Shipwreck Galleries

The Shipwreck Galleries occupy a beautiful 1850s commissariat store on Cliff Street, the oldest public building in Western Australia. They display the recovered remains and cargo of the four major Dutch East India Company wrecks off the Western Australian coast — the Batavia, Zuytdorp, Vergulde Draeck, and Zeewijk — together with the more recent wreck of the Rapid.

The reconstructed stern of the Batavia, with original timbers cradled on a modern frame, is the highlight. Smaller exhibits cover marine archaeology technique, the Gilt Dragon and Vergulde Draeck cargo of silver bullion, and the everyday life of Dutch sailors at the start of the seventeenth century. Free entry. Allow ninety minutes.

things to do museum
A story
The Galleries hold the bow timbers and stone cargo of the Batavia, the Dutch East India ship wrecked off the Houtman Abrolhos in 1629. The mutiny that followed the wreck — orchestrated by under-merchant Jeronimus Cornelisz, who systematically murdered around 125 survivors on the islands before being hanged on a third — is one of the darkest stories in Australian colonial history.