Other-waters

The ‘Mayflower’ was the ship which transported the Pilgrim Fathers from Plymouth, England to "North Virginia" (in what was later to become the United States of America) in 1620, leaving Plymouth on September 6 and dropping anchor near Cape Cod on November 21.

‘Nautilus’ was a schooner launched in 1799 and purchased by the United States Navy in 1803 as ‘USS Nautilus’, the first ship to bear that name. She served in the First Barbary War. Altered to a brigantine, she was captured by the British during the War of 1812.

‘Nautilus’ was built in 1799 as a merchant vessel by Henry Spencer on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. She was purchased by the Navy in May 1803, at Baltimore, Maryland, from Thomas Tennant; and commissioned 24 June 1803, Lieutenant Richard Somers in command.

The ‘Batavia’ was a ship of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) which struck a reef on the Houtman Abrolhos, a chain of islands off the Western Australian coast, on 4 June 1629.

For the VOC, a shipwreck was not so unusual; it happened regularly during its long history. What made this shipwreck special was the extraordinary drama that followed. The commander of the ship, Francisco Pelsaert, together with all the senior officers, a few crew members and some passengers, left the disaster site in search of water, leaving behind 268 people still alive on the wreck.

‘Nuestra Señora de Atocha” was the most famous of a fleet of Spanish ships that sunk in 1622 off the Florida Keys while carrying copper, silver, gold, tobacco, and indigo from Spanish ports at Cartagena, Colombia, Porto Bello in New Granada and Havana bound for Spain.

The ‘Atocha’ was driven off course by a hurricane that scattered the fleet, then wrecked on September 6 on the coral reefs off the Keys. Only five of the 265 members of the crew and passengers survived.