Akerendam

The final voyage

Akerendam, built in 1724 for the VOC, left Texel on 19 January 1725 in convoy with two other Batavia-bound ships, carrying a crew of about 200 and a specie cargo the Dutch record as 19 chests of gold and silver coin intended to buy goods in the East. She was separated from her convoy partners in heavy weather in the North Sea.

On the night of 8 March 1725 the ship, blown far north of her intended route, struck the rocks at the northern point of the Norwegian island of Runde and broke up. There were no survivors. In the months that followed, five chests of coin were recovered from the wreckage; the remainder, and the site itself, then went unrecorded for nearly two and a half centuries.

What was aboard

No surviving cargo manifest has been published in full, but Dutch East India Company correspondence and Norwegian museum documentation of the 1972–73 recovery together establish the specie aboard with unusual precision for a wreck of this age.

Gold ducats: Roughly 6,600 Utrecht gold ducats dated 1724 were recovered — the largest known surviving group of that issue, and thought to represent the entire year's mintage.

Silver coin: Approximately 50,000 silver coins, including Spanish American 8-reales cobs and various European silver denominations then circulating as VOC trade money.

Company trade cargo: Nineteen chests of specie are documented as the ship's outbound treasure; only five were salvaged shortly after the wreck, the rest lying undiscovered until 1972.

The ship's company: A crew of approximately 200, all of whom were lost; no passenger or crew list of the maiden voyage is quoted in published sources.

How to collect

Expect the 1724 Utrecht ducat: The gold coin most associated with this wreck is the Utrecht ducat dated 1724; authentic examples typically show sea-worn surfaces and are catalogued against the known Runde find.

Ask about the 1978 auction chain: Most privately held Akerendam material descends from the finders' 1978 Swiss auction share. A lot without that lineage, or an old Norwegian export document, deserves closer scrutiny.

Cross-check against museum type series: Bergen Maritime Museum's published coin types from the find are a useful reference for confirming an object is consistent with the wreck's documented cargo.

Treat 'never salvaged' claims skeptically: The site was thoroughly worked in 1972–73; a very large share of the coinage entered circulation through the finders' legal share, and later 'private stock' claims should be weighed against that history.