Warrnambool Standard
March 15 1911
Dutch
Galliot at Port Fairy
(Extract)
The party of
Australian scientists which has been investigating the reported discovery at
Port Fairy of the sunken wreck of a galleon returned to Melbourne from their
trip on Monday evening. Mr. D. Le Souef, the curator of the Zoological
Gardens, who was one of the party, states: - “The wreck is evidently a Dutch
galliot,
and not a Spanish galleon, as far as we could judge. She is about 75 feet
long, and very heavily built. The ribs are about 12 inches apart, and her
sheathing is about 2 inches thick. The two ends are almost square, and the
ribs go inwards. The upper deck is gone, but the lower deck is still
there. We have not accurate data as to the period of its construction, but it
would be somewhere about the eighteenth century, and certainly long before white
people were in the vicinity of the wreck. The nearest blacks have been
questioned, and they say that the wreck has been there since the blacks were
piccaninies
[sic]. There is deep water all around this wreck, which makes it
difficult to investigate. We have brought some of the timber with us.
Mr. W.J.
James, who discovered the wreck, is coming to Melbourne to go further into the
matter.”