Page 23 - Kennemerland VOC ship, 1664 - Published Reports

W.A. FORSTER & K.B.HIGGS: KENNEMERLAND
20 bale of paper
30,000 weight of pitch and tar
100 dozen of bridle bitts and stirion irons 30 great guns
Sails, cables, anchors
The gold and silver was equal to 242,400 guilders[81which is in close agreement with the figure in the Dutch archives of 240,000 guilders.
The court appeared to be unaware that half of this amount was aboard the Rijnland. Robert Hunter promised the islanders . . . 'the fourt of all that should be wene or dragged out of the sea ylle he did not deny to them till they wan thrie chists of gold and silver. . . .' Another witness described how on 16 January '3 little chests with strong
iron bands and double locked were dragged up from the sea bottom. ..'whilst yet another witness said that 'He saw 3 chests numbered
1, 2 and 4. He heard that one contained 16 bags of gold, another 8, and 3rd €2000 Scots of layed money ...' Since each bag contained 900 ducats the total amount recovered was equal to 114,200 guilders. After being taken to the Orkneys the money was rather be- latedly handed over to Patrick Blair, the Sheriff of the Orkneys and Shetland. The Court wrongly assumed the remainder of the 240,000 guilders to have been secretly salvaged by the Earl whereas we know it to have been aboard the Rijnland. This error was to lose the Earl his estates.
Five iron guns and two brass guns were also recovered and taken by Patrick Trail to Kirk- wall in the Orkneys. The Earl gave the five less valuable iron cannons to Captain William Sinclair 'for the use of the King's garison' at Lerwick['] but he retained the two brass cannons at his house in Birsay. There is some evidence that the Dutch may have sent a ship to carry out salvage on the Kennemerland.[81
The Earl did not appear to answer the charges against him and in its judgement the Court demanded the return of the three missing chests of gold and silver and of the two brass cannons. A more detailed assess- ment of the Court hearings is given in the full report of our expedition.
The seizure of the wreck of the Kennemer- land provided Charles I1 with a pretext for
passing an Act of Parliament on 27 December 1669 to recover the Crown estates of Orkney and Shetland from the Earl of MortonIs1.
Charles I1 gave the wreck of the Kennemer- land to Alexander Bruce, the second Earl of Kincardine (Green, 1895). The warrant grant- ing the Kennemerlandto the Earl referred to salvage work on the wreck by a Captain Andrew Dick who had been appointed Ste- ward Principal and Chamberlain of Orkney and Shetland on 30 July 1669. He had been granted a commission from the Scottish Treasury to salvage the Kennemerland. Like the Earl of Morton he failed to surrender what he recovered to the Crown so in con- sequence his commission was cancelled. On the death of the Earl of Kincardine, Charles I1 gave the wreck of the Kennemerland to the Earl's widow, Dame Veronica de Areskin Von Somersdyke (or Somelsdijk)[lol, her heirs, and assignees (Dallas, 1774). As a result of the merger of the Earldoms of
Elgin and Kincardine in 1747, it would seem quite likely that the current Earl of Elgin is the legal owner of the wreck of the Kennemerland[' I.
It is not known whether the Earl of Kin- cardine or his widow attempted to salvage the wreck, but it is known that a salvage diver worked on both the De Liefde[lal and the Kennemerlandbetween1729-35. (Bax,1970.) This diver was probably John Lethbridge""].
The search for the Kennemerland (Fig. 1)
The area of search during the 1971 expedition extended from the south face of Old Man's Stack, around Stoura Stack, and included the whole of the harbour. The extremely rugged, kelp-covered bottom and the pre- sence of at least three modem wrecks further complicated the search.
Knowing the Kennemerland struck Stoura Stack we intended to start our search there but were misled by the Ordnance Survey map which confuses Stoura Stack with the adjacent Old Man's Stack. We did, however, find two badly corroded iron cannons and a small area of concretion on the seaward side of Old Man's Stack. An exhaustive search using moving jack stays and an underwater
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