[2025 Fremantle Attraction] Travel Guide for WA Maritime Museum (Updated Feb)

Before the British came to Australia, the European Dutch had sailed to the Australian mainland as early as the 17th century. The Western Australia Maritime Museum is a museum in Australia dedicated to the collection of Dutch nautical ships from the 17th to 18th centuries. The beginning of the 18th century was the period when the Dutch East India Company (Indonesia) was strong, and Jakarta was used as a trading center by the East India Germans. The Western Australian Maritime Museum collects the remains and written materials of four ships of the Dutch East Indies at that time. These four ships ran aground in the waters of Western Australia on their way to East India. For hundreds of years, the remains of these four ships were originally laid on the seabed off the coast of Western Australia. It was not until 1960 that they were slowly excavated and studied by marine archaeologists. After decades of hard work, silver coins were unearthed from the remains of the ships. , cannons, spices, unexpected, porcelain, silk, etc., as if the life of the Dutch navigator at that time reproduced. Among the four ships, the Bataiva, which ran aground in 1629, is well known because after the ship ran aground, the refugees on board fled to the island of Houtman Abdolhos, where large-scale mutiny and multiple murders occurred. In the Maritime Museum, the remains of Bataiva, which were salvaged ashore and then reprocessed, were displayed to reproduce the original appearance of the ship. The huge hull and superb technology made people admire the strong national strength and advanced shipbuilding technology of the Netherlands at that time.