This website is a record of four expeditions conducted in 2001.
They all share a global maritime archaeological heritage. Locating the wrecks of the early explorers
Rose and Louis de Freycinet and William Dampier has been important to Australia for these
explorers charted much of its coastline and reported on the land and its peoples. To inspect the
wrecks and to report on their remains was to pave the way for a greater understanding and for a
number of exhibitions and works on the explorers and their ships.

The James Matthews, ostensibly a mundane trading brig lost near Fremantle in the mid 19th
century, was later found to have been a former slave ship. It was an amazing discovery, for
just over 24 metres long, it had earlier been captured with an astonishing 433 African slaves.
The 2001 report details remedial work at the site.

The Japanese attack on the 'sleepy pearl town' of Broome in 1942 shocked the world. Over half a
century later, maritime archaeologists piece together the nightmare that was 'Australia's Pearl Harbour'.

In 2001 the Western Australian Maritime Museum set out to locate, survey and document these sites
and piece together the links binding these seemingly disparate elements as part of the Australian and
the world's maritime heritage.