I know this wreck is in Australia, the Zuytdorp ?
I keep reading about this Dutch ship where all the silver Guilders are lying stuck to the seabed, all they need is to be pried loose.
Only problem it's at the bottom of a cliff miles from anywhere with only half a day a year where it's calm enough to even think about diving it......
In 1988, an American woman who had married a Shark Bay Aboriginal man contacted Dr Playford and described how her husband had died some years before from a disease called variegate porphyria. Playford found that the disease was genetically linked and largely confined to Afrikaners and that all cases of the disease in South Africa were traceable back to Gerrit Jansz and Ariaantjie Jacobs, who had married in The Cape in 1688. The Zuytdorp had arrived at the Cape in March 1712 where it took on more than 100 new crew. It was thought that one of the Jansz' sons could have boarded the ship at this time and thus become the carrier of the disease into the Australian Aboriginal population. In 2002, a DNA investigation into the hypothesis of a variegate porphyria mutation having been introduced into the aboriginal population by shipwrecked sailors was undertaken at the Queen Elizabeth II Medical Centre in Nedlands, Western Australia and the Stellenbosch University in South Africa.[5] The conclusion was that the mutations were not inherited from shipwrecked sailors. The SS Xantho and other late 19th century vessels brought hundreds of pearl divers to Western Australia from the islands occupied by the Dutch East India Company, where diseases (including genetic diseases) were introduced by the Dutch to the local population. Many of those pearl divers are known to have intermarried with Aboriginal people, so it is equally likely that any genetic links between Australian Aborigines and the Dutch can be traced to those sources and not to the Zuytdorp, despite the ship pictured on Walga Rock.
The ship were again pointed out to the local legend and Tamala Station head stockman, Tom Pepper. He had got the information from his Aboriginal wife Lurlie and her family. He pointed out the exact location to Phillip Playford. Tom Pepper and his son, Tom Pepper JR, were allso involved in the process of saving goods from the ship, in several dangerous operations due to the shifting weather. Phillip Playford's subsequent book, Carpet Of Silver: The Wreck Of The Zuytdorp, won awards and has run into many editions. It in turn was followed by radio personality Bill Bunbury reviewing the issues of the wreck and consequences in the chapter A Lost Ship-Lost People - The Zuytdorp story in his work Caught in Time - Talking Australia History. The site, one of the few restricted zones under the Commonwealth Historic Shipwrecks Act 1976, remains under regular surveillance. The Western Australian Museum in both Fremantle and at Geraldton has produced exhibitions on the wreck, a website, and many reports. Due to the logistical difficulties and the advent of Health and Safety legislation prohibiting the taking of risk in an occupational environment, the Zuytdorp program was again shelved in 2002, though work remains to be done.[6][7] Recently there has been renewed interest in the authenticity of an inscription reading "Zuytdorp 1711" that was once visible on a rock-face adjacent to the reef platform at the site. Post-dating Phillip Playford's first visits in 1954/5, when photographs of the same area show no inscription, this is a modern artefact.
