Ship (3m).
L/B/D:
157.5 × 38.2 × 19.5 dph (48m × 11.6m × 5.9m). Tons:
1,110 disp. Hull:
wood. Comp.:
191 crew; 123 soldiers; 3 pass. Arm.:
8 × 12pdr, 16 × 8pdr, 8 × 4pdr, 10 swivels. Built:
Oostenburg Shipyard (VOC), Amsterdam; 1744.
Between 1602 and 1799, the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (United East India Company, or VOC) built 1,700 East Indiamen for the long-distance trade between the Netherlands and the East Indies. Amsterdam was one of the largest of the 150-voet class approved in 1742. (One voet equals 1.05 feet.) Laid down in April of 1744, she was finished in time to join the VOC's autumn fleet to Batavia and loaded in the deep water anchorage off the Texel. Under Captain Willem Klump, she sailed on November 15 but was three times forced back by North Sea gales. On January 8, 1745, she sailed in company with five other ships, only to encounter more gales off the Downs in the English Channel. When the weather cleared, she sailed farther down channel until she grounded and lost her rudder; Klump then anchored off Hastings. Perhaps threatened by mutiny—his sailors had been dying at the rate of about three per day—Klump attempted to run his ship aground in an effort to save her, which he did January 26, off Bulverhithe, just west of Hastings. The passengers and most of the crew landed safely, although within two days fifty more crew had died ashore and many were too ill to leave the ship. Amsterdam settled into the beach at the rate of about 6 inches a day, and her keel came to rest about 20 feet below the surface. The wreck was never forgotten, and during the summer of 1969 curious workers laying a sewage pipe began exploring the area with a backhoe and located the ship beneath the sand in 50°50N, 00°31E. At this point, thanks largely to the energetic efforts of maritime archaeologist Peter Marsden and others, the ship was legally secured when Britain accepted the Dutch government's right to the wreck. Although much of the ship's contents had been saved (including more than 300,000 florins worth of silver) or plundered at the time of the wreck, Amsterdam's remaining stores, including medical supplies, clothing, wine and beer, and other artifacts of shipboard life provide a fine view of life aboard these lumbering merchantmen that spent more than nine months at sea in a quest for the spices of the Orient. In 1989 the city of Amsterdam launched a full-scale sailing replica of the East Indiaman called Amsterdam II.
Friedman, "Amsterdam II." Marsden, The Wreck of the "Amsterdam." Van Rooij & Gawronski, East Indiaman Amsterdam.
