Misadventures in Nature's Paradise by Andrew Viduka

Author:Andrew Viduka
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UWA Publishing

Figure 59. The Dutch barque Vice Admiraal Rijk.

Of the 20 men on board, only three survived the wrecking event. They managed to scale the cliffs and live ashore, eating raw seabirds for 57 days before being rescued by the passing ship Amicitia. Roelof Bennet, one of the survivors, left a detailed account of the wrecking event and his experience on the island. The title page of the book containing Bennet’s account translates as:

Historic and literary curiosities, descriptions of nature, geographical particularities (features/curiosities), historical and romantic stories. Collected from the pen of several famous and anonymous writers as well as ‘scholarly’ and skilled translators from the best pieces of foreign periodic and other works.13

Despite the book’s title, the Bennet account generally matches the geographical features of the island and the other sources regarding the loss of the vessel, and it can be regarded as a historical rather than a romantic account.

Bennet would have celebrated his 40th birthday aboard the Vice Admiraal Rijk on 10 March, three days after they left Ramsgate. He was born in Velthausen, Germany, in 1812 and appears to have lived for a time in Ede, Netherlands, as an officer (lieutenant at sea 2nd class) of the Royal Netherlands Navy, before departing for Batavia.14

After his rescue, Bennet returned to the Netherlands, and on 27 April 1854, he married Adele Douin in Amsterdam. Together they had three daughters, all born on Banda Neira in Indonesia. Bennet’s wife died there on 13 July 1864, but it is not known when Bennet died. He wrote the following account of his shipwreck experience:

The Christmas, or Kerstijds, Island is at 105° gr. 33' longitude [of Greenwich] and 10°32' south latitude, about 55 miles from Java. It is three and a half hours wide and four hours long [presumably he meant minutes of angular measurement rather than hours]. It consists of coral rocks, with trees whose crowns are occupied and it is only approachable on the north-western side. On all the other sides it is surrounded by steep cliffs, and it provides no ground to anchor, because within a few fathoms of the island, the sea is so deep that a sounding lead cannot reach the bottom. There were never residents other than some Indians who, however, after spending nine months said goodbye again to this inhospitable land.

On the 27 June 1852, at noon, we were, according to observations, 15 [Dutch] miles south of Christmas Island, to which we set sail in hopes of getting it in sight before nightfall. The wind was southeast and east southeast.

Unfortunately, the weather changed in the evening and heavy rain, in the direction of the island, forced us out of caution to sail away from it. After they moved the bow to the south, we moved, with reduced sail, to sea. At 9.30 pm the sky brightened and we could see the island, approximately three and a half geographical miles from us; at about 10 pm we turned the prow towards the north, to sail around the island at a distance of seven or eight miles.

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