I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a bit sick of covid-19 restrictions and American politics. This week I thought I’d write about something completely different. Three hundred and ninety-one years ago this month there was a bump in the night and the captain of the Batavia was heard to say, God verdomme. God…
I read today in a newspaper article that systematic excavation of Beacon Island in the Abrolhos group off the West Australian coast has begun with the discovery of a new grave. That might not mean much to many of you, but it does to me. Beacon Island is the modern name for Batavia’s Graveyard, the…
In 1963, the last resting place of the Dutch merchantman Batavia, which hit a reef on the Abrolhos islands off the coast of Western Australia in 1629, was finally found. 1963. It had taken three hundred and eighty-four years before the wreck was finally found. It wasn’t as if the incident hadn’t been recorded. It…