An unforgettable story of survival, brought to life by a master storyteller.” [Susanna Lynley Book Review]

The Zeewijk wreck – the last of the four known Dutch shipwrecks on Western Australia’s coast – has long been eclipsed by the infamous Batavia tragedy a century earlier. But unlike the Batavia’s descent into mutiny and massacre, the Zeewijk story unfolded as a very different ordeal, the survivors facing extraordinary hardship far from any hope of rescue. Some circumstances favoured the stranded crew, but death stalked them closely and the outcome had a certain grim inevitability. Marooned on Houtman’s Abrolhos, an ambitious and unprecedented plan was conceived. If successful, it would be a first, and indeed the only record anywhere of such an achievement.
The Zeewijk-Tortelduijf story deserves far greater prominence in Australia’s maritime history.