Florance Broadhurst

Florance Constantine Broadhurst (1861–1909) was a 19th century Western Australian businessman who is most notable for successfully taking over the management of a number of business ventures of his notoriously unsuccessful father, Charles Edward Broadhurst, and turning a profit. The best known of these is the guano mining venture in the Houtman Abrolhos. While managing this venture, Florance Broadhurst found a number of artifacts that he believed to be relics of the 1629 "Batavia" shipwreck. He developed an interest in the wreck, and eventually obtained a copy of Isaac Commelin's 1647 "Ongeluckige voyagie, van't schip Batavia", the Dutch publication that first popularised the "Batavia" incident. He commissioned Willem Siebenhaar to translate it, and this resulted in what is still the only English translation, entitled "The Abrolhos tragedy".

References

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*cite book | first = Henrietta | last = Drake-Brockman | year = 1995 | title = Voyage to disaster (2nd edition) | location = Nedlands | publisher = University of Western Australia Press | isbn = 1-902694-72-2