On the Dodo and a Mysterious Mauritian Schip-wreck

In 1598 the second Dutch ‘spice fleet’ left Texel for East India with eight ships under command of Jacob Corneliszoon van Neck (1564-1638). Admiral Van Neck’s command ship was Mauritius, named after the stadtholder Maurice of Nassau, who was the then leader of the Dutch revolt and a successful general. Vice-Admiral Wybrand van Warwijck (1570 - 1615) captained the Amsterdam. This fleet also included Jacob van Heemskerck (1567-1607), then already a famous arctic explorer.

After rounding the Cape of Hope, the fleet dispersed in a number of storms. Five of the ships lost contact with the admiral. Van Neck’s three ships eventually safely reached Bantam on Java subsequently. There they were loaded up with spices, and eventually returned back to Amsterdam where the voyage turned out to have been immensely financially profitable.

The five other ships under command Vice admiral Van Warwijck landed on a deserted Vulcanic island. The Portuguese had been there in the past and called it Ilha do Cirne or Ilha do Cerne. But the Dutch rechristened it Mauritius. Van Warwijck and Van Heemskerck eventually caught up with Van Neck in Bantam.

The Dutch first landing on Mauritius is rather famous because it includes the first recorded encounter with the Dodo (see for a useful chronology and drawings, Julian P. Hume "The history of the dodo Raphus cucullatus and the penguin of Mauritius." Historical Biology 18.2 (2006): 69-93). A student in my course on imperialism, Magali Cho Lin Wing, did a paper on a copy of a print that represents these events located in Rijksmuseum. What follows is inspired by one of the sources she uses.

Reports of the 1598 voyages were printed pretty much once van Neck returned. These, in turn, were translated into English. In 1703 an edition was published in London, A Collection of Voyages Undertaken by the Dutch East-India Company. Contaning An Account of several Attempts to find out the North-East Passage, and their Discoveries in the East-Indies, and the South Seas. (This source was used by Magali.) The following passage caught my attention:

The Island of Maurice, though uninhabited, and without any four-footed Beasts, is for all that as good and convenient a place to take in Refreshments for the Ships that fail to the East-Indies, as St. Helene is to those that return from the fame. They found in it it 300 pounds weight of Bees-Wax, with Greek Characters written upon it; befides a Deck of a Ship, a Capstone, and a Main-Yard, the remainder undoubtedly of a Shipwrack. 253-254

The Dutch original can be found (here) on p. 6 in a publication from 1648: a Waerachtig Verhael van de Schip-vaert op Oost-Indien, ghedaen by de acht Schepen; in den Iare 1598. van Amsterdam uytgezeylt, onder 't beleyt van den Admirael Jacob Cornelifsz. van Neck, en de Vice-Admiael Wybrand van Warwijck: Ghetrocken Uyt het Journael ofte Dagh-register, voor defen daer van ghedruckt; ende doorgaens, tot beter onderrechtinge des Lefers, uyt verscheyden andere Schrijvers verrijckt.

It would be interesting to learn which original source, if any, originates this claim. (The title of the 1648 publication itself notes that it is derived from multiple sources not just the ship’s log.) So far I have been unable to locate an earlier text with mentions that 300pounds of beeswax or the schripwreck.

That evidence of prior shipwrecks was found near Mauritius should not be so surprising. Prior to the Portuguese, there is reason to believe Arab mariners visited the island since the Middle ages.

But I was startled by the mention of Greek characters on the beeswax. The most likely explanation for the presence of this beeswax was on a shipwrecked Portuguese ship. But in looking through the list of sixteenth century shipwrecks (here) none seemed like an obvious candidate source. So this got me dreaming a bit of Eudoxus of Cyzicus— a second century BC Greek living in Egypt where he seemed to have captained boats up the Nile from Alexandria.

Our best source of Eudoxus’ life is Strabo (who seems to have based himself on Posidonius the Stoic). Strabo himself treats the whole story as a fable no better attested than Plato’s account of Atlantis. And Strabo’s own point is to undercut Posidonius’ claims about the size of Africa. But Strabo recounts the adventures of Eudoxus at some length.

Eudoxus’ sea-adventures started with the attempt to find a sea-link to India without relying on Arabs. On his second voyage back, he ended up sailing down the East coast of Africa. On his route he finds evidence of an earlier shipwreck. And when Eudoxus returns to Egypt he asks around:

But he brought the figure-head to the market-place and showed it to the shipmasters, and learned from them that it was a figure-head from Gades [modern Cadiz]; for he was told that whereas the merchants of Gades fit out large ships, the poor men fit out small ships which they call "horses" from the devices on the prows of their ships, and that they sail with these small ships on fishing voyages around the coast of Maurusia [Western Mauritania] as far as the river Lixus; but some of the shipmasters, indeed, recognized the figure-head as having belonged to one of the ships that had sailed rather too far beyond the Lixus River and had not returned home safely.

And from the above-mentioned fact Eudoxus conjectured that the circumnavigation of Libya was possible, went home,⁠ placed all his property on a ship, and put out to sea.

Here ‘Libya’ stands in for the whole continent of Africa. Finding evidence of a shipwreck on the east coast of Africa means that a ship has been able to circumnavigate around it anticlockwise. (Such a clock would have been probably unfamiliar to Eudoxus, although Posidonius constructed orreries that might have been known to Strabo.)

So, Eudoxus set out on another expedition this time to circumnavigate the continent. Sailing from Cadiz, he seems to have made it as far down as Western Mauritania before he had to flee back to Cadiz. Supposedly undeterred, he fitted another ship to circumnavigate the continent. Strabo following Posidonius describes it as follows:

And again he built a round ship and a long ship of fifty oars, his purpose being to keep to the open sea with his long ship and to explore the coast with the round ship. He put on board agricultural implements, seeds, and carpenters, and again set out with a view to the same circumnavigation; his intention being, in case the voyage should be delayed, to spend the winter on the island he had previously observed, to sow the seed, reap the harvest therefrom, and then finish the voyage which he had decided upon at the outset.

I would like to believe this richly endowed ship includes 300 pounds of Greek beeswax.

What happens next is left unclear. Posidonius, who seems to be committed to the idea that Africa is much smaller than people think and relatively easy to circumnavigate through the circular ocean around it, implies Eudoxus would have returned safely. Strabo treats it all as nonsense. But whatever is true, Eudoxus’ whereabouts have remained unknown. I would like to think it not impossible Eudoxus made it around the stormy Cape of Good Hope to know his vision was not impossible, before disappearing near modern Mauritius.