The first Europeans known to have sighted the island were the crew of the
Dutch East India Company (VOC) ship
Eendracht, captained by Hartog, on 25 October 1616, during a voyage from
Cape Town to
Batavia. The date, and the names of the senior people on the vessel, were inscribed on a pewter plate and nailed to a post. In 1697, Dutch captain
Willem de Vlamingh landed on the island and found the
Hartog Plate. He replaced it with one of his own, which included a copy of Hartog's inscription, and took the original plate home to
Amsterdam, where it is still kept in the
Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. On 28 March 1772, French navigator
Louis Aleno de Saint-Aloüarn landed on the island and became the first European to formally take possession of Western Australia in the name of the French king
Louis XV. That involved a ceremony on 30 March, during which one or more bottles were buried on the island. One bottle was recorded as containing an annexation document and a coin. In 1998 a bottle cap made of lead with an
écu coin set in it was found at Turtle Bay by a team led by Philippe Godard and Max Cramer. That triggered a broader search by a team from the
Western Australian Museum, led by Myra Stanbury, with Bob Sheppard, Bob Creasy and Dr Michael McCarthy. On 1 April 1998, an intact bottle was unearthed, with a lead cap identical to the one recovered earlier, and also with a coin set in it. No trace of an annexation document has yet been found. In 1801, the island was visited by the
Naturaliste, under
French Navy officer and explorer
Emmanuel Hamelin, which was part of the
Baudin expedition to Australia. They found de Vlamingh's plate almost buried in the sand, its post having rotted away. Hamelin ordered that it be re-erected in its original position. In 1818, the
Uranie, captained by French explorer
Louis de Freycinet, who had been an officer in Hamelin's 1801 crew, sent a boat ashore to recover de Vlamingh's plate. It eventually arrived in Paris, only to be lost for over a century. It was found in 1940 and returned to Australia in 1947, where it can now be seen at the
WA Maritime Museum in
Fremantle. In 1869, Francis Louis
von Bibra (son of
Franz Ludwig von Bibra) was granted a lease to the island. Von Bibra grazed sheep there and traded guano from its bays. In 1907, the leasehold on the island was acquired from Messrs Moore and Meade by the Withnell brothers. It was regarded as an ideal place for a sheep station as there was no danger of rabbit invasion. In 1909, it was carrying a flock of about 12,000 sheep and produced approximately 400
bales of
wool. The property was then owned by John and James Withnell, the children of John and
Emma Withnell who had been early settlers in the
Pilbara. The brothers estimated the area of the island to be and intended to increase the flock on the island to 25,000. By 1910 the flock size was 14,200. By 1919, the pastoral lease was put up for auction by the owner James Nicholas, who also owned
Croydon and Peron Peninsula Stations. The station occupied an area of and was stocked with approximately 19,000 sheep.
Thomas Wardle, the
Lord Mayor of Perth, purchased the island as a private retreat for his family in about 1969 and later retired there, becoming a semi-recluse with his wife. With the exception of the pastoral homestead, the island later returned to government ownership and became part of the
Shark Bay Marine Park. The homestead is now run as an
eco-tourism resort and maintained by Wardle's grandson, Kieran Wardle. On 16 March 2008, Australian Prime Minister
Kevin Rudd announced that the wreck of the
World War II German raider Kormoran had been found on the seabed about west of the island. ==Geography ==