The Abrolhos tragedy is the only English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 translation

Translation

Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...

 of Isaac Commelin

Isaac Commelin

Isaac Commelin was a Dutch historian.-Life:He wrote Lives of the Stadtholders William I and Maurice and Beginning and Ending of the Dutch East India Company, as well as other basic works in the fields of geography, cosmography and astronomy, discovery and travel...

's 1647 Ongeluckige voyagie, van't schip Batavia, which was the first published account of the 1629 shipwreck

Shipwreck

A shipwreck is what remains of a ship that has wrecked, either sunk or beached. Whatever the cause, a sunken ship or a wrecked ship is a physical example of the event: this explains why the two concepts are often overlapping in English....

 of the Batavia

Batavia (ship)

Batavia was a ship of the Dutch East India Company . It was built in Amsterdam in 1628, and armed with 24 cast iron cannons and a number of bronze guns. Batavia was shipwrecked on her maiden voyage, and was made famous by the subsequent mutiny and massacre that took place among the survivors...

in the Houtman Abrolhos

Houtman Abrolhos

The Houtman Abrolhos is a chain of 122 islands, and associated coral reefs, in the Indian Ocean off the west coast of Australia. Nominally located at , it lies about eighty kilometres west of Geraldton, Western Australia...

, and the subsequent mutiny and massacre that occurred amongst the survivors.

The translation came about after Florance Broadhurst

Florance Broadhurst

Florance Constantine Broadhurst was a 19th century Western Australian businessman who is most notable for successfully taking over the management of a number of business ventures of his notoriously unsuccessful, yet extremely creative and hard-working father, Charles Edward Broadhurst, and...

, who was managing a guano

Guano

Guano is the excrement of seabirds, cave dwelling bats, and seals. Guano manure is an effective fertilizer due to its high levels of phosphorus and nitrogen and also its lack of odor. It was an important source of nitrates for gunpowder...

 mining operation in the Houtman Abrolhos, acquired a first edition of Ongeluckige voyagie, and commissioned Willem Siebenhaar

Willem Siebenhaar

Willem Siebenhaar was a social activist and writer in Western Australia from the 1890s until he left Australia in 1924. His literary contributions and opposition to policies such as conscription were his most notable contributions to the history of the state.-Biography:Siebenhaar was born in The...

 to translate it. The translations was eventually published in the 1897 "Christmas Edition" (24 December) of Western Australia

Western Australia

Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...

's The Western Mail

Western Mail (Western Australia)

The Western Mail, or Western Mail, was the name of two weekly newspapers published in Perth, Western Australia.-West Australian newspapers:...

.

The Abrolhos tragedy is credited with having greatly increased interest in the Batavia incident in Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. Specifically, Henrietta Drake-Brockman

Henrietta Drake-Brockman

-Early life:Henrietta Frances York Drake-Brockman was born in Perth, Western Australia in 1901. She was educated in Scotland, the land of her mother, and at Frensham School]Frensham school for girls in Mittagong. She studied literature at the University of Western Australia and art in Henri Van...

 credits 'it with having fed her fascination with the incident—a fascination that ultimately resulted in her undertaking and publishing research that was key to the discovery of the wreck in 1970.

External links

• Pelsaert, Batavia, 1629 Facsimile of . Ongeluckige voyagie, van't schip Batavia, nae de Oost-Indien [Pelsaert Journal].
• Text of The Abrolhos Tragedy Siebenhaar, Willem, The Western Mail (Christmas Edition 1897).