It wasn't just a sunk craft. They sunk a carrier. That's painful. Your wikipedia entry is kind of weird, since it's about Australia and there are no Dutch ships in the list for the last century or so.
Australia has 'sunk' USS carriers in war games also - there are entire books written about how carriers are hard to defend in modern warfare - they're painful to lose but (shhh, don't tell anyone) relativey easy targets in all manner of ways.
The wikipedia entry is about 1400+ ships that were mostly Dutch - from the days of the Dutch East Indies and Spice trades.
It's of interest as that coast was one of the main drivers to develop "GPS 0.1" aka clocks capable of reliable determination of Longitude and one of the (relative to monetary value at the time) largest technology prizes offered.
They stopped stacking up on the West Australian coast once accurate navigation became commonplace but for a while there .. yep, Dutch ships sank themselves.
While your post is informative, it's kind of disingenuous to claim a link between two phenomena when there is none, seemingly because you needed to say something bad about Dutch ships in some way. It's a shame really, because it detracts from the quality of your other links.
> it's kind of disingenuous to claim a link between two phenomena
Which two phenomena?
Dutch ships heading to the Dutch East Indies sinking and the need to accurately measure longitude?
These are very much linked.
> needed to say something bad about Dutch ships
I felt no such need.
It's a simple fact that a comment about Netherland naval ships faux sinking US carriers prompted a remark about the large numbers of Dutch ships famously sunk off our coast here in W.Australia.
It has little to do with the quality of the ships and everything to do with the then inability to accurately reckon longitude.
Of technical interest to anyone with an interest in the evolution of surveying, navigation, timekeeping, colonial expansion, shipwrecks, treasure, etc.
