The ''Arnhem'' or ''Aernem''Jack, Robert

1921 () was a Dutch East Indiaman sailing vessel that was shipwrecked 12 February 1662 off

Mauritius Mauritius, officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island country in the Indian Ocean, about off the southeastern coast of East Africa, east of Madagascar. It includes the main island (also called Mauritius), as well as Rodrigues, Ag ...

on the Saint Brandon Rocks.

Description

The ''Arnhem'' was built by the Dutch East India Company (Dutch: ''Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie'' or ''VOC'') chamber of Amsterdam at their wharf in 1654.
De VOCsite. Retrieved 4 August 2015. It was named after the city of Arnhem in the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

. The sailing ship was an East Indiaman or ''spiegelretourschip''. It had a capacity of 1,000 tons.

Fate

Captained by Pieter Anthoniszoon, the ''Arnhem'' was one of seven VOC ships that left Batavia on 23 December 1661, homeward bound via the

Cape of Good Hope The Cape of Good Hope ( ) is a rocky headland on the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa. A List of common misconceptions#Geography, common misconception is that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Afri ...

. The other vessels were the '' Wapen van Holland'', ''Prins Willem'', ''Vogel Phoenix'', ''Maarsseveen'', ''Prinses Royal'' and ''Gekroonde Leeuw''. On 11 February 1662, the fleet was scattered by a violent storm. The ''Wapen van Holland'' (920 tons), ''Gekroonde Leeuw'' (1,200 tons) and ''Prins Willem'' (1,200 tons) disappeared without trace. The following day ''Arnhem'' ran aground on the Saint Brandon Rocks (also known as Cargados Carajos), a group of atolls and reefs some 200 kilometres north-east of Mauritius. Volkert Evertsz and other survivors of the wreck survived by piloting a small boat to Mauritius, and are thought to have been the last humans to see live

dodo The dodo (''Raphus cucullatus'') is an extinction, extinct flightless bird that was endemism, endemic to the island of Mauritius, which is east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. The dodo's closest relative was the also-extinct and flightles ...

s. They survived the three months until their rescue by hunting "goats, birds, tortoises and pigs". Evertsz was rescued by the English ship Truroe in May 1662. Seven of the survivors chose not to return with the first rescue ship.

References

{{Reflist 1650s ships Maritime exploration of Australia Ships of the Dutch East India Company Shipwrecks in the Indian Ocean 1660s disasters 17th-century maritime incidents 1662 in transport 1662 in the Dutch Empire 1660s in Africa Ships built in Amsterdam