gravity and importance. VOC ships had both a Captain and a Senior Merchant aboard. Put simply, the Captain handled the sailing and the Merchant handed the business and made sure the journey was profitable. But the reason for being of the VOC was profit, so the Senior Merchant outranked the Captain in decision making. When ships left Holland they usually carried a fortune in silver and gold not only to pay wages and keep the Indonesian colonies functioning, but to purchase the most valuable of commodities at the time; spice. This was Pepper, Cloves, Nutmeg, Mace, Cinnamon as well as silks, cotton and porcelain.
On 23 January 1616, Hartog set sail from the island of Texel in the Netherlands with 2 ships later joining with 2 more. The typical route to the East Indies was down the Atlantic coast of Africa, stopping along the way as required for water, food, repairs, etc.
Eendracht became separated from the rest of the fleet. After reaching the southern tip of Africa, Hartog rounded the Cape of Good Hope and travelled East across the Indian Ocean.
They were assisted in this by plugging into a strong wind called the ‘Roaring 40s’.
This route, pioneered in 1609 by another company Captain Hendrik Brouwer used the prevailing winds between latitudes 35 and 45 degrees south to speed up sailing times from Holland. Sometimes before their turn North to Indonesia, they would be blown too far East. This is how he any many of his VOC colleagues including the ship Leeuwin encountered Western Australia, part of the ‘Unknown South Land.’ referred to as ‘Terra Australis Incognita’.
The Eendracht found themselves on the wild Australian coast when they arrived at Shark Bay on the 25th October 1616 and anchored at the Northern tip of a long thin island. The crew went ashore and explored for two or three days. The land was considered inhospitable and of no use to the VOC, certainly nothing to distract from the untold riches of the East Indies. After all the Dutch were traders not land developers.
To mark their visit, the crew flattened a pewter dinner plate and engraved it with the details of the ship and crew. This is called ‘Hartogs Plate’ and it is now preserved in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The plate is the earliest archaeological evidence of a European presence in Australia and the place where it was found at the north-western tip of the Island forms the western edge of Shark Bay and is known as ‘Cape Inscription’. Leaving carved plates, stones or boards was part of a maritime communication system used by Dutch seafarers.
Hartog called the lands he encountered Eendrachtsland (Land of Eendracht) That name was recorded in the archives and was used by VOC cartographer Hessel Gerritszoon on his famous map of the West Coast of Australia.
The Eendracht then continued North sailing into the Flores Sea off Indonesia. Meeting a hostile reception at Makassar on the island of Sulawesi, Eendracht arrived at its destination the important spice trading port of Bantam, Java. It was then active in regional trade, for example in September 1617 shipping to Bantam 200 tonnes of Cloves. Almost a year later on 17 December 1617, Eendracht departed for the voyage back to Holland likely with a load of spice and trade goods arriving in the Dutch Province of Zeeland in October 1618. Hartog then faded into obscurity, he left the VOC shortly after and worked private trading ventures until he passed away a few years later.
Hartog’s plate remained undisturbed for 81 years until another Dutch Captain Willem de Vlamingh came ashore in 1697 and found it degraded and half buried in sand. He made a new one, copying Hartog’s inscription then adding the details of his own visit. He returned to the Netherlands with the original plate, which now resides in Amsterdam.
I’ve talked about the French Baudin scientific expedition before, in particular the journeys of the ships Geographe and Naturaliste. In 1801 they too landed on the Island. The De Vlamingh plate was found by young cartographer, Louis de Freycinet, who bought it back to the Naturaliste. Captain Jacques Hamelin, ordered him to return the plate to where he found it. You can listen to the story of the Naturaliste and Geographe at www.backyardbattlefields.com (Where you are right now!) In 1818 de Freycinet returned, this time a Captain of his own ship L’Uranie, he’d obviously been thinking about the plate for the past 17 years and took it back to France as a souvenir. It then disappeared until the 1940s where after the Second World War, it was found and gifted to the Australian government. The plate now resides at the Maritime Museum in Fremantle, Western Australia.
Many other sailors also spent time in the area around Dirk Hartog Island including explorer, travel writer and Avocado fancier Englishman William Dampier who arrived in 1699 during his voyage to explore and map the coasts of ‘New Holland’. Due to the large number of Sharks he saw, he named the surrounding waters ‘Shark Bay’, he spent a week mapping the coast and collecting plant specimens.
In 1772 a Frenchman with the impressive name Louis Francois Marie Aleno de Saint Aloüarn aboard the ship Gros Ventre arrived on a mission of exploration and acquisition with the goal of claiming the western half of ‘New Holland’ for King Louis XV. On the evening of 29th March, Gros Ventre entered Shark Bay. The ship’s boat went ashore with some crew and five soldiers to reconnoitre the land and claim possession for the glory of France. After walking inland, finding little evidence of human occupation, they returned to the coast and took possession of the land.
A Prise de Possession took place on a cliff on the Northern part of the Island, overlooking a place called Turtle Bay. The annexation was commemorated by raising a flag, firing a volley of rifle shots called a Fuer de Joie and reading a proclamation which was then inserted into a bottle, sealed with lead and buried. Near it they placed two six franc coins. It wasn’t until 1998 that the coins and lead seals as well as one bottle were recovered.
Fifty years later, Englishman Phillip Parker King, also made his mark on the island, not only inscribing his initials and the year 1822 on one of the remaining Dutch posts but he also cemented his place in Australian bogan folklore by lending his ships name, the Bathurst to their beloved motor race.
With the multiple Dutch and French visits to Western Australia, significantly pre-dating the English, It’s always an interesting counter-factual to think about how close Australia came to becoming a partioned country like Canada, effectively half French half English or indeed half-Dutch. Think of it, instead of cheering for Daniel Ricciardo we’d be screaming Verstappen.
I shudder to think…………..”
Listen to this Backyard Battlefields episode at Audible, Apple Podcasts and Audible.
