Ridderschap Van Holland (1682) - Final Voyage

Final Voyage

On 11 July 1693, the Ridderschap van Holland departed Wielingen on a voyage to Batavia. She arrived at the Cape of Good Hope on 9 January 1694, remaining there until 5 February. She sailed from the Cape with a crew of around 300, and two passengers. She never reached her destination, and was never heard from again. Contemporary rumours suggested that she had sprung her mast rounding the Cape, limped north and been captured by pirates based at Fort Dauphin, near the south-eastern corner of Madagascar. However, Abraham Samuel, the pirate supposedly responsible, did not arrive in the area until 1697.

In 1697, Willem de Vlamingh was sent with three ships to search for the Ridderschap van Holland at Île Saint-Paul and Île Amsterdam, and then along the west coast of Australia. Nothing was found. Two years later, two ships made investigations while visiting Madagascar, but without success.

It is probable that the Ridderschap van Holland was actually wrecked in the Pelsaert Group of the Houtman Abrolhos islands off the coast of Western Australia. The crew of a later East Indiaman, the Zeewijk, which was wrecked on Pelsaert Island in 1727, discovered the remains of a Dutch ship of approximately the correct antiquity on their island, together with numerous artefacts, such as bottles, that suggested some of a ship's crew had survived in the islands for a considerable time. John Lort Stokes, captain of the HMS Beagle, also saw these artefacts in 1840. It is now widely thought that these artefacts were from the Ridderschap van Holland, although it is possible that they came from the Fortuyn, which disappeared in 1724 and is now thought to have been wrecked near Cocos Islands.

Any archaeological remains were destroyed by guano mining on the island in the early 20th century, so positive identification of the wreck is now impossible.