The Zeeland shilling

If you look closely, you’ll recognise the coin Lennard often tosses when he comes to a fork in the road and has a decision to make. It was in the battered pewter tobacco tin, along with other coins, his mother Mary found in the back of a cave on the cliffs at Lucky Bay. She gave the tin and its contents to WA’s Maritime Museum, but kept this shilling (schelling) and gave it to Lennard. He’s convinced it belonged to Gerrit de Waal, survivor of the Zuytdorp shipwreck on the cliffs north of Kalbarri in 1712. He suspects Gerrit is his likely ancestor.

On this preparatory book cover graphic, you’ll notice a three-masted cargo vessel (retourschip) on the horizon, and a picture of the Town Hall in Middelburg, Zeeland, where the Zuytdorp was built in 1701.

You have to admire the thoroughness of Lennard’s research into the building and voyages of the Zuytdorp, while piecing together his ancestry. He often follows a lead, willing to follow every clue in search of the truth.

I’ve followed his example, and procured these photographs of the coin with permission from photographer Pat Baker of the Fremantle Shipwrecks Museum.