Wrong Place Castaways October 18, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient, Medieval, Modern , trackback
Right through history castaways have been thrown up on foreign shores after a shipwreck, a storm or an argument on board (in many navies marooning was a form of punishment). For those of us interested in Wrong Place and Wrong Time phenomena these castaways are crucial. But how many were actually left behind. For example, how many Europeans got left behind in the Americas from 1492 to 1600, in the first age of exploration? How many Mediterranean sailors found themselves lost down the coast of Africa in ancient and medieval times? How many American Indians were washed over to Euro-Asia? These questions are fascinating but impossible to answer.
Or are they? While reading Mike Dash’s Graveyard of the Batavia Beach came across this paragraph, which comes as close as we will perhaps ever get to a convincing attempt to calculate a rough number of castaways from one region in another: in this case Europeans on the coast of Australia before that continent was settled by the English.
During its 200-year history, the VOC* lost 1 in 50 of its ship is outward bound, and nearly 1 in 20 on the return voyage, a total of 246 vessels. At least 3 of these ships, and possibly as many as 8 or 10, were wrecked along the western coast. A minimum of 75 more Dutchmen, and perhaps as many as 200, are known to have been cast up on the South-Land [Australia] as a result [182 on epub]
Of course, this is limited, to just Dutch vessels. There may, in earlier times, have been Portuguese vessels. There was certainly, towards the end of the period, British ships. So this is all very, very approximate. But it suggests that the Australian coast could have been salted with anything from 50 to 1000 Europeans before the first European settlements. Of course, many of these castaways will have died shortly after arrival, some will have been killed by the local Aboriginal population, but a number presumably co-habited or settled down with the Aborigines and their DNA (there are some stories of ‘white aborigines’), their knowledge and perhaps, in some cases, their technologies could have leaked into these ‘pristine’ communities. Estimates for the population of Australia prior to European settlement range from quarter of a million to a million. Five hundred Europeans gives us lots of scope for explaining curiosities and myths, but presumably this is just too few for real cultural change? The thing where the white man becomes the tribal god and teaches them to shoot fire is more Hollywood than history?
Any other thoughts on castaways: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
* the Verenigde Oost-indische Compagnie, the United East India Company, the Dutch monopoly on eastern trade.
