Ongeluckige voyagie, van’t schip Batavia, nae de Oost-Indien.

A$165,000 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Amsterdam : Jan Jansz, 1647. First edition. Small quarto, papered boards; title-leaf, pp. 118, lacking final blank (as in most copies); six folding copperplates (plate V provided in expert facsimile); some very pale marginal water stains, tiny worm hole to margin of first few leaves; a clean and well preserved copy, housed in a calf clamshell box. The first full account of the wreck of the Batavia , with the first printed European images of Australia. an especially outstanding rarity (Wantrup). The shipwreck of the Batavia remains one of the most gripping stories in maritime history. In 1629, the VOC ship Batavia , under the command of François Pelsaert, was wrecked on Morning Reef on the Houtman Abrolhos off the West Australian coast during her maiden voyage from the Netherlands to Batavia, Java. There were over 300 passengers aboard, mainly settlers, merchants and their families, of whom 40 drowned while attempting to reach shore. The survivors were grouped on two small desolate islands, while Pelsaert and his crew searched the shore on the mainland for a fresh water supply, to no avail. Faced with disaster, Pelsaert and a few companions sailed by longboat along the West Australian coastline and north across the Indian Ocean to the settlement at Batavia, a remarkable feat of navigation which took 33 days and was achieved without fresh supplies. The Batavian Governor-General gave Pelsaert command of a rescue vessel, the Saardam , and he sailed back to the site of the wreck,

• Binding: Hardcover

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