In October of 1628, a trade ship set sail from the Netherlands with gold and gems to be traded

for spices in Indonesia. Unbeknownst to the captain, the danger of the voyage was not from

these storms and rough waters that encounter, but instead something sinister brewing within

the ship itself. In the end, this would result in the loss of the majority of the over 300 passengers,

but even worse than that, the prolonged suffering of many of the survivors.

This is their horrifying story, and as always, viewer discretion is advised. In the Indian Ocean, somewhere off the coast of Western Australia in September of 1629,

Captain Francisco Palsert was getting frustrated. For a month, he and a ship, the Sardom,

had been looking for one specific island among a chain of 122 of them.

And unfortunately, almost all of those islands looked exactly the same.

This chain of islands is known as the Houtman-Abrolos, and most of them are little more than specks of sand on the horizon.

Francisco was looking for one known as Beacon Island, but because of the limits of ship navigation at the time,

he couldn't accurately identify the lines of longitude and latitude.

Instead, crews used a method called Dead Reckoning to guide ships in the correct direction.

This is when a ship will estimate its position, then sometime later make a calculation of where they're going based on the initial estimate.

The problem with this

method is that small errors can have a drastic impact over long distances. Just a few degrees off

course can result in miles of distance away from where a ship intends to go. In fact, a similar

scenario is exactly what got Francisco in trouble in the first place. After weeks of this

searching, the Sardom crew was basically just making haphazard

passes around an area where they thought Beacon Island was located.

And for the most part, all they managed to find was more ocean until one day Francisco

finally spotted something in the distance.

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