Unique bid to rewrite a painful past
Archaeologist wants to involve locals in search for Dutch shipwreck
● For some it’s the ship that caused all the trouble — a reminder of a painful past, buried somewhere in the beach sand of Table Bay.
For maritime archaeologist Bruno Werz the Dutch ship Nieuw Haarlem, which he is convinced he has found, planted the seeds of a shared future.
He has launched a unique survey to find out if South Africans want him to dig up a ship that dumped a group of white castaways in the Cape almost five years before Jan van Riebeeck arrived. If his project gets the thumbs-up, he wants locals to get involved — to help rewrite history.
Werz has been searching for the Haarlem for 30 years. A test excavation in 2019 yielded a few potential artefacts, sent for lab testing at Wits University.
But his discoveries in the Dutch archives are possibly more significant — a diary of one of the castaways contradicting the colonial narrative of conflict between the earliest European visitors and indigenous communities.
Unlike the centuries of bloodshed that followed Van Riebeeck’s arrival, the shipwrecked crew of the Haarlem engaged peacefully with local tribes for about a year, trading and calling each other by their first names. The crew’s experience — captured in the diary of merchant Leendert Jansz, and redacted by Werz in his 2017 book The Haarlem Shipwreck — was largely responsible for Van Riebeeck’s subsequent mission to establish a permanent base in the Cape. It paints a picture fundamentally different to Van Riebeeck’s published views on “hostile natives”.
By contrast, Jansz said of his early encounters with the locals: “We believe strongly that the farmers in this country, when one would shoot their cattle and take these away without payment as no justice was to be feared, they would not be one hair better than these indigenous people. We, of the aforementioned ship, testify very differently in this matter, as after we had been there for approximately five months, the indigenous people came to the fort (that had been constructed for our defence) in all friendliness to barter and they brought cattle and sheep in quantities. Also, on one occasion the first mate, the carpenter and the corporal ... went as far as to where the houses of the indigenous people stood ... They were received and treated in a friendly manner by the aforementioned inhabitants, who could have beaten them to death as they were in their hands, should they have been inclined to cannibalism (as has been suggested by some).”
Werz wants to reignite the spirit of the shipwreck survivors by involving local communities in his work — a unique approach to archaeology that so far appears to have support. In 2019 he reached out to Cape Flats schools to teach them about the Haarlem project. Now he wants to make it a shared project — thereby encouraging a more balanced view of history and not the top-down colonial perspective.
Pretoria attorney Naazneen Khan, who works with Werz as a board member of the African Institute for Marine and Underwater Research, Exploration and Education (Aimure), said social cohesion is a vital aspect of the Haarlem project. “What is amazing about the project is that the Haarlem has so many different stories to tell, and it means different things to different people depending on their historical, professional and social backgrounds. What we as Aimure hope to achieve is bringing these communities together to discuss how they identify with the project from their perspectives and to bring these stories to life.”
She added: “Not many people know or realise the significance of the wrecking of the Haarlem and how this formed the catalyst for the model of South Africa we have today. With my background as an attorney, for example, I can identify with the Haarlem by the fact that a large part of our legal system is founded on Roman Dutch law principles ... This is how far the influence of the Haarlem wreck has impacted us.”
Historical records show the ship foundered in Table Bay on March 25 1647. About half the crew lived for a year in a makeshift camp on Blouberg beach before returning to the Netherlands. The Jansz report has remained largely hidden from view despite its crucial role in motivating the Dutch East India Company to dispatch Van Riebeeck to set up a permanent refreshment station.
Werz said there is historical irony in Van Riebeeck being a celebrated colonial hero when in fact, despite his misgivings about indigenous communities, he was found guilty of dishonest conduct during his professional service. “The [Jansz] report also states that to run the Cape expedition a good and honest officer was needed — but Van Riebeeck turned out to be different. If somebody else had been in command, history could have turned out very differently.”
“He [Van Riebeeck] was a company servant who had earlier been reprimanded for illicit trading in the East [and] was ordered back to the Dutch Republic where he was tried, discharged and then reinstated about two years later,” Werz wrote in his book. “It is clear from his comments that Van Riebeeck was not as positively inclined towards the indigenous people as Jansz. He states that: ‘These are completely untrustworthy, but a brutal gang that live without any conscience.’”
Werz hopes his survey of local interest in the wreck will provide the necessary crosscultural mandate to take the next step — retrieving the wreck from beneath the sand.
The South African Heritage Resources Agency is aware of his intention to restart on-site work. “We are always happy to hear about prospective research and shall keep an eye out for any permit applications coming our way,” said head of maritime archaeology Lesa la Grange.