Fremantle Shipwreck Galleries

The year 1629. Dutch ship The Batavia closes in on new found land now known as Australia, but never arrives at its destination.

Dutch ship the Batavia in Fremantle

It was shipwrecked after striking a reef in the Abrolhos Islands and almost 400years later it sits in the Fremantle ShipWreck Galleries Maritime Museum. The highlight of the museum is the remaining 1/4 of the Batavia lifted by divers in the 1970s. However the back of the museum contains something potentially more interesting: The steam engine.

Steam Engine in the museum

Part of the $2 entrance by donation fee is going towards restoring the original engine, potentially producing a working model, so far the brass nuts have had to be replaced with new items due to the nature of nuts wearing out, but every other part of the engine found can be reused.

Skeleton from shipwreck

You can also meet a very unique man here too; one of the first Europeans to arrive in Australia. In 1963 an excavation of  Beacon Island (The Batavia’s graveyard) found 2 preserved skeletons in a coral reef. The man to your left here was in his late 30s and 1.8M (6feet) tall. He is missing his right foot and has his right shoulder blade broken and damage to the skull.

The rest of the museum is made up of relics from the Batavia and other Dutch shipwrecks ‘Zuytdorp, Zeewijk, and Vergulde Draeck’ and items from Australia’s first mariners.

Items include shoes, pottery, glass bottles (from newer ships when glass became cheaper to manufacture), coins (from many different countries), irons, chains, dice, cannons, a chessboard and many pieces that make a ship up.

Chess set found in a shipwreck

Much like other parts of Fremantle, the Shipwreck Galleries was built by convicts as a commissariat building and is located on Cliff street, it is open daily except Wednesdays and public holidays.

Tagged as: Australia, Fremantle, Museum, Perth, Travel, Western Australia