Original subtitles

The Abrolhos Islands...

it's wild, but beautiful.

I spend a lot of time out here.

I've got a little aquaculture business.

And I just love this wild isolation, I suppose.

When it gets rough here, it's so rough, mate.

You don't want to hit this reef in a boat.

No way. Good luck in surviving.

Over the last 400 years,

there's a lot of ships that have come to peril on this reef.

It was a ship trap.

Still is today.

I still hold hope that there is some hidden wrecks and hidden gems

beneath the seas around here.

One of them's called the Ridderschap van Holland,

a very important historic Dutch ship.

It left Holland, was never found.

Like, not even a trace of it was found.

So, this is the one that some believe might be on this island.

It's gonna be awesome to find.

In the unpredictable waters of the infamous Abrolhos Islands...

If they get caught in one of those breakers,

they're just going to be high and dry, smack into the reef.

...the shipwreck hunters are chasing

one of the greatest maritime mysteries.

This reef is so low-lying they would never see it at night.

So there's a very good chance we could find a wreck.

And a discovery could make history.

This whole mission's coming down to this moment.

That... Oh!

What is it, Al?

They look like cannons.

Andre, you know what "Abrolhos" means in Portuguese?

No. "Watch out. Keep your eyes open."

-Makes sense. -Big time.

You haven't been to the Abrolhos until you hit the bottom.

The Abrolhos Islands sit 60 kilometers

off the Western Australian coast.

The web of 122 low-lying atolls and hidden reefs

has been a shipping hazard for centuries.

It's also the location of the shipwreck hunters' next mission.

But first, they're diving the known wreck, Ben Ledi,

to check their equipment and procedures.

We've just pulled up at Long Island and we're gonna go for a test dive.

Here, on the shore, there's a beautiful wreck.

So this kind of training will help dial us in.

The team, they're gonna absolutely love it because they can see the rib structures

all camouflaged in all the coral.

And it's good for future searches so they know what to look for.

We're going in on scuba. Gives us more time on the bottom

and the opportunity to be really meticulous.

We've got all of our camera gear as well.

I'm actually really excited.

The water down here is so clear.

It's so crazy, Nushy.

Plenty of fish.

Beautiful structure.

Right. Big ribs and...

So good.

So much amazing fish life.

It's surreal down here.

How are those big admiralty anchors in the guts?

Nice, beautiful sharks.

Between the three of us, we should have heaps of data.

That's great, good work.

We'll see you back on the surface shortly.

Here they are now.

So sick!

That was just crazy.

-Didn't want to get out. -So many fish?

That was pretty epic.

It's amazing.

Let's get moving, get back to camp.

The Abrolhos Islands are home to a lobster fishing community.

For part of the year, Ash also lives here,

tending to his sustainable seaweed farm.

For the next 10 days, it'll also be home for the shipwreck hunters...

-Coming in hot! -...while they search

for one of history's great missing ships.

There you go, mate.

So, this is the ship that vanished. The Ridderschap.

"Ridderschap" means "knighthood" in Dutch.

And it left Holland back in the 17th century.

And we're in the small pocket where it could be.

Mate, it's been my dream to find it.

In 1693, Ridderschap van Holland,

one of the largest ships of the powerful Dutch East India Company,

set sail for a distant trading outpost.

On board was one of the most important men of the time,

Admiral Sir James Couper, the new Consul Extraordinaire to Batavia.

After resupplying at the Cape of Good Hope,

the next stop should have been the spice capital of Batavia.

When approaching the little-known southland,

Ridderschap van Holland had orders to turn north

and track parallel to modem-day Western Australia.

But somewhere along this route,

the ship and its 300 crew vanished.

One theory is that it disappeared in the waters of the Abrolhos Islands.

The Abrolhos is sticking out here as a trap off the coast.

And so, you might be sailing up the coast thinking you're in clear water

and suddenly you're on the reefs.

It's a mystery that has fascinated geologist and shipwreck hunter,

Alasdair Cooke, for decades.

The Ridderschap's a really important ship,

has just an incredible story.

Alasdair has shipwreck hunting in his blood.

In the 1960s, here in the Abrolhos Islands,

one of his relatives co-discovered another historic Dutch wreck, Batavia.

As a kid, I just remember thinking, "What a cool thing to do,"

you know, like, what a great interest to have in your life,

researching these missing wrecks.

Alasdair has combined historical records

and geophysical surveys of the Abrolhos Islands,

trying to find telltale signs of a shipwreck.

If it's on the West Australian coast,

it's a big area to cover.

However, there are ways you can narrow down the odds.

-Let me show you. -Awesome.

-The Abrolhos... -Here you go.

Good on you, thanks.

So, we've been looking for 25 years up and down the West Australian coast.

And the way we're doing it that's different

is we're using a airborne magnetometer,

like a metal detector strapped to a helicopter.

And fly along the coast right on the reef line.

We get anomalies when there's some kind of steel object on the reef.

So any wreck that's got cannons or anchors is going to show up.

When flown close to the surface,

a magnetometer will detect objects that are dense in iron

and could be part of a shipwreck.

Alasdair has scanned a section of the Abrolhos Islands

with some intriguing results.

So if there's two locations where there's strong anomalies

that'd mean there's definitely steel there

and they don't correlate with any known wrecks.

And we've tried to dive this area,

but we just couldn't get out

with the swell conditions the way they were.

But that's where you guys come in.

We'll give you the exact coordinates of where these magnetic anomalies are

and then you'll need to run in between the waves,

get right over the top of those coordinates

or as close as you can, and see what's on the bottom.

And, Al, how do you know that the way that you read the data actually works?

We know it works because all of the things that we've flown over,

all of the known wrecks show up really well.

And we found quite a lot of wrecks already using that data.

One of them's up here in the Easter group. We've dived on it once

and we've found things that suggest it's definitely a wreck,

it looks like it's an old wreck.

It doesn't look like it's Dutch, but it looks like it's interesting.

-Wow. -That's super-exciting.

We've shown the museum what we'd found up there,

and they think it's a boat that went missing in the 1860s

called the Cochituate.

And so the museum have asked if we have the opportunity,

go and have a look at it, film it in more detail.

That might help them positively identify this as the Cochituate,

and as a new discovery.

-That's wicked. -That's so cool.

All right, so the two main jobs that we want to do,

we want to get out on to the potential Cochituate site

and see what we can find,

and then the other is to come down here onto Half Moon Reef,

get out there amongst the swell,

and look at these targets that we haven't been able to get onto.

Hopefully, find a Dutch wreck that's been missing

-for hundreds of years. -Pretty keen.

-All right, let's go. -Can't wait.

The shipwreck hunters now have

an incredible double mission ahead of them,

help Alasdair find the famous Ridderschap van Holland,

but first, discover evidence to confirm the identity of another wreck,

the 160-year-old Cochituate.

-I wish we'd get going. -Well...

And everyone's going back for more cereal. It's like...

One more trip and we'll be ready.

Another trip? Okay.

Cochituate was captained by American George Bangs.

The 347-ton barque smashed into a reef

at 3:00 a.m. on June 14, 1861.

Although they would endure weeks of great hardship,

the crew lived to tell the tale.

And so we've really got our work cut out for us today.

We've got to try and positively identify that this wreck site is the Cochituate.

There's still a few missing pieces,

but it's really about gathering more evidence

to try and fill in those gaps.

With local lobster fisher, Jesse Liddon, at the helm,

the team is heading 12 nautical miles northwest

to the outer edge of the notorious West Reef,

where Cochituate is said to have sunk.

Here, they'll be exposed to the full force of the Indian Ocean.

It's such a remote place, the Abrolhos.

It's miles offshore on the coast of Western Australia,

plus, on the west side,

it's, like, thousands of nautical miles to South Africa,

thousands of nautical miles to Antarctica.

Got such a massive expanse of ocean.

The first thing it hits is Abrolhos Islands.

All that energy from the waves coming from such a huge distance.

So, that's always a massive danger for the divers.

Alasdair has two locations for the team to dive.

One, in dangerous surf breaking on the reef,

the other in the calmer waters of the lagoon.

We're now moored just in the lagoon here.

If we start off running along the inside here, see if we can pick up

any signs of the wreckage that might've come over the reef.

So, the ship we're trying to identify was wooden?

It's one of the biggest ships lost in the Abrolhos and never found.

So if we can get good photographs,

we should get enough information to positively identify it.

For three months, Cochituate was stuck on this remote reef.

After removing anything of value,

a salvage team bunt the ship to the waterline

to expose valuable metals such as copper, used for nails.

Cochituate then disappeared into history,

its exact location lost forever.

Alasdair believes evidence in this spot

will finally identify the long-lost shipwreck.

If it's the Cochituate, it was a wooden wreck fastened with copper.

So the things you'll see will be the stuff that the algae doesn't grow on.

So the copper should be the easy thing to find,

but there might be some ceramics,

and there might be other paraphernalia off the wreck, potentially.

So the team will be equipped with all cameras,

we'll document the whole thing,

try and get some real evidence of what's laying here.

It will be a methodical search.

The team will capture evidence on camera

for the Western Australian Museum to examine.

Any time we dive on a wreck site

we're following cultural heritage guidelines,

which really means everything stays in situ.

You can't actually touch or affect the site at all.

And that's the reason with photography and videography,

if we can take the stills, take the video, bring that back

and review it over periods of time to piece it all together,

and get a really good understanding of what's on the seafloor.

That's the treasure, really.

Cool. Let's get in the water.

All right, bye, bye.

On the inside of the reef,

Alasdair has already found evidence of possible shipwreck debris.

The team quickly finds more.

These stones, they don't look at home here,

so it's another clue that there's a shipwreck.

It's a really good sign.

So it's called a ballast trail. It's a really good indicator

that we're on a shipwreck of a wooden sailing boat.

Ballast is a heavy material, often bricks or rocks,

placed in a ship's hull to increase stability.

The site soon reveals more secrets.

There's this huge copper nail just sitting there in the sand,

it's in really good condition.

Much bigger than normal nails we see every day,

so it stuck out really well, and it means we're definitely on the right site.

Looks like the wrecks just hit the wall here,

and then all the artefacts have just been splayed out

hundreds of meters all over this reef in the middle of nowhere.

The ballast trail and the copper nails

are part of a plume of debris washed in from the wreck.

It lines up with Alasdair's aerial magnetometer hit

on the outside of the reef.

Whatever's there could be significant enough

to confirm the ship's identity.

I reckon it could be anchors, mate. Hopefully.

We got to get out there while the swell's good.

Hold on, Johnny.

We saw some fastenings, so it's definitely a wreck site.

The wrecks come over the reef.

I reckon maybe there's an anchor or something out there,

or the main bit of structure.

You can see

we're coming into the gutter now.

There's a lot more swell and surge coming over that area,

so it's gonna be harder to dive there.

We'll just free dive it. It's easier, we're more agile in the water,

and if it all goes pear-shaped, we can get out quick.

Andre drops a marker in the middle of the target zone

to focus diving operations.

-Back on the money there? -We're on the money!

With a dangerous swell building, the team must work quickly.

Whoo-hoo!

It's one of the favorite parts of shipwreck hunting,

the anticipation before you get in the water.

Everyone's going as fast as they can, and the conditions are good.

-Andre's already down there. -Small fear of dying, too.

Just to keep you on your toes.

It's almost a race to get in the water, to be honest,

and I'm losing, so I better get in.

To thoroughly search the area,

the divers work together to cover a 200-meter zone around the marker buoy.

Skipper, Jesse Liddon, and his brother, Sam,

who know the dangers of this reef well,

are ready for any emergency.

Slowly, shapes from the wreck emerge.

Alasdair uses a detector to confirm they're made of metal.

The team fights the swell and current,

determined to capture evidence on camera.

Hopefully, it's enough to identify this as the Cochituate wreck site.

There's a few bits of metal.

Couldn't find any wood.

-No. -Just steel...

...just sitting in the holes in the reef.

I'd say it's been there a long time, there's not much left of any structure.

I guess not.

It's as if the captain didn't even deploy any anchors,

and just hit the reef and kept going.

You're literally at the mercy of the ocean in there.

Like, I couldn't even really move with these giant fins against the current.

There's so much water movement.

But it just makes you think about, you know, those guys,

if they're wrecking here,

they've just got this constant push up against shallower and shallower...

And this is a good day.

Imagine in the storm on a big day.

And they're fully clad in clothes and overboard.

-Might not have known how to swim. -Makes you feel for them,

if you think about what they went through.

To find out why Cochituate hit the reef and what happened next,

Johnny has discovered a newspaper report from 1861.

The human story is so wild, and it says,

"The Cochituate had experienced heavy gales

"for some days previous to the accident,

"but at the time it occurred, it was about 3:00 a.m."

Obviously, it was a massive cold front that they were stuck in.

It'd be horrendous.

Sleepless nights.

-Heaps of broken rigging and repairs. -Cold, always wet, right?

You can't get dry when you're working on a deck

-in a storm. -No, no.

"At the time it occurred, there was a light wind.

"And when the breakers were first seen, the ship was close upon them.

"And when attempted to be put about, she misstays,

"when the man at the helm had his shoulder bone broken

"by the spokes of the wheel."

-Oh, my God. -It's crazy.

The wheel would've just got flicked out of his hands when the rudder hit reef.

-Yes. -It would be chaos.

Imagine the noise, the timber cracking up.

Oh, my God.

And then it'd get pushed over with the breaker.

The waves smashing it against the reef,

the screaming of everyone, like, a lot of them couldn't swim.

Like, it doesn't get scarier than that as a sailor, does it?

Middle of the night, hitting a reef.

You can only just imagine it. It'd be horrible, mate.

In the chaos of the wreck,

the crew somehow managed to abandon ship,

scramble into two small lifeboats,

find their bearings,

and sail for the mainland 60 kilometers to the east.

Two days later, they landed on a remote stretch of coastline.

With few provisions,

Captain Bangs, an American, and his crew of various nationalities

were now in a desperate situation.

"The second mate and party

"started to walk along the beach to Fremantle,

"each man living on dead fish and birds which they picked up along the beach."

That's like 400 Ks away.

By foot.

"The captain was said to be very sickly

"and having a very old man in his party, too infirm to travel.

"The weather continuing unfavorable,

"they left following the route of their companions."

So you've got an old bloke that's slowing you down.

-Keeping you back. -Bring him or leave him to die?

What would you have done, Ash, if there was an old boy keeping you?

You mean you'd leave him to die?

Go ahead, Johnny.

-I don't wanna get stranded with you. -No.

The rest of the article goes on. "On Saturday evening,

"the town of Fremantle was thrown into a state of great excitement

"by the arrival of a man in a state of starvation

"who stated that he was a Dutchman

"belonging to the barque Cochituate, of Boston, United States.

"Mounted police and search parties were sent out,

"and fairly quickly, the rest of the survivors were found.

"They were in poor condition but alive, including Captain Bangs.

"We were informed that the captain was not aware

"that Champion Bay was settled, nor did he know of such a place."

Champion Bay, where there was a settlement.

-Geraldton. -Geraldton.

So basically, they've hiked 400-odd kilometers over around two weeks,

when they could've walked 60 kilometers

-in the other direction. -No...

That is brutal.

-They could've walked within a day... -Oh...

...and been within safety,

but they've done two weeks.

-Oh, God. -But they'd be rightly furious.

-Great story. -It is a brilliant story.

Without knowing there was a settlement just to the north,

the crew of Cochituate instead walked south,

all the way to the port town of Fremantle.

While the crew's survival is documented,

the team need to confirm if they've found the wreck of Cochituate.

So this is some of the ballast stones.

And we also saw some other little things.

Like, we saw some of the copper nails as well.

That really narrows it down.

At the very minimum, it shows it was a sailing vessel,

and the copper nails show that it was a wooden sailing vessel.

And, you know, that'll put kind of a age wrap around it.

-That's awesome. Super cool. -Amazing. That's so cool.

And you can see these long iron ingots here.

It's really hard to tell what they are,

but they're immediately outside the reef from where the ballast trail is.

So they're in the right position for where the ship must've broken up.

We've just gotta find somebody who knows about how they built ships in the 1860s.

Do you think that we should send this imagery to the W.A. Museum?

Absolutely.

Those images are so clear. That's gonna be a big help to identifying what they are.

Get it to the museum and on to the next one.

On to the Ridderschap.

The next day, a big swell makes it too dangerous

to launch the second phase of the mission,

diving targets Alasdair hopes could be the wreck of a mighty Dutch ship.

Ridderschap van Holland was a flagship of the Dutch East India Company,

which ruled the waves, if not the world,

throughout the 17th century.

The ship's failure to arrive at Batavia,

now Jakarta in modern-day Indonesia,

with Admiral Couper and its much-needed treasury,

was a huge blow to the Company.

In response, three ships commanded by Willem de Vlamingh

were sent to search the West Australian coastline,

rescue Admiral Couper, and secure the treasure.

De Vlamingh found nothing.

Many believe Ridderschap van Holland lies here on the Abrolhos islands,

and for good reason.

As soon as they left Cape Town, all the Dutch ships were directed

to sail due east to a certain distance

and stay well clear of the mainland of Australia.

-Yep. -And you can just imagine, like,

this is, like, the coast of...

They'd come towards Western Australia,

chosen a path northwards,

but what they didn't know was

there's this group of islands further north called Abrolhos,

where we are now.

There's no moon, it's so dark,

there's no way you're gonna see these low-lying islands.

-They would have no idea. -Absolutely.

That's why there's been a couple of found wrecks, Dutch wrecks,

let alone all the other shipwrecks.

The Ridderschap van Holland was instructed to sail on the same route.

If the wreck site is in the Abrolhos Islands,

any survivors would have experienced pristine waters

and extraordinary wildlife.

Right now, surrounded by some Australian sea lions.

They just decided to come out and have a little swim.

They're so playful to swim with, they're so interactive.

But unfortunately, Australian sea lion numbers are in decline

and we've lost 60% over the last 40 years.

They're coming to say hi.

It's so interesting because the sea lions that we see here,

their colonies only ever stick to the same islands and beaches,

so they probably have some stories

that were passed down through generation and generation.

Might know what happened with the Ridderschap,

probably where it is and everything.

If only they could talk to us.

-Can you speak seal? -Nah.

-Well, they'd have some good answers. -Definitely.

While Captain de Vlamingh searched the Western Australian coast,

a new rumor began circulating.

Johnny has found a 300-year-old letter

about de Vlamingh's search for Ridderschap van Holland.

It says, "The subject of this voyage was to get intelligence

"of a ship having on board Sir James Couper with 300 men,

"which we thought to be stranded there.

"But since we have understood that the ship has been taken

"by some pirates near Madagascar,

"and Sir James was by them killed."

In their mind, it's over there.

It's been taken by pirates, and it's never made it over here.

There's still people here in Western Australia

that think it's here, that's why we're doing the search.

Like, "Where is it?" It still needs to be found.

A new day, and the conditions have finally improved.

Just so happy we've got good swell,

like, a 1.4-meter swell,

which is, like, couple of days a year

we get that chance to dive this particular spot.

It'd just be amazing to find this missing Dutch wreck.

The team races to Alasdair's magnetometer hits.

This is their opportunity to find Ridderschap van Holland.

So we're just coming in on the ocean side of Wreck Point.

There's a few other wrecks that were wrecked along here over the years.

It's a super wild place.

There's thousands of kilometers of ocean that way,

and just swell rolling in, smashing in against the reef.

Super powerful. Super raw.

Lot of big sharks around here.

So it's about as wild as you get for places to look for shipwrecks.

This reef is so low-lying they would never see it at night,

so it's a perfect place to catch on these Dutch ships all that time ago.

So there's a very good chance we could find a wreck.

We've never had a day like this where you can get on top of the target

and see what it is.

There's gonna be something there that has created a magnetic anomaly,

so it's not... it's not natural.

It has to be something. Bit of anchor, you know, something.

Alasdair's targets are on the edge of Half Moon Reef

near Wreck Point,

where many ships continue to be lost.

Everyone knows it can be really dangerous here.

We're up against the big swells because of currents,

a lot of white water, and a lot of breakers.

And, of course, there's marine life here that can cause a fair few injuries, too.

So, we've just got to be real cautious of our surroundings,

and hopefully everything's gonna go well,

and we'll come back.

But, it always causes a little bit of nerves before you jump in.

I reckon we're gonna find it, that's for sure.

Let's go.

So they're just gonna drop the markers exactly where we think the anomaly is,

and then they'll come back and pick me up, very soon I hope.

Hopefully they don't find it while I'm over here.

For this difficult and dangerous phase of the mission,

Alasdair will direct operations from the boat.

There must be something that caused the anomaly, but...

it's possible that it's so overgrown with coral that they can't identify it.

In which case, it'd have to be pretty old.

This is where local knowledge just comes into it,

so now Jesse's holding us about five meters

from the edge of the reef, in the safe zone.

But if you go just a little bit too far that way,

you go over the waterfall.

-Oh, Jesus. -Far out.

Oh, my God.

The sharpest cheese-grating reef you'll ever have.

Looks like they're on the right spot, just inside the edge of the reef line,

so right where the waves are rolling over.

To find the targets,

the team will have to swim right into the impact zone.

We've got a couple of big sets coming through.

We've got some ski support.

We've got the drone in the sky watching us as well.

Just got to find something now.

Ash returns to update Alasdair on the search so far.

What'd you find, Ash?

Look, the waves have worn away these big daggers of limestone walls.

So, if our boat was to hit it, it's just all over.

There's some holes and cracks as well,

but you can distinctly see what's in the bottom of those.

And we had a good pair of eyes looking everywhere.

Well, that's all you can do.

Nothing abnormality-shaped down there.

I just don't want 'em to say they can't find anything,

'cause there's got to be something there that produces the magnetic anomaly.

It's a really clear target.

The worst thing is when you can't explain it

and you're just left wondering whether, you know, what you've missed.

What'd you see, fellas?

It looks like the perfect place for a shipwreck.

Jagged rocks off turbulent water.

Except no shipwreck.

-No. -Jesse, how close to the actual target?

Could you get shallow enough?

We got as close to the back edge as we could,

but I think that target is on top of the reef.

We gotta get up on top of the platform. Have a look...

So maybe we'll go around on the lagoon side and come in.

And there is another distinctive magnetic anomaly

about 200 meters in the lagoon.

But I think we go back inside there and do that.

-Okay. -Yup.

Struggling to get close enough to the target

from the outside of the reef,

the team relocates to approach through the calmer waters of the lagoon.

On the way in,

there's an additional magnetometer target to investigate.

This whole mission's coming down to this moment.

We've got two more anomalies to check out.

This is our last chance to find the Ridderschap.

While the conditions are calmer here,

Mother Nature has thrown up another challenge.

It's, like, a big clump of coral right where the mark is.

-A foot. -Right over the top.

-Probably got a foot of coral on it. -Big clump.

So there probably is something under it. We just don't know what it is.

So, that anomaly is right in the middle of some huge staghorn coral gardens.

If something's beneath it, there's no way we're gonna see it.

Staghorn coral is made up of living animals,

little, tiny polyps that can often attach to wreckage,

and then just start excreting this calcareous substance

and creates that outer skeleton,

and then over hundreds of years, it just keeps building up

and whatever it first attached to is pretty much buried.

We don't want to damage the marine environment,

so we're just gonna have to leave whatever wreckage might be buried beneath,

and the ocean will keep its secrets under the coral.

One more spot.

One more spot.

The team moves to the final magnetometer target,

the one they tried to reach earlier from the ocean side of the reef.

Far out, it's right on the reef, whatever it is.

Just somewhere...

at the bottom here.

Down here.

-On this inside of this ledge, Dre. -Under there, all that.

In this whole...

Right here.

There's stuff here and back there.

So, there's a lot of structure around.

-Look. -That... Oh!

Look, there's a cannon here, look.

-What? -Change in depth...

Here it is. It could be even this big black...

-Really? -We're right over it.

-You're right. -Look at that!

-You kidding? -They look like cannons?

Just have a look. Might be underwater.

Under there. All that.

Hey, Al.

Al! Al!

What is it, Al? Anything, mate?

Looks like Nush's coming over.

Any cannons?

They look like cannons?

Oh, my gosh, I just got so excited.

I thought I saw, like, three or four cannons sitting on the bottom.

And then I went and swam 'round the front, and I realized that they were gas bottles.

I was so disappointed. I was, like, "We're onto a wreck."

We're onto something. And then, no.

-They look similar from the back. -From the back, they look similar.

But when you swim around the front, you feel like, "No, what's this?"

-A gas bottle. -Spewing. It's a letdown.

It is.

Despite not finding Ridderschap van Holland,

for Alasdair, the mission has been a success.

Well, we've closed off a lot of the loose ends we've had from the past.

We've managed to get onto all the targets we've never been able to look at before.

And one day, we'll go up to one of those magnetic anomalies,

find what we're looking for.

But in the meantime, we've just got to work through them.

Still searching for answers,

Johnny has taken a closer look at the story of pirates

capturing Ridderschap van Holland off the coast of Africa.

So, I know the VOC did do a search of Madagascar.

They sent two ships there to search and they didn't find anything.

-Really? -Not a trace.

So, they've hit up all the locals around Madagascar.

They probably chased pirates around the sea for a bit.

And you know how ruthless they'd have been.

-They'd have found evidence. -Oh.

So, I feel like that kind of shuts out that pirate story. Do you?

Be hard to pirate it.

So, there was like hundreds of men

and army soldiers on that boat.

-I don't know... -I mean, it's a massive ship.

There'd be signs of it,

if it was salvaged or turned into a pirate boat

-or scrapped for timber, and cannons... -100%.

-...and they'd find. -You can't just disappear

-with something like that. -It's gotta be underwater somewhere.

-It's a pretty cool mystery. -It is very cool, and it's crazy to think

that it's just sitting there underwater somewhere in the world,

like, it could be between here and Africa, or it could be, I don't know.

It could be a kilometer off there sitting under our noses,

but maybe we'll never find it.

Maybe someone else will.

In the search for Ridderschap van Holland,

the team found evidence of a more recent wreck.

But the large, old gas bottles inside the reef have them stumped.

I first come up to these gas bottles, I'm like, "Oh, my God, it's cannon."

They looked a lot like they could have been the real thing.

Generations of Jesse Liddon's family

have worked these waters.

He thinks he might know the answer.

I've never seen the gas bottles 'cause they blend in,

but I always fished around those railway irons,

and we were always told this story

about this massive freezer boat, the Atlantic Ocean,

and it's run aground on that reef,

and it's just sitting up there on its side. It's rolled over.

They've brought in a team to re-weld the boat, refloat the boat.

For three months, they're living on the boat,

-and they at some point ripped it off... -Oh, my God.

...and left a few things behind.

What a job, mate.

Jesse, what were the gas bottles for, then?

Well, we don't really know,

but my mum reckons it was as rollers to float it out

and rip it off the back edge.

And then it was that spot

we always called the Atlantic Ocean.

But, and they corresponded exactly. So, at least your magnetometer works.

The magnetometer picked them up, they looked like the distribution

you get from a wreck with cannons scattered around.

And then you hear a story like that, and you go,

"Well, who would ever dream that up?" How could you ever expect that?

That's how it works. You gotta get out and look at everything,

and eventually you get onto one that's the real thing.

So, we've covered it fairly thoroughly, I think.

Unless you have more spots you'd like us to check,

that, you know, passed down in the family history.

There's a couple of other wrecks out there.

Maybe next trip.

At the start of the mission,

Alasdair and the shipwreck hunters discovered copper nails,

ballast and iron objects at West Reef.

Hoping it might be the wreck site of the 160-year-old Cochituate,

they sent vision to the Western Australian Museum.

Maritime archaeologist Dr. Deb Shefi is about to deliver the verdict.

-Hi, Deb. -Hey, team, how are you?

Good to see ya, mate.

But first, she has news about the gas bottles.

Thanks a lot for sending footage of the gas bottles.

This is an exciting find.

We had absolutely no idea that it was there.

Look, I've done some digging in our records.

And here, look, this is Atlantic Ocean.

Now, you have found the salvage site of this vessel that was built in 1961.

-That's great, Deb. -That's awesome.

What's even more exciting, I think, is, look here.

So, here's a picture of the vessel on the reef itself,

taken after it wrecked in 1964, just three years later.

-So good. -So, pretty exciting

that we now have this footprint left of a wrecking event from 1964,

which we had no idea was there.

-And this means... -That's so exciting. Awesome.

-It's pretty exciting. So, thanks so much. -Mate.

Now onto that first site, the one you think is Cochituate.

I've had a look at the footage.

I don't know the site, but what you've shown me,

that iron structure,

those copper fasteners which clearly are part of a wooden vessel,

the ballast which doesn't belong there

and the lack of evidence of any other material

suggests a heavily salvaged vessel.

So, I'm happy to say

that we can confirm that this is Cochituate.

So good, Al. That's awesome, that's very good.

-Congratulations, Al. -Amazing.

-That's so cool. -Well done, team.

Really exciting that we get to add another known shipwreck

off the coast of W.A.

-Tick one off. -We have more to go,

so keep up the good work.

Cheers.

Thanks, you guys.

It's been a fantastic week. We've made a positive ID on the Cochituate

so we could tick that box and make sure that we did know what it was.

And we'll all get to say, "Well, we've found a historic wreck,"

and I hope one of many to come, I hope.

It's been a successful expedition.

The shipwreck hunters have made two remarkable breakthroughs.

They've confirmed the wreck site of Cochituate,

and they've also discovered the salvage site of Atlantic Ocean.

But the ultimate prize of finding the missing 17th century Dutch trader

and solving one of history's great maritime mysteries

remains elusive for now.

The Ridderschap van Holland, that was the one I was eager to find,

and we had a good search.

You must get in the water

and investigate these magnetic lumps that have been spotted.

I reckon it's in deep water somewhere.

Just sitting there, encrusted in coral on the bottom of the ocean.

I think someone's gonna come across it

and go, "What the heck is this?"

Amazing.