History
The Saksenburg was a three-masted, square-rigged sailing vessel that had left Texel on 2 November 1727. The vessel stopped at the Cape between 21 April and 26 May 1728, and arrived in Batavia on 12 August that year. There was a gap of two years in her record before the vessel was wrecked while it was homeward bound near Agulhas in 1730.
In the night of 8 to 9 January 1730, the Saksenburg wrecked just before Cape Town on a reef at Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point of Africa. Only 7 of the crew members survived the ordeal when they were eventually picked up by other vessels.
Description
Skipper | Jan de Haan |
---|---|
Length | 129.9 feet (39.6 m) |
Tonnage | 610 ton (305 last) |
Status
The geographic co-ordinates for what may be the site were provided by Charlie Shapiro on 22 May 2001 from GPS readings taken during a magnetometer survey.
References
- DAS 2711.2.
- Generale missiven Deel 9.
- Lesa la Grange, Martijn Manders, Briege Williams, John Gribble and Leon Derksen (2024).
Dutch Shipwrecks in South African Waters: A Brief History of Sites, Stores and Archives [Unpublished].