This included the Zeewijk, wrecked in the Pelsaert Group of the Houtman Abrolhos in 1727, which he dived on earlier in 1963, and the Zuytdorp which came to grief when it struck the Zuytdorp Cliffs, 560 kilometres north of Perth, in 1712.
It has been speculated that survivors may have traded with or may have intermarried with the local aboriginal community between present-day Kalbarri and Shark Bay.
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Their fate was unknown until the 20th century when the wreck site was discovered on a remote part of the Western Australian coast between Kalbarri and Shark Bay, approximately 40 km north of the Murchison River.
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In 2002, a DNA investigation into the hypothesis of a variegate porphyria mutation having been introduced into the aboriginal population by shipwrecked sailors was undertaken at the Queen Elizabeth II Medical Centre in Nedlands, Western Australia and the Stellenbosch University in South Africa.
Zuytdorp |