Hollandia. (North site)

Over the last few years myself and a few friends have been visiting the wreck of the treasure ship Hollandia. I dived this wreck quite a bit with the salvage men in the 1990's but it was long after all the treasure had been salvaged. Whilst diving it more recently it struck me how interesting and well spread out the wreck was. So to understand it more, over many dives I slowly produced this plan while everyone else just enjoyed themselves. What I get out of it is this- I am the only one of our group who can be dropped onto any part of this vast site and know exactly where I am at any position. i can swim around to any part without a safety reel line and return to the shot. Its useful for when another diver says he wants to go to any particular area I can take him there or give directions. This Is why I have produced such plans of many of the wrecks I find of interest here- or that I have found. There is another part of this wreck  about 60 meters off to the south of this area called the- 'south site' but its a bit dull and not worth the effort as theres not much to see other than barrels of iron nails and some iron bars. There were numerous large cigar shaped lead ingots on both sites but they have all but been lifted and sold by the salvors. I found a nice sherd of the Hollandia's bell on this north site, it is very ornate with animals and floral patterning and also the letters  GLOR....... which I can only assume was -Glorious Hollandia?  The salvors found fragments of this same bell which are currently held in the Rijks museum in Amsterdam. It is all the same bell  but none of their fragments  has any lettering on.  There is clearly still more of it down there to be found. I will keep looking every time I visit this wonderful wreck in future.  At 30meters depth its a good build up dive for  the deeper stuff and not to far to go to get to it, so we tend to pop out there quite a bit in the evenings when the seas are calm enough.

Here's my bell fragment. & a few images I took of bits of the wreck still on the sea bed.

Here's a lovely old image of the guys who lifted the Hollandia's treasure back in the day with some pillar dollars on show. Wonderful stuff!