The intertidal springs near the Vergulde Draak 1656 wreck site, Western Australia: hydrogeological characteristics and a
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The intertidal springs near the Vergulde Draak 1656 wreck site, Western Australia: hydrogeological characteristics and archaeological significance Vincent E. A. Post 1 & Ursula Salmon 2 & Wendy van Duivenvoorde 3 Received: 15 September 2019 / Accepted: 24 April 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract On 28 April 1656, the Vergulde Draak was shipwrecked on the Western Australian shore after it struck a reef north of the presentday town of Seabird. This article presents the results of an investigation in the vicinity of the wreck site to identify any potable water resources for the sustenance of the 68 survivors. From historical documents it is known that hardly any provisions could be rescued from the ship, so the survivors were reliant on finding water on land. There is no surface water in the immediate vicinity of the wreck. The chemical characteristics of three intertidal springs, as well as the Indian Ocean, were documented. Enough freshwater discharged from two of the three springs to cause a decrease of the salinity and pH, and an increase of the temperature, of the ocean water over a distance along the shore of 100 m. The chloride concentrations of the springs ranged between 3 and 6.5 g/L, and the shipwreck survivors might have resorted to drinking this brackish water. It is also possible that they collected rainwater or tried to dig a well in the dunes, where slightly brackish groundwater was found during the present study. Only future archaeological discoveries can provide certainty, but, albeit suboptimal, the beach offered at least some water resources for a survivor camp. Keywords Australia . Coastal aquifers . Karst . Archaeology . Submarine groundwater discharge
Introduction Submarine groundwater discharge (SGD), i.e., the process of groundwater flow into the ocean, has attracted a lot of scientific attention since its role as a pathway of land-derived nutrients and contaminants became recognised (Jiao 2019; Johannes 1980; Moore 2010); however, the significance of SGD is broader. Brosnan et al. (2018) suggested that the
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10040-020-02173-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Vincent E. A. Post [email protected] 1
College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide 5001, Australia
2
Faculty of Science, The University of Western Australia, (M089), 35 Stirling Highway, Perth WA6009, Australia
3
College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide 5001, Australia
population of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) sustained themselves with brackish water from springs along the coastline during times of drought. Similar examples, and the societal importance of SGD more generally, have recently been described in a global review by Moosdorf and Oehler (2017). They included the account of the crew of the whale ship Essex, which was wrecked on Henderson Island in the Pacifi
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