ARCHAEOLOGISTS have made a “significant discovery” after finding a historic 800-tonne Dutch merchant ship which sunk 168 years ago.

The Koning Willem de Tweede sunk off the coast of Robe, Australia in June 1857 – killing 16 of its 25 crew members in the deadly plunge.

The groundbreaking find was announced by the Australian National Maritime Museum and the SilentWorld Foundation after a gruelling four-year search.

The museum said that the breakthrough discovery “connects us to stories of trade and migration, having discharged over 400 Chinese miners just days before its sinking”.

The merchant ship used to transport Chinese migrants to South Australia, who then walked to Victoria’s Goldfields to live and work.

And the tragic sinking unfolded just days after hundreds of Chinese workers had disembarked from the vessel.

The 140-foot ship set sail in Guichen Bay, before it shockingly disappeared into the depths of the ocean.

Experts say the shipwreck helps tell the story of Chinese migration through the South of the country during the Victorian gold rush.

This prosperous era between 1851 and the late 1860s was marked by an influx of money and population growth due to many people seeking fortunes.

Spokesperson for the Australian National Maritime Museum, James Hunter, told Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) that archaeologists had uncovered several components of the ship.

He said that they had located the ship’s windlass – which is a device that raises and lowers equipment to the ship sticking out of the seabed.

The spokesperson said: “We looked at things like the depth of the ship — the draught — and we’ve looked at the water depth it’s sitting in, and that all seems to line up really well.”

He also said that researchers found a “magnetic anomaly”, about the same length as the 140-foot ship.

The museum praised the SilentWorld Foundation in collaboration with South Australia‘s Department for Environment and Water and Flinders University for making the find.

They hailed it as a “significant discovery” and added that “future monitoring visits are planned to further assess the site and uncover more of this important piece of maritime history”.

SilentWorld said the discovery could not have been possible without hard work.

The project to locate the ship lasted several years.

They described visibility in the sea as “challenging”, and added that teamwork with the department led to the “incredible” find.

Their search was hampered by “sand blizzards”.

Hunter told ABC the ship may have run aground on the seabed and was eventually buried by sand.

Their team believed they had found the wreckage three years earlier, but Hunter said the sand made identification difficult.

The research team are planning to return to the site, hoping to find more of the wreckage intact.

The incredible find comes after an iconic wooden car was discovered in the wreckage of the famed US warship, downed by a Japanese submarine during WWII.

Historians were baffled as to why the 1940-41 black Ford Super Deluxe Woody was aboard the aircraft carrier – now 16,650 feet below the surface.

And in February, the terrifying last moments of the tragic ship dubbed the “Greek Titanic” were revealed after new images captured the ghostly remains of her wreck.

The Heimara sank on January 19, 1947, after hitting an islet in the South Euboean Gulf – killing 400 people in Greece’s deadliest-ever boating disaster.

New research revealed the horror of her final moments, as well as artifacts from the wreck – frozen in time for nearly 80 years.

Among the relics were the shoes of the dead, some of them children’s, as well as paper items and letters from the ship’s nameplate.