Shipwrecks and Australia - The Dutch VOC, Batavia and SS Xantho at the WA Shipwreck Museum!
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 มิ.ย. 2024
- Head to www.squarespace.com/drachinifel to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code DRACHINIFEL
Today we take a look at the Western Australia Shipwreck Museum and the long history it chronicles!
00:00:00 - Intro
00:01:55 - Museum
Naval History books, use code 'DRACH' for 25% off - www.usni.org/press/books?f%5B...
Free naval photos and channel posters - www.drachinifel.co.uk
Want to support the channel? - / drachinifel
Want to talk about ships? / discord
![[Live สด] การออกรางวัลสลากกินแบ่งรัฐบาล งวดวันที่ 16 มิถุนายน 2567](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/P3WkqO9gKjo/mqdefault.jpg)
Pinned post for Q&A :)
I was recently reading about how the Royal Navy during the age of sail allegedly banned sea shanties (with a few exceptions to songs like Drunken Sailor) is this true? And if so why?
I'm from New Zealand. I'm interested in the Bird-class minesweepers. I'm particularly interested in the exploits of the "Kiwi" and "Moa" (RNZS) in regards to their operation in the Guadalcanal theatre - where they jointly took on I-1 (J1 submarine of the IGN) - and forced it to beach. I'd like to know more about their history in this campaign, and the value of the intelligence that was retrieved from I-1.
Which is in your opinion is the best Pirate flag design and whose flag did they belong too?
Which Axis warship loss would have hastened their defeat the most if said ship had been sunk a year earlier?
I believe from your collab with Venom Geek that you consider the Starship enterprise of TOS--SFS to be the equivalent of a late age of sail cruiser. What naval analogies led you to this conclusion? Considering her official class is Heavy Cruiser and she was conceived in the early 1960s I had always inferred she was the equivalent of a early guided missile cruiser refitted from one of the surviving ww2 heavy cruisers. Considering thats what was sailing around when Roddenberry described his concept to Jeffries. Her shuttlecraft also behave less like ships boats and more akin to helicopters
The Batavia story never gets old , the good old VoC never failed to recruit the worst maniacs .
Rest in peace to the 1415 of the Mighty Hood who lost their lives 83 years ago today.
May God Bless, and keep their souls!
The Dyfkin replica sails all around Australia and does sometimes visit Perth and docks very close to the shipwreck museum
‘Duyfken’ or ‘little dove’
It points to the pigeon/dove of Noah’s Ark.
The Duyfken was built in Fremantle, and sailed the coastline near Perth for many years. It only moved east recently (I sailed on it on Perth waters in 2020)
@@PJRye They were in the middle of building of it when i went to fremantle maritime museum as a kid
It also sailed to the Netherlands and back shortly after its construction
That model of HMS Renown is amazing, im still struggling with a 1:350 scale USS New Jersey that i just need to paint and assemble, can't imagine trying to make the whole thing by hand. Some people are just incredibly talented.
It's not talent, its time and practice. You can do it as well, don't give up. Believing talent is all there is to art is a common way of people holding themselves back. I am sure your New Jersey is great and your model making will only improve with time and study.
@@MagnoliaNox This is so very true. Talent means having a natural ability, but that still means they have to learn all the same skills as everyone else.
Intense3295 is correct. People are confused what the word talent means. It means having a natural ability at something, but they have to learn the same skills as you will. So I urge you to carry on with your struggles with USS New Jersey because as your skill level increases so will you confidence. Good luck
@@MagnoliaNoxMichael Jordan tried this line on me. But I put in a couple hours practice each day and have been dunking on him ever since. Also, my fade away is unstoppable!
A lot of any skill comes down to perseverance or bloody mindedness, take your pick ⛏.
I sometimes do welding and people say to me that "they can't weld or that they haven't got the skills to weld. Welding (of the electric arc variety) involves a basic understanding of how an electrical circuit works and how welding works as well as things that ruin good welds like mill scale and porosity. Then it comes down to practice, practice, practice! Finally, one day you are doing a weld and you have your settings right on the machine, your metal has been prepared properly, it is tacked and or clamped well to hold it in place during the weld and then you start laying down a bead. Finally you are keeping the electrode where you want it to be in the prepared groove and you are holding the electrode at the right distance and angle. You complete the weld and as you step back to admire your work, you notice that the protective slag is slowly beginning to peel itself off of the fresh weld as it cools down.
You have just achieved a slag peel, which shows that everything went right with that weld.
I have to tell you that it's quite exciting when it does happen. You have hit the sweet spot.
That sweet spot comes about after lots of practice and learning about welding. Any skill takes time and dedication to learn and that is the secret!
Mark from Melbourne Australia 🇦🇺
For anyone interested in reading about the Batavia wreck, the story of the survivors and the efforts to preserve the ship, i would recommend 'Island of Angry Ghosts' by Hugh Edwards. A fantastic read about a harrowing and very tragic story.
Also 'Batavia's Graveyard' by Mike Dash. Definitely harrowing and astonishing.
@@andrewcarr3650 Batavia's Graveyard is really well done. and really horrifying given how far it went..."Downhill" shall we say.
The "supercargo" is the person responsible for arranging cargoes and negotiating fees.
Essentially they act as a representative of the cargo owner/company in all matters of trade while the captain was in charge of ship handling but was restricted to following written orders from the supercargo.
slight pronunciation correction: not van Damian's Land but van Diemen (dee-men)
Were they pre-empting Tasmanians after the pub shut?.
@@petewood2350No just fore warning the convicts sentenced to serve their time there that they were entering Hell.
wow - the native rock imagery of the SS Xantho is amazing. Wonderful vid, thank you.
So surreal hearing Drac talking about places and thing that I’ve seen myself 😮
It's surreal hearing Drac talk about the place where I spent the first 38 years of my life. Kind of makes one a bit homesick 🙂
Grew up near Warrnambool, so I've heard all the stories about the 'Mahogany Ship' that was reputed to be a wreaked Portuguese caravel that washed up around the mid 1500s.
In true 'bool fashion, the only thing closely resembling this elusive ship that has ever been seen was a 'scale' replica that 'washed ashore' next to a new McDonalds restaurant in the early 90s
I visited Warnambool in December 2022 as a part of my School Orchestra Tour of Victoria and Southern New South Wales. I had a little time before my motel room was ready so I took the truck up to the carpark lookout on the hill that Warnambool hides behind. The town hides behind that hill for a very good reason, it was blowing hard enough to shake the truck on its suspension. Not far inland from the town are some major wind farm wind turbines. It must have been hell to be coming up out of the Southern Ocean during a storm and to have been slammed onto the coast around there.
Mark from Melbourne Australia 🇦🇺
Defragged History has an amazing series on the Batavia
Indeed. It's rather harrowing story but incredibly well told.
Why did I listen to some rando Brit spend most of an hour geeking-out over early 17th Century collections of engineered rubbish scattered up and down the coasts of WA?
The world may never know.
Great job Sir Drach!
Just as an addendum to an absolutely awesome review of the spectacular museum: the weapons that survived the wreck of the Batavia were actually left with the senior person remaining with the survivors: Jeronimus Cornelisz. As a result, while it was likely the soldiers still had small sidearms for the time like dirks and short swords, the bulk of the firearms and other weapons were with the mutineers. That was what made the holdout on West Wallaby Island (where the soldiers built their fort - which still exists today as the oldest European building in Australia) so much more amazing! The soldiers used their superior tactics over the significant technological advantage the mutineers had! Yes, this story is well known in Australia - at least in the history and seafaring circles. The leader of the soldiers, Wiebbe Hayes, is very much a hero of that formative era of Australia's history.
Not really on the scope off this channel, but the fort the soldiers off the Batavia build on the small island is (by some) regarded as the first permanent european structure build on Australian soil
Ah yes, Wiebbe Haye's fort.
The wreck and mutiny of the Batavia is an amazing story, I'm surprised that a film has never been made about it. It's genuinely shocking how little of Australia's early Dutch maritime history is known even in Australia. Many Australians think Cook was the first European to set foot in Australia. He wasn't even the first Englishman, William Dampier beat him by more than 80 years
I grew up near the small town of Guilderton Western Australia which was named after a cache of silver guilders that was discovered nearby from the 1656 wreck of the Vergulde Draeck. Of the Vergulde Draeck's compliment of one hundred and ninety three crew, seventy five managed to survive and establish a camp on the beach. In an epic act of seamanship, seven of the crew managed to sail the ships tiny boat all the way to Batavia for help however none of the remaining marooned men were ever seen again despite a number of attempts by the VOC to rescue them.
My primary school had a production written for our school choir about the batavia mutany. As crazy as that sounds. The choir was one of the best in the country and the work was written for them specifically by a professional composer.
I have never forgotten the names and stories of these explorers and ships from when I was at school some 65 years ago! Australian History was then part of the Australian Primary School curriculum ! Also, there are a large number of shipwrecks off the South Australian coast, particularly in the Great Australian Bight and around Kangaroo Island, and there is a Maritime Museum in Port Adelaide with historic vessels moored at nearby wharves, and a Bathurst Class Corvette preserved in its namesake city of Whyalla
Grew up on all these stories told both by oldies and school curriculum (Mornington, Victoria)
There is quite a detailed series about the Batavia on TH-cam. Ep 1 is at th-cam.com/video/ocADHWSggn0/w-d-xo.html
They should have done what the crew of the Zeewijk did in 1727. Shipwrecked on the Houtman Abrolhos they utilized wood from the wreck and the island to build a honest to God sloop, christened Sloepie, to transport the survivors to Batavia. The fact that the first European structure and the first European ship in Australia were both built by shipwrecked Dutchmen is at least somewhat interesting.
I spent 3 or 4 months living on the South coast of Victoria, a beautiful stretch called the Shipwreck Coast. All sorts of interesting plaques detailing various shipwrecks up and down the coast. Did you also come across the Submarine Museum in the small town of Holbrook, NSW? A fascinating wee museum with the upper casing and sail of an old Oberon class sub, HMAS Otway. Was a very cool surprise find when roadtripping from Sydney to Melbourne.
Also, if you are ever back in Ontario and have some days to travel you may find of interest a Historic dockyard in Penetanguishene on Lake Huron. Was the site of a naval base used during the War of 1812 and after and has some reconstructed buildings from the Naval base and attached army garrison and has a building with the salvaged wreck of the HMS Tecumseth in it. She was one of the 'war emergency' ships built for that war that saw a little service, then was laid up and sank at her moorings due to being green wood.
Also up there is a short, incline railway that transfers boats uphill between two sections of the Trent/Severn waterway that goes between Lake Ontario and Lake Huron. Not naval related, just a very interesting engineering achievement.
Would recommend all of those if you ever have the opportunity
Batavia sounds like a great movie for the Dutch to make...
There have been many proposals over de decades inc Paul Verhoeven trying to get one off the ground (based on the book Batavia's Graveyard). Not even he managed. After Verhoeven, Roel Reiné tried (Batavia's Deathsong) but given how long ago this was (should have filmed in 2016) that probably is long dead now too. Russel Crow's company bought the rights to some book about Batavia in 2016 I think, a movie never materialized.
A couple of years ago an Australian production company was reported in news here to be looking to film on the Batavia replica but again didn't seem to go beyond that.
Batavia wasn't just cursed with a demonically insane maniac on board it also seems to be cursed by some sort of unfilmability :(.
tldr
Though I don't think most of us Dutch here are actually that interested and that might be the reason none materialized, at least not from Dutch cinema.The Dutch age of sail history is steeped in dark pages about slavery. Something modern multicultural Dutch can have a hard time reconciling or rather put and keep in the past, add to that the Batavia story from a Dutch perspective doesn't offer any, how to say, redeeming qualities, it's just a maniac killing innocent men, women and children. It's probably why a film about De Ruyter (by Roel Reiné) happened and Batavia never materialized. No perceived viewer interest and thus no investor interest.
At least that's my perception over in the Netherlands speaking to other age-of-sail/sail movie lovers here, so might be completely wrong, don't know that many.
That said, I'd definitely watch a good movie about it personally.
There's the 1995 Shipwreck Coast: Batavia - Wreck, Mutiny and Murder, a Feature film length docudrama though. Might be good and close to a movie experience. (Think I've seen it but don't remember much so can't say how accurate or enjoyable as a movie it is.)
Now that you have seen the wreck, come and see the replica and artisanal shipyard in Lelystad! (They also started a replica of "De Zeven Provinciën", De Ruyters flagship, but that is as of now sadly unfinished)
Only a few weeks ago I did a search to see if you'd done a video about the Batavia. They've made a full size replica using only period tools a few decades ago. If you're ever in the Netherlands for that or its shipyard museum, I'd love to meet you there.
Not going to post it again, but you are correct of course. I visited it a number of times while it was being build, think somewhere 1990’s, and it was fascinating to see. @xarthis also mentions it.
Yes, they also started building a replica of a 17 century warship ,also with period tools. The ship in question was going to be a replica of “de zeven provincies “ , De Ruiters flagship.
I don’t know the status of that build ,but I think it is on permanent hiatus.
I've been on it , I laughed my head off that'd they'd celebrate such a cursed ship
Replica was present at Sydney Olympic games as Dutch flagship for their team, even sailed a bit (straight downwind according to short film that I saw then…)
13:11 turns out big rock always wins
To answer the query: a supercargo is someone who's there to supervise the cargo. They're employed by whoever owns the cargo (rather than the owners of the ship) to look after it, make sure it goes where it's supposed to, and often do the selling of it after it arrives, then bring the money (or some other trade goods) back, so they don't have to trust the captain of the ship with that stuff.
Amazing they restored it to the point where it rotates. Guessing they used non ferrous metals for bearings etc.. Oh and that last pic is an absolute winner! What a shot.
Yay! I don’t have to wait another month for it.
Galveston on Wednesday, Australia on Friday, Drach gets a round a lot these days.
Mate, this was so interesting, thanks for presenting some of Australia's Dutch history.
It earned the name Shipwreck Coast for very good reason.
I should visit there again and bring a tap measure this time. They have a few cannon I'd like to better understand.
The Story of Batavia is actually epi. The rescue ship arriving just at the moment of the climactic battle is like something streight out of a bad fictional novel :) I did a bookreport about the Book on the Voyge in school. As far as I know amongst the dead of the last battle on the good guys side was a Guy called Jan from my Hometown of Emden in northern Germany.
The Batavia story is such a classic and brings me back to my childhood hearing all the essential Australian folk tales passed down by the oldies.
Impressed by your Dutch pronunciation.
It's not perfect (btw don't expect that either🤣) ,but it's impressive 👍
Thx for a interesting video.😎
Duyfken means “small pigeon”
or Little Dove?
@@RM-au9mmsquab
Strangely, my primary schools choir was quit famous for a while in the 90s. A composer worked with them to write a choir production about batavia and its sinking. I have no idea why... The schools on the east coast. I seem to remember it was quit good.
This makes me want to go on a vaction to see some cool museums
Perth is the most remote large city (population over 1 million) in the world, Adelaide and Jakarta are the nearest large cities and they are thousands of miles away. Probably better to visit eastern Australia and New Zealand where things are a bit closer together, unless you like really remote places.
Been for a short sail on the Duyfken. It *is* tiny. Loved it! Reminded me why I joined the RAN but its a long way from a DDG to matchsticks and sail vessel like Duyfken
I was watching this while cooking, so I had to go back and replay it 3 times to make sure Drach didn't slander the completely serious, totally historially accurate documentary film A Knight's Tale. I thought I was going to have to add it to my list of "Things to fight over next time I see Drach." That list only had 1 other item on it, and it was the slander (sarcasm) of the mighty battleship Maine.
At approx. 17:20 you mentioned "supercargo"...as a title for a person in charge of "cargo"...yet I seem to remember it referring to a "passenger" on a primarily merchant ship that had space available for said passengers...All the best to you and yours . PAB
Very interesting Australian history !
Thank you.
What a pity videos of the quality that Drach routinely posts can't get more than one like per view.
It looks like Drach now knows how to escape the bitter Northern winter, maybe dual citizenship is in order.
My school house was named Duyfkin, and a couple of spots nearby were Dutch landings, a little way down the west coast of the Cape North Peninsula.
GSHS! Can't remember what house I was in there. Pretty sure the house colour was red.
@@euanstevenson32 hahaha is that Gove High?
Mine was South Weipa, primary.
Sorry, should be Cape York peninsula
Wow
A boatload of information.
I love these informative and entertaining videos. I'm glad I'm still around to enjoy them.
Great job, once again. Thanks.
Another fascinating episode, thank you.
Thanks for sharing 👍
I saw the replica of the Dyfkin in horbour in Cairns next to one of the mega yachts of (if I recall) Larry Ellison. The tender of the mega yacht was about the same size as the Dyfkin.
outstanding! deep history here, thank you
Really interesting stuff, thanks!!
Age of Sail: Splendid. TY Drach 😄👍
Loved the chanting.😊
11/10, every time.
thanks, Drach
Interesting story as usual, Drach! I'm trying to do Australia next after the British Isles tour.
This seems like a pretty cool museum.
Thank you.
That was great. I wish I could could be there and join you. Have a good time and thanks for the video.
Having lived in Geraldton (450k north of Perth) for the last thirty five years I am quite familiar with the story of the Batavia and quite a violent one it is too as we have some of the wreckage in an exhibit in our own museum as well as an operational replica of the longboat that survivors sailed to Batavia here though nowhere as comprehensive as the Fremantle facility. There is also a small exhibit on HMAS Sydney from her 1941 battle against the Kormoran as well as the memorial and at the airport a couple of superbly detailed models of both the Sydney and the Kormoran. I've also been fortunate enough to see the Duyfken replica in person and it is really a tiny ship.
Great presentation Drach!
I went to this museum a few years ago and loved it - IMHO well worth a visit. I actually preferred it to the museum just down the road!
A detailed long utube about Batavia please
35:00 great photo of Sydney.
Really interesting. Not sure if I missed it but there is a very good history book published 20 yrs or so ago on the Batavia. Keep up the good work.
That engine is very cool
That is a wild design decision to base your available power on ambient water temperature
That model ship in the glass case looks a lot like the Revel Spanish Galleon 1/96 scale not a Dutch East Indianman .
Spectacular video with a spectacular ending view. How pertinent it would be #42 - the answer to the question: what is the meaning of life and everything?
He’s blonde! He’s tan! He comes from Gelderland!
Excellent book about the insanity of the voyage and wreck is “Batavia's Graveyard”.
Niche.
Wish I had a drydock question but nothing occurs to me. Very intersting having a museum dedicated to shipwrecks.
Excellent video.
Its quite strange to see these things on your channel that I can go and visit.
I recall doing a school project on the Early dutch visitors to our Coast back in 1978. Got an A minus. 😉
I think Rottnest (Island) near Perth translates to Rats Nest.
Obviously the Dutch thought Quokkas to be bloody big Rats. 🤣
Just in case your from central Wisconsin ,what is a ...quokkas ? ( Asking for a friend)...
@@user-ie1tz5rm8x
th-cam.com/users/shortsy47Qvl5pjLQ?si=y8Fm2Q-NVOcvl9wd
Ref: 16:52, the dictionary says that a supercargo is a representative of a ship's owner that accompanies the vessel. They exist in the modern day, at a minimum in a military context. U.S. Army units will send "supercargoes" (Soldiers) on ships moving the unit's equipment to an exercise or real-world deployment.
Pretty cool video, love these old shipwrecks. At least these wrecks are being honored unlike all the ww2 wrecks that got scrapped and pilliaged with no honors around there.
"Sail east, young man, bump into large desert island, do not colonise, head north, earn profits!"
Given the rate at which Australia is moving north it won't be too long, in planetary terms, until New Guinea is the northern tip of Australia. Which will likely rather annoy Jakarta.
Growing up in Geraldton, East of the Abrolhos islands where the Batavia ship wreck happened on, ive always known the pronunciation as 'Bat'(as in cricket bat)-'a'(tay)-'v'(vee)-'ia'(yah) -battayveeyah
The phonetic description is bəˈteɪviə/ It's a reference to a region of the Netherlands (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batavia_(region)). The tribe that lived there was highly rated by the Romans due to their ability to cross rivers with their gear. Which probably contributed to the many later references to them.
It is really endearing to hear you try and pronounce Dutch names. But I fear our language simply is not meant (apparently) to be pronounced correctly by people not native to our language. So don’t feel bad about it. 😁 little fact (not related to nautical history but to WW II) is that the resistance in The Netherlands made new contacts say Scheveningen (city/town in the west of The Netherlands). You simply would not be able too pronounce it correctly unless you were Dutch speaking. 😜
Have you ever done an episode on the USS PC-815? I have tried to look, honestly.
Allowing one's figure head to head-butt an island the size of Australia, while said figure head is still attached to one's ship is more than a little deleterious to the health of ship and crew. This was true back in the 1600s and is still true today :-(
Batavia = WA's version of "Survivor".
You'd reckon that Golding read the story of the Batavia before he wrote lord of the Flies.
Drach….have you come across the VOC’s reaction to Captain Cooks reports from his mapping of the east coast of Australia? As an alternate history, I alway wondered if the Dutch would have settled northern Queensland to grow spices if they had turned south from the Torris Strait.
Holy shit drach, if you need someone to help pronounce old dutch sailor names and ships ou know where to find me haha - great video though!
The channel Scarry Interesting has a good detailed account of the Batavia.
Dat is de Middellijn: The equator.
For those interested in the full story on the Batavia and her crew, I highly recommend Defragged History's series on it. It is very in depth and goes over the whole ordeal in great detail. The first episode is a bit of a slow burn but it becomes a story fit for tv.
I've read Batavia's Graveyard, but I'll have to give that a watch. The whole story is...frankly I don't know if there's a word for it.
@@sawyerawr5783 Grim is the closest I've gotten but it doesn't do it justice. This series does not hold back.
Amazing preserved steam engine
Hi Drach. Great presentation, as always. I would say however that I don't think the model you show @4.45 is the Duyfken. It looks like a larger ship with a separate (open) quarterdeck and poop which the Duyfken didn't have. Also the gun ports on this model are on a lower "gun" deck whereas most of the Dufken's small falcons were on the upper main deck.
Looking forward to seeing your upcoming presentation of the Dufken replica. I went on her twice back in 2005/2006. Absolutely beautifully made replica with some amazing history of it's own.
BTW, did you see the model of William Dampier's ship the Roebuck in the Fremantle Museum? My cousin built that one.
Yep, saw the Roebuck :)
The model in the museum I showed was labelled as Duyfken 😀
@@Drachinifel Curious re the Duyfken. I wonder if this may be a model of the Overijssel, which was apparently originally named the Duyfken (before the smaller newer "jacht" came along)? It certainly looks like the Overijssel shown in this painting of the return of the Second expedition to the East Indies. Curious. Hope to head back over to WA before the end of the year and have a look in at Fremantle so perhaps I can solve that mystery then. 😄 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Dutch_Expedition_to_the_East_Indies#/media/File:De_terugkomst_in_Amsterdam_van_de_tweede_expeditie_naar_Oost-Indi%C3%AB,_Hendrik_Cornelisz_Vroom,_1599,_Rijksmuseum_SK-A-2858.jpg
Ahem! At the 35’ mark I think you meant to say, “With a little bit of help from HM*A*S Sydney.”
Hey, they all belong to the same guy. All the "A" does is specify it is Charles III's Australian subjects who have been delegated to maintain his warship for him as opposed to his Pommy Bastar...British subjects who maintain his vessels with the appellation HMS.
Just be thankful it is not HMCS Sydney, because that means half the crew would be speaking Quebecois and insisting it should be "Le Navire de Sa Majesté Sydney."
Now I think of it: what would Australians call their ships if they did go republican? Can't be "His Majesty's Australian Ship," since his Majesty would not be the sovereign anymore. I don't think Australian Ship quite has the same impact.
Does the pictograph at 27:35 look like it is showing a 3dish image of the ship, with prospective?
Let's go Australia mentioned in something
Clearly I missed all the good stuff when I visited Oz.
5:20 "find new places to trade with etc" is an interesting euthanism for "find more people to enslave at gunpoint to extract resources for you" so more of the etc. than the start of the sentence .
There are movies and documentaries on the Batavia. IMDB is your friend.
G'Day from Perth! Are you still in WA ? If so I'll buy you lunch!
Using the Roaring forties , the Ships would follows the latitude of Amsterdam island , a volcanic island with high inaccessible cliffs
then sail a bit more and head North East to hit Battavia , or at least Indonesian archipelago
the Dutch sailors were very wary of the Australian coast , no water or fresh supplies , the massive iron deposits were interfering with their compass
and the tides of King sound are some of the strongest in the world tossing ships on the coast
best to be avoided if possible
10:00 ... you said "it means crossing the equator".. should be " it means spending more time in the tropics or vicinity".
Is it sad that my mind actually DID go to "A Knights Tale" at the mention of Gelderland?
The VOC only started paying dividends in 1633, hence the invention of the stock exchange because the often very ordinary shareholders couldn't wait 31 years on ROI. It was more about growth and taking the war for independence overseas to Spain's ally and therefore enemy Portugal and block their important source of money and therefore war. Little fortunes were made and for the Dutch Republic it was peanuts anyway because they did most of all European trade and that was much bigger.
It's a real shame that not many people know that the Dutch were the first europeans to discover AU
Fun fact, duifken translates to little pigeon
Gelderland!
when you discuss geography Drach, I have 3 letters: MAP. OK, now at @8:00 perhaps NVM?
"Go figure" - WA has less (Western) history than the UK, so anything 'old' is historic and deserving of care. Maritime history is perfect. (Aside from the climate being hot and dry which preserves material better than cold and wet)
25th, 24 May 2024