Digital archive of shipwreck journals

The Western Australian Museum and the Netherlands National Archives are creating a digital archive of journals and documents relating to the ships and shipwrecks associated with the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC) in Australia. The project has been funded by grants from the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Canberra; the Commonwealth Department of the Environment and Energy, Protecting National Historic Sites: Batavia National Heritage Sites Listing Maritime Archaeological Project; and the Australian Research Council Linkage Grant: Roaring 40s.

The objective of the project is to create a website that shows the original, high-resolution images of the pages of the documents and journals, that exist in the archives, of all of the vessels that visited Australia, alongside transcriptions (in Dutch) and translations (in English). The site is in the ealy stage of development and shows three journals, on this Online Collections site, with more to come. The web pages, created by the WA Museum’s web team, provide for the first time, up-to-date documents describing the contents of the journals. 

The translations and transcriptions have been provided by a number of experts in 17th century Dutch manuscripts including Adriaan de Jong, Menno Leenstra, Ruud Paesie and Helena Liebenberg.