Apparently, on arrival at the Cape of Good Hope, one of the masts had sprung, and the skipper ordered a new mast to be stepped in. However, Couper—impatient of any delay—overruled the order and on 5 February 1694 the ship departed the Cape of Good Hope on its final leg of the outward voyage with a weakened mast, which subsequently broke.
The skipper is believed to have sailed for the nearest land at Madagascar to obtain timber, where the ship was likely captured and crew killed. At this time, Fort Dauphin in Madagascar was a stronghold for pirates. Their leader, Abraham Samuells, had a reputation for cruelty towards any Europeans visiting or wrecked on the coast, with no prisoners taken or lives spared.
On 3 October 1698, Burgomaster Witsen of Amsterdam wrote to his friend Dr Martin Lister in England that:
Here is returned a ship which by our East India Company was sent to the Southland called Hollandia Nova... The subject of this voyage was to get intelligence of a ship having on board Sir Jacob Couper, with 300 men, which we thought to be stranded there, but since, we have understood that the said ship has been taken by some pirates near Madagascar and that the said Sir Jacob was by them killed.
(Halls 1965).
In 1699, Jan Coin, skipper of the yacht Tamboer, was dispatched to Madagascar to obtain further information concerning the possibility that Ridderschap van Holland had been taken by pirates.
We left Table Bay on the 2nd May, and after a stormy passage anchored on the 27th June about three and a half leagues below the bay Tollinare, where a Frenchman and seven blacks boarded and informed us that they had been sent by their king, Captain Samuel. On the 3rd July, we anchored in the bay before mentioned in 5½ fathoms sandy bottom before the demolished French fort “the Dauphine,” and a pistol shot distant from the shore. I at once sent a letter to the king, written in English, informing him of the reason of my visit…. I endeavoured to collect information from some old inhabitants and various Europeans who had long wandered about in this neighbourhood, regarding the Ridderschap, and everything connected with the pirates. In the latter case I was at the proper spot. I was told that heavy pieces of wreckage had been washed up on the south side of Madagascar four years ago and near the Isle St. Marie, but that no human beings were observed. A reef here runs out to sea about 15 Dutch miles long. Seven or eight miles to the north of this, at Mangetanga, about the same time, pieces of heavy masts, &c., were washed on shore, where also 14 graves were found. No one could tell who made them, or who were buried there. This was all that I could discover about the Ridderschap.
(Leibrandt (1896) Precis of the Archives of the Cape of Good Hope, Letters received 1695-1708, p. 228; Rapport van de schipper van het jacht Tamboer, CTAR C 366 (old C 424) No. 119, p. 631).
The vessel was officially written off as having probably been lost near Madagascar while on a voyage to the Indies (Halls 1965).
The loss of Ridderschap van Holland is significant to the expansion of new Dutch knowledge of the Australian continent, as it led to Willem de Vlamingh visiting New Holland in 1696-1697 to search for any traces of the ship, and his drawing of the first accurate chart of the Western Australian coast.
