Career
The best known of these is the guano mining venture in the Houtman Abrolhos. This situation continued until Florance, who had a mercantile education, joined the concern and began managing the venture under the name Broadhurst MacNeil and Company. MacNeil was initially a backer and a partner but he took not part in the management of the venture.
With his accountancy training F.C. Broadhurst proved enormously successful exporting to Europe and winning a gold medal at the Paris Exposition.
While working the deposits on Gun Island his labourers found a large 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. Broadhurst maintained a catalogue of his finds, which he donated to the state.
These were eventually shown to be related not to the Batavia, but the VOC ship Zeewijk which was wrecked off Gun Island in 1727.
Though a great success, in 1904 Broadhurst lost the monopoly to the guano industry.