Shipwreck found off Australia’s coast 168 years after it sank, killing 16 crew members

Researchers have discovered the likely location of a Dutch ship that sank off the coast of Australia over 150 years ago. 

The Koning William de Tweede was an 800-ton ship that was sailing near Robe, South Australia when it sank in June 1857. Hundreds of Chinese miners had disembarked from the vessel just days before the sinking, the Australian National Maritime Museum said on social media. 

The ship was sailing with 25 crew members when it sank, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Sixteen of the crew members died in the sinking, ABC reported. 

The museum began working with Silentworld Foundation, which studies Australia’s maritime history, as well as Flinders University and South Australia’s Department for Environment and Water. The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands also supported the research efforts, the museum said. 

Dr. James Hunter, with the maritime museum, told ABC that researchers found parts of the ship on the seabed of Guichen Bay. Those parts included the ship’s winch and iron components, Hunter said. 

The efforts to find the ship have been ongoing for about four years, the Silentworld Foundation said on social media. Poor visibility underwater hindered the work, Hunter told ABC. Researchers believed they had identified the ship in 2022, but it took until March 2025 to confirm the vessel’s identity. 

“The latest visit to Robe … led to the probable identification of the shipwreck,” the Silentworld Foundation said on social media. “The visibility was challenging, but still enough for the team to make this incredible call!” 

The maritime museum said on Facebook that future monitoring will be done at the site. Those visits will assess the site and work to “uncover more of this important piece of maritime history,” the museum said. 

The waters off Australia’s coast are littered with shipwrecks and several have been found in recent months.

Last July, Australian scientists pinpointed the final resting place of the Noongah, a huge freighter that sank in rough seas in 1969, killing 21 of the 26 crew members on board.

Three months before that, a small underwater drone located a century-old vessel in a region known as a “ship graveyard” off Australia’s coast. That discovery came just weeks after an expedition found the wreck of the coal steamship SS Nemesis off Australia’s coast, more than a century after it sank.