Bloom abstract 2008
Sharing the responsibility for shipwrecks: cooperation and exchange
On 7th January 1997 Prince Willem-Alexander, Prince of Orange, opened the Australian-Netherlands Colloquium on Maritime Archaeology and Maritime History. This landmark meeting in Fremantle saw the culmination of years of cooperation between Australia and the Netherlands on the protection of the Dutch shipwreck sites off the Western Australian coastline and the preservation of the objects found on them. While the colloquium was celebrating the tercentenary of the Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh, it could not ignore the now famous wrecks of the VOC ships Batavia (1629), Vergulde Draeck (1656), Zuytdorp (1712) and Zeewijk (1727), on which have been found substantial numbers of coins and other artefacts that now form part of the collection in the Western Australian Maritime Museum.
The Batavia and the Vergulde Draeck were the first of these wreck sites to be exploited, both in 1963, and this led in 1964 to the Western Australian State Government enacting legislation (later revised to the Maritime Archaeology Act 1973 ) to protect these and other historic wrecks. In 1972 the Netherlands Government transferred their rights to the Dutch shipwrecks on the Western Australian coast to the Australian Government, and in 1976 the Commonwealth of Australia Government enacted Federal legislation that also helps to protect these sites (Historic Shipwrecks Act 1976).
The joint overseeing of the recovery and preservation of these objects was under the auspices of ANCODS (Agreement between Australia and the Netherlands concerning Old Dutch Shipwrecks) Committee, which was set up in 1972. It had two major objectives. The first was to safeguard the legal position of the 17th and 18th century Dutch shipwrecks off the Western Australian coast, and to protect the Western Australian Museum’s programme of recovery and treatment of these artefacts, and the second was to take responsibility for the location and ownership of these objects.
In this paper we examine the highly successful cooperation of Australia and the Netherlands over almost four decades in the preservation and recording of this important part of our joint heritage.