The ‘unlucky voyage’ In 1629 Batavia, a three-masted sailing ship bound for the Dutch East Indies, ran aground on a coral reef in the arid Houtman Abrolhos Islands off western Australia, which ...

Historians have theorized that Cornelisz sought to take the ship’s treasure and become a pirate. Whatever his exact motives, he and a contingent of men mutinied, killing many of the ship’s passengers ...

This ship model from the Netherlands (right) helped create the Batavia model (left). (Supplied: John McCarthy)"The way this study has been done is a little bit like a car crash reconstruction ...

The doomed voyage of the Batavia is a tale of mutiny, murder and mayhem from the pre-colonial days. And 363 years after the ship sank, the four coins were stolen by a diver.