Batavia's Graveyard

by Mike Dash

  In some respects this was a natural reaction; the survivors knew that there was more food and water on the wreck and did not realize that foul weather, and the rioting soldiers and sailors still on board, had prevented Pelsaert and Jacobsz from salvaging more barrels from the stores. Nevertheless, once it became clear that some people were helping themselves to the barrels on the island, others would have hurried to secure a fair share for themselves. Already the once-disorganized mass of people on the island had begun to coalesce into small groups, half a dozen to a dozen strong, bound by some sort of common tie—soldiers, sailors, families, men who came from the same town, and others who had messed together on the ship. Emboldened by their numbers, these groups, it would appear, demanded what they wanted from the stockpile. A good deal of the food and most, if not all, the water, was thus consumed within 24 hours of the survivors’ arrival on Batavia’s Graveyard.

  By evening on the second day, 6 June, the people on the island had begun to realize their mistake. There had been no more rain; a thorough search of the whole island had revealed no wells; and Pelsaert’s one attempt to bring more water had failed in circumstances that suggested there would be no others. The survivors were already suffering from thirst but, without boats, they had no means of leaving Batavia’s Graveyard to search for water. All 180 of them were trapped on an arid prison—one that, without another rainstorm, would quickly kill them.

  As the drought continued into a third day, and then a fourth, the survivors’ agonies became intense. Without water, their bodies swiftly became dehydrated; after a day or so, saliva thickened into an unpleasant paste, and soon after that their mouths ceased to produce it altogether. Thereafter the symptoms only became worse: tongues hardened and swelled; eyelids cracked; the eyes themselves wept tears of blood. Throats became so dry that even breathing seemed difficult.

  Ten of the people on the island died. The old and young would have been the first to weaken, but after four or five days without water all of the survivors would have been affected to a considerable degree. They clung to life by adopting the strategies that shipwrecked men and castaways have always turned to. Most, from the predikant down, drank their own urine; a few threw aside their caution and gulped seawater; a third group chewed incessantly on lead pellets in the vain hope that they could generate enough saliva to afford at least some relief. It is very likely, though the sources do not mention it, that they also killed seabirds and sea lions in order to drink their blood.

  None of these methods of relieving thirst are particularly effective. Drinking one’s “own water,” as Gijsbert Bastiaensz put it, would have helped the survivors to reduce the risk of dehydration, but urine contains so many salts that it is worse than useless for quenching thirst. So too is seawater, and though it can be safely drunk in small quantities, one and a half pints—which contains the equivalent of an adult male’s daily requirement of salt—is the most that should be consumed in a single day. But the Batavia’s survivors had no way of knowing this. So potent is the folklore on the subject, which insists that drinking seawater leads invariably to madness, that they, like most shipwrecked sailors, no doubt refused it until they were already so dehydrated that it would have done them much more harm than good.

  After three or four days without water, sheer desperation forced the people on the island to try to get fresh supplies from the wreck. There was not yet enough driftwood to build a raft, but the predikant’s servant-girl, whose name was Wybrecht Claasen, was a strong swimmer, and she volunteered to try to reach the ship without one. The Batavia was almost a mile away, but it was possible to wade across at least part of the shallows, and after two attempts the girl contrived to reach the reef. She hauled herself onto a rock within hailing distance of the ship, calling for a rope, and the people on the wreck hurled over a line. Claasen tied the rope around her waist and was hauled on board through the breakers—“not without great danger to her life,” as one of those watching from the island observed.

  Remarkably, the maid did manage to return safely to Batavia’s Graveyard. It does not seem possible that she brought much water with her, but even a small amount would have helped to revive them and, in any case, her exploit was important from a purely moral point of view. It was the first real triumph the survivors had enjoyed since they had reached the island, and an important sign that they could take matters into their own hands, rather than waiting passively for death. In that respect, at least, the worst of their ordeal was now over.

  Nevertheless, many more of the Batavia’s passengers and crew would have died of thirst within another day or so had it not been for a squall that mercifully struck the island on the fifth day, 9 June. In no more than an hour or two, the survivors collected so much fresh water in pieces of sailcloth spread out on the coral that they more than replenished their supplies. The rain continued through the night, and though it never fell more than intermittently thereafter, from then on there was always just enough to provide a modest ration for them all.

  The position of the people on the wreck could not have been more different. The 70 men stranded on the Batavia had plenty to eat and drink; indeed the free access they now enjoyed to the private quarters in the stern, where the officers had kept their personal supplies, meant that most were better fed and watered than they had been for years. On the other hand, the ship herself was partly filled with water and, under the constant assault of the surf, she was rapidly disintegrating.

  The Batavia held together for eight days, until, on 12 June, the breakers finally destroyed her. Long before that, however, it had become difficult to find a place on board that was still safe and dry, and the survivors’ discomfort was only increased by the certainty that when she did break up they would all be tipped into the booming surf. The majority of those left on board—Jeronimus Cornelisz among them—could not swim; these men must have taken Ariaen Jacobsz’s advice and built crude rafts or piled loose planks and empty barrels on the deck to be certain that they would have something to hang onto when the moment came.

  Even the stronger swimmers could hardly have been confident of reaching shore. They had watched while the men who had jumped overboard on the night of the wreck were smashed against the coral and drowned, and knew that it took luck to get across the reef alive. So for a week they sat and waited for the ship to disappear beneath them, and while they waited, most of them drank. They were, one of their number later recalled, “left in such a desolate state.”

  The destruction of the Batavia, when it finally occurred, happened so rapidly that the men on board were taken by surprise. Battered to the point of disintegration by the surf, the ship’s port side burst open and “the wrecking went on so quickly and easily that it was like a miracle.” As the waves rushed in, anyone caught down below must have drowned almost immediately. Even the men on deck hardly had time to reach their life preservers before they found themselves afloat. For most the end was quick; the breakers held them under or knocked them senseless on the coral so that they drowned. The lucky ones were swept right over the reef into the calmer waters beyond, but only 20 of the 70 men on board managed to float or swim ashore.

  Jeronimus Cornelisz was not among them. When the Batavia’s upperworks disintegrated, his fear of drowning had prompted him to shimmy, apparently alone, along the retourschip’s bowsprit. The forward section of the ship had then broken away, with him still in it, and somehow drifted safely to the shallows. The under-merchant stayed there, clinging to his spar, for two more days, until the bowsprit fell apart beneath him. Then he floated to the island in a mass of driftwood, the last man to escape Batavia alive.

  Jeronimus staggered ashore on Batavia’s Graveyard cold, wet, and utterly exhausted. He had been 10 days on the wreck, the last two of them alone, exposed to biting southeast winds and in terror for his life. Now he was jelly-limbed and spent, in desperate need of hot food and a place to rest.

  The people of the island ran to meet him on the beach and half-helped, half-carried him into their
camp, where he was gratified to find that he was treated with great deference and respect. Frans Jansz and his councillors came to greet him, and he was pressed to take dry clothing and something to eat. Then, when he had filled his stomach, he was urged to rest.

  Cornelisz slept for hours in a borrowed bed and awakened to the sound of many voices. The campsite on the northeast quarter of the island had by now grown to quite a size, and it was alive with activity. The first crude tents had already been erected from spars and scraps of canvas cast up on the coral, and small groups of survivors were busy hunting birds or spreading strips of sailcloth to catch rain. Others scavenged washed-up bits of planking from the ship for fires.

  The destruction of the Batavia had substantially increased this bounty. The survivors’ coral islet lay directly in the path of the winds blowing from the wreck site, and large quantities of driftwood now appeared, along with barrels from the stores. Over the next few days, 500 gallons of water and 550 gallons of French and Spanish wine were washed ashore, together with some vinegar and other victuals. The barrels were manhandled up the beach and left, under guard, in a central store; the spars and planks were gathered by the carpenters, who set to work to turn them into skiffs and rafts.

  The appearance of these additional supplies was welcome, but one look at the meager contents of the store tent convinced Jeronimus that Batavia’s Graveyard would not support a large population for too long. With the arrival of the survivors from the wreck, the number of people on the island had grown to 208 men, women, and children. Even living on half rations, they would consume nearly three tons of meat and 1,250 gallons of water a month, enough to empty the stores in a few days. To make matters worse, the natural resources of the cay were already almost exhausted. During their first week on the island, the survivors had killed and eaten hundreds of birds, and so many sea lions that the colonies that had once crowded the beaches were all but gone, slaughtered for their meat. The rains were still intermittent and could hardly be relied on, and while they waited for the rafts to be completed there was still no way of leaving the island. Their position was precarious in the extreme.

  It was for this reason, more than any other, that Cornelisz was welcomed when he came ashore. It was now the middle of June, and the people of Batavia’s Graveyard had seen nothing of Francisco Pelsaert for well over a week. For a few days Frans Jansz and his councillors had dared to hope that their commandeur would return with barrels full of water, but by now it had become only too clear that Pelsaert had left the Abrolhos and was unlikely to return. With the upper-merchant gone, Jeronimus, his deputy, was the natural leader of the Batavia survivors. It was no surprise that the surgeon turned to Cornelisz for help.

  Within a day or two the under-merchant was elected to the raad. As the senior VOC official in the archipelago, he was entitled to a seat on the ship’s council, and his education and quick wit made him so much more articulate than his fellow councillors that they deferred to him, at least at first. The scant surviving evidence suggests that Cornelisz quickly came to dominate the group.

  Jeronimus enjoyed his new position of authority, and his willingness to join the raad is easily explained. On Batavia, he had possessed no real power, but on Batavia’s Graveyard he was listened to attentively, and the orders that he gave were scrupulously obeyed. He had the luxury of a large tent to himself, and the commandeur’s own clothes—which had been salvaged from the wreck—were placed at his disposal. The under-merchant thus acquired by right the very things he had once planned to seize by mutiny. In his private quarters, surrounded by his requisitioned finery, Cornelisz became a man of consequence at last—the ruler, in effect, of his own small island kingdom.

  Assured of the respect and deference he craved, Jeronimus threw himself into the business of survival. For a few days he was everywhere, striding about in Pelsaert’s sumptuous clothing, issuing an endless stream of orders and working energetically to improve the camp. He sent out hunting parties, supervised the erection of more tents, and oversaw the completion of the boats. The Batavia survivors were grateful for his efforts. “This merchant,” wrote Gijsbert Bastiaensz, “in the beginning behaved himself very well.”

  In truth, however, Cornelisz soon tired of his exertions. He might adore the rigmarole of leadership, but he had no time for the responsibilities that it entailed. The work was hard, the detail bored him; and though he had enjoyed his welcome as a savior, he remained utterly self-centered. The fact was that the under-merchant did not care whether the people he was protecting lived or died. On Batavia, where his shipmates had stood in the way of his plans for mutiny, he had been willing to kill them all to seize the ship. On Batavia’s Graveyard, the same men had become mere mouths to feed, and he was still prepared to see them dead if he thought that it would benefit himself.

  By the beginning of the latter half of June, moreover, Jeronimus’s inherent ruthlessness had been buttressed by a sobering discovery: rumors of his planned mutiny were circulating on the island. The man who had unveiled the plot was Ryckert Woutersz, one of Jacobsz’s recruits, who had taken considerable risks on the retourschip at the skipper’s behest, “sleeping for some days with a sword under his head” while he waited for the call to action. Outraged to discover that Ariaen had fled the archipelago without him, Woutersz determined to betray his master, “telling in public what They had intended to do, [and] complaining very much about the skipper.” For some reason the man’s initial allegations had been more or less ignored; perhaps the other survivors were too much racked by thirst to care about his stories, or they simply did not believe him. Now that the situation on the island had improved, however, fresh whispers had begun to sweep the camp. Jeronimus’s name, it seems, had not been mentioned; Woutersz may not even have known of the under-merchant’s involvement. But Cornelisz guessed that it might yet emerge. It was not the sort of matter he could afford to ignore.

  Alone in his tent, Cornelisz took stock of his position with cold-eyed detachment. To begin with, he had to assume that Pelsaert and the skipper were by now on their way to the Dutch settlements on Java. Ariaen, he hoped, might yet find some opportunity to murder the commandeur, tip his body overboard, and change course to some other European port—possibly Portuguese Malacca. In that case the Batavia survivors would perhaps be rescued by foreigners and the revelation of the mutiny would cease to matter.

  Nevertheless, as Jeronimus knew, there was every chance that Jacobsz and Jan Evertsz would get no opportunity to dispose of Pelsaert. In that case, much would depend on the skipper’s skill. The chances of an open, overloaded boat completing such a lengthy ocean voyage were poor, but Ariaen was a first-rate seaman and it was at least possible that he would reach the Indies. If he did, the Company would certainly dispatch a rescue ship, most probably a jacht, to recover its money chests and pick up any survivors. Provided that Jeronimus could stay alive long enough for the jacht to reach them—perhaps another month or two—he might yet find himself stepping ashore in Java.

  In most circumstances, that too would be a welcome outcome, but Ryckert Woutersz’s allegations were a problem. Jeronimus was, he knew, immune to normal criticism in the Abrolhos; the Batavia’s men had no wish to risk angering the leader of the council by taking issue with him. But his power was not absolute, and while the other members of the council could band together to outvote him, any suggestion that he had planned to mutiny would be catastrophic. Such a thing could not be laughed off or forgotten, and if there ever was a full investigation of the matter, Cornelisz’s actions on the retourschip might prove to be his death sentence. The Dutch authorities would be bound to take the allegations seriously, and they would not hesitate to torture any suspects who fell into their hands. There was every likelihood that the truth would be uncovered in this way, and the ringleaders, including Jeronimus, exposed and executed. No matter what else might occur, therefore, Cornelisz himself could not risk going to the Indies.

  What, then, was he to do if a Dutch rescue ship arrived? T
o a man as ruthless as Cornelisz, the answer appeared obvious. A jacht might carry a crew of no more than 20 or 30 sailors, so few they could be overwhelmed in a well-planned attack. Given the support of enough determined men, he could make himself the master of a rescue ship. There would be no need then to go to Java. Instead he could pursue the plan he had conceived in the Southern Ocean: turn pirate, make a fortune, and retire to some foreign port to enjoy the fruits of his endeavor.

  Even if there turned out to be no rescue and no voyage, Cornelisz could see advantages to freeing himself from the restraints he labored under in the Abrolhos. As things stood, there were distinct limits to his power and authority. His suggestions might always be respected, and his orders generally obeyed, but there were still four other councillors on the raad, and he could be outvoted. The matter was made more serious by the fact that Jeronimus’s colleagues did not share his views on the need to hoard their limited supplies. Frans Jansz and the other councillors, the under-merchant had begun to think, would kill them all with their ridiculous insistence on eking out a ration to every man, woman, and child on the island. That was something he could not allow to happen.

  Sometime during the third week of the month, therefore, Jeronimus made up his mind to instigate the mutiny that he had planned on the Batavia. The circumstances were, of course, now very different. There was no longer any ship to seize; the under-merchant’s closest ally, Ariaen Jacobsz, had deserted him; and—most importantly—it would no longer be nearly such an easy matter to control the majority of loyalists in the crew. But the Cornelisz’s goals had hardly changed. Jeronimus sought wealth, power, comfort, and security, and he was prepared to go to any lengths to secure himself these luxuries.

  It took the under-merchant perhaps a week to recruit the men he needed to seize power on the island. Exactly how he managed this was never revealed in any detail. The survivors’ situation—stranded, short of food and water, and apparently abandoned by the VOC—no doubt made his task easier than it would otherwise have been, and the fact that up to a dozen of the sailors and soldiers who had been ready to mutiny on the retourschip had found themselves trapped on Batavia’s Graveyard was a significant advantage. But he also had his own abilities to call on—a quick, if perverse, mind and a pathologically charming tongue.