Batavia Epub

by Pete Fitzsimons

  Of course, there is always her maid, Zwaantje Hendrix, to talk to, but one doesn’t really converse with one’s servant so much as command her. While it is possible to be on a friendly basis with hired help, that does not properly describe Lucretia’s relationship with Zwaantje, whom she frankly regrets employing. It was a last-minute thing, as was Lucretia’s decision to come to the East Indies in the first place.

  It isn’t that Zwaantje is foul-mouthed around her mistress – for she wouldn’t dare – but certainly when the maid thinks Lucretia is out of earshot she is more than merely common and . . . and, well, the other thing is that Zwaantje attracts male attention like a mangy dog attracts fleas. Lucretia is, of course, well used to keen male attention, but it has always been of the most genteel kind. Zwaantje, however – who, it has to be said, has a body reminiscent of a ship’s hourglass – has about her the manner of a bawdy wench, and males are always competing for her interest in the most outrageous manner. And she appears to love every second of it. Lucretia can barely bear to be around it.

  No, the only person whom Lucretia really enjoys talking to during this first part of the long voyage – and he appears to return the compliment – is Commandeur Pelsaert.

  A man of her own class, with an eye for the ladies, the good Commandeur always treats her with elaborate respect, never fails to make time for her and continually enquires as to her health and whether anything can be done to make her more comfortable. As to the Commandeur’s own health, Pelsaert appears to have departed Texel continuing to ail from his old Indian malady, and it is with increasing frequency that he confines himself to his quarters.

  And yet, he is still not confined frequently enough for Jacobsz’s liking. Whenever Pelsaert comes out on the deck and is anywhere near the skipper, the latter bristles, feeling invaded and trying desperately hard to remain polite, but not always succeeding.

  For all of his ongoing illness, Pelsaert is not so sick that he cannot sometimes arise, and on one occasion he finds the captain all at sea on the fo’c’sle deck, passing around a bottle of Oude Jenever, old Dutch gin, and regaling some sailors with stories of the south-sea strumpets he has had. Enraged at the breach of protocol, Pelsaert upbraids Jacobsz before his men in the strongest of terms.

  ‘Skipper Jacobsz,’ he begins, struggling for control, ‘why are you unable to conduct yourself with the dignity that your rank merits? May I remind you, you are no common seaman but a captain of the premier ship of the VOC? This is your preferred company?’ He gestures towards the common sailors with no little disdain, before continuing, ‘I suggest you forthwith retire to the Great Cabin.’

  At the end of this terse conversation, both men stalk off in opposite directions, each clearly struggling to control himself.

  Observing the exchange from a discreet distance, far enough away that it cannot be said he is intruding but still easily close enough to hear every word, is one Jeronimus Cornelisz.

  Despite having no experience working for the VOC, by virtue of his education and charm Jeronimus has surprisingly been appointed as an Onderkoopman. Even though Pelsaert and Jeronimus only met for the first time on boarding the retourschip, he is now the Commandeur’s commercial second in command, in charge of procuring and selling cargo – the very meat and potatoes of the Company. Working closely with Pelsaert over the past weeks, Jeronimus has never seen the Commandeur remotely this agitated, and thinks he could stand to know more.

  Skipper Jacobsz is also someone Jeronimus is still getting to know, but he smoothly engages him in conversation. ‘All is well, Skipper?’

  ‘Ja, ja, well, well,’ replies Jacobsz carefully, unsure just how honest he can be with a man such as Jeronimus, who, though he seems approachable enough, is still of the cursed VOC, and high up at that. One disloyal word about the Commandeur to a high Company official such as Jeronimus, if it is reported, could see him clapped in irons.

  Jeronimus decides to alleviate his obvious fears. ‘The Commandeur can be a . . . difficult man . . . ja?’ he offers to Jacobsz with a smile. It is an invitation. Unburden yourself. You are safe with me.

  And yet, while appreciative, still Jacobsz does not fully take the bait. ‘Ja, sometimes difficult,’ he says carefully in return, ‘but then, so are we all sometimes.’

  They begin to talk, tentatively at first but then with greater vigour, as they execute a difficult pas de deux. Jeronimus encourages Jacobsz to express more and more of his distaste for Pelsaert while offering up just enough of his own criticisms to assure the skipper he is safe in being so forward. By conversation’s end, the two have formed something between a bond and an alliance. At the very least, they know they are of broadly the same view. Neither of them is a Company man, and both look with disgust on those who are, who define themselves only in terms of their employment by the VOC, of whom the pompous Pelsaert is a prime example. It is something of a relief to know that, in the other, they have an approximate equal with whom they can be frank.

  The sun rises, the sun falls. The wind she blows, and the swell rolls on. The Batavia proceeds south at the rough rate of five knots, or 120 nautical miles a day. The only things for the ship’s company to gain perspective from are the Batavia’s faithful dogs, the convoy of other ships that are still on her heels, always essaying to keep roughly in position astern as the endless horizon stretches out its constant arms in every direction, making the once enormous Batavia and her sister ships look like mere model boats on a pond. There is little direct contact between the ships in the fleet, yet for many aboard the Batavia it is of enormous comfort to know they are there for them, most particularly at dawn’s first light, when it is certain they have not lost contact through the night. There is similar relief, after the passing of each storm, to count the six sets of sails in the distance and know that none of their companions have been lost.

  For those not born to the sea, unlike stingrays, sharks and Ariaen Jacobsz, shipboard life is for the most part devastating tedium interspersed with irregular dollops of pure terror. For many, the experience is further worsened by long bouts of debilitating sickness, including the cursed mal de mer.

  One who is particularly hard hit by seasickness is a VOC assistant from Middelburg, Andries de Vries, who, though blessed with a sensitive nature, has been cursed with an equally sensitive stomach. While others tend to recover from their zeeziekte, seasickness, after just a week or so, it never really leaves Andries, particularly when below decks. The only partial relief comes when he is allowed above and into the fresh air. Here, he ventures to stand in the middle of the ship, where there is least movement, looking towards the bow with the wind full in his face, while taking tea liberally laced with ginger – a remedy that traces all the way back to the first of the Arab traders on the spice route.

  But there are pitfalls in being up on deck, too, stemming from some of the things he is privy to seeing. One time, he is up there and starting to feel roughly normal for the first time in many days when, before his very eyes, one of the ship’s butchers grabs a squealing pig from one of the pens and cuts its throat. With an opening mighty spurt that splatters Andries’s clogs, the pig’s artery starts shooting out blood as if it is water rushing from a heavy bilge pump, all of it with a force only matched by the force with which Andries, an instant later, is projectile vomiting green bile across the railing to the ocean blue below.

  Those on deck watch him closely as he does so, because, whatever else, it is something different, a tiny break from the sheer boredom of it all. There is the swell of the sea as it always is; there is the horizon stretching out in all directions as it always is; there is the clear blue sky without a cloud, just as it mostly is . . . and there is Andries vomiting. I shall watch him.

  Coenraat van Huyssen and Lenart Michielsz van Os, both from noble families, are the officers in charge of the rough soldiers two decks below, whom they will command once they arrive at the Batavia garrison. For now, they have very little to do with them apart from the occasional visit. Both men ar
e young, good-looking and have a swagger to them entirely out of kilter with the minimal achievements they have registered in their lives to this point. Just like Lucretia, they too are learning quickly about shipboard life, but, unlike her, they move freely around the whole ship.

  It is, they discover, almost a tiny version of the Netherlands afloat. Throughout the ship, merchants, butchers, bakers, soldiers, sailors and candlestick makers are all well represented, as are rich men, poor men, beggar men and thieves. And, just as a thriving city like Amsterdam has foundries, workshops, restaurants, taverns, tailors, apothecaries and doctors, the Batavia has versions of all of these aboard.

  For music, there is, among others, Cornelis the Fat Trumpeter, who sometimes entertains the ship with his merry playing and renditions of seafaring shanties, which the sailors invariably sing along to:

  In Amsterdam there lived a maid.

  Mark well what I do say!

  In Amsterdam there lived a maid,

  And she was mistress of the whoring trade.

  I’ll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid.

  True, in terms of music it is not quite what those on the upper decks are used to hearing in the finest salons in Amsterdam, but for those on the lower decks it provides precious relief from the sheer dullness of it all, and for all of them it is a sound of home, of civilisation, of the world they have come from, and it is greatly appreciated.

  As to the Netherlands justice system, it, too, is represented on the ship, by the provost marshall, Pieter Jansz, who is responsible for discipline. Even a relatively minor offence such as blaspheming, drunkenness or defecating or urinating where you shouldn’t can result in a public flogging or confinement in the hole. For worse transgressions, the penalties are very serious indeed, with most of the regulations devoted to keeping the peace on the ship and maintaining order.

  If, for example, a sailor or soldier is found to have engaged in a fight resulting in bloodshed, then the punishment is clearly prescribed in the VOC regulations. The aggressor is to have one hand strapped behind his back while the other hand is nailed to the mast. And there he will stay until he tears himself loose, ripping his own hand apart. If the fight, however, has resulted in the death of another, then the aggressor can look forward to being bound to the victim and thrown overboard. As all sailors and soldiers know, if you refuse to obey an order from the captain you face either the death penalty or, if you are lucky, a keel-hauling – literally being hauled on a line under the width of the keel while the ship is moving. Some survive a keel-hauling, many do not. Meanwhile, all of murder, mutiny and sodomy bring a certain death sentence – with the one restraint being that all punishments meted out have to be accounted for once back in port.

  For matters where it is not clear who the guilty parties are, the VOC’s regulations allow the Commandeur to set up a court of inquiry composed of members of the ship’s council, consisting of himself, together with the skipper, the provost, the bosun, the opperstuurman and the Predikant.

  On the happier side of things, even the Dutch countryside is well represented on the Batavia, as the ship carries everything from roosters, goats, sheep and heavily pregnant sows in narrow enclosures on the deck and deep in the hold to plants and vegetables such as onions and carrots, which are carefully nurtured on the foredeck in the hope of providing fresh fare for the captain’s table for as long as possible.

  Of course, the work entailed in keeping all such systems going is immense, and while the soldiers and the passengers might have a great deal of free time on their hands, the rest of the ship’s company do not. The busiest are the sailors, but they are not alone in being constantly in demand.

  In the dispensary on the ship’s gun deck, right by the mainmast – a space slightly more than five feet square – the ship’s kindly surgeons, Maistre, Mr, Frans Jansz and his assistant Aris Jansz, keep their enormous supply of powders, pills and potions. Each day at 9 am, they have a consulting hour, where all those ailing from maladies, wounds, ulcers, boils, broken limbs and smashed digits can come forward to receive whatever help they can give. Often, the two surgeons are to be found applying such things as Egyptian ointments to cuts in the hope that they will heal more quickly, or ‘bleeding’ people in an attempt to cure their fevers.

  The two men’s other duty aboard is to act as the ship’s barbers. (Both roles involve razors, after all, and at least it is some consolation that they are surgeons first and barbers second, as opposed to the other way round.) Frans is a decent, quietly spoken man with a kind word for all – a rare quality for one relatively high in the VOC’s employ – and Aris, though much quieter and self-contained, is equally highly regarded.

  Meanwhile, down in the galley, the cooks are nearly always preparing for, or cleaning up from, a meal, while the cabin boys, some of whom are as young as ten and 12 years old, are scurrying every which way – both up and down and around and around – on errands of fetching, cleaning, shining, emptying chamber pots and taking messages.

  None are busier than young Rogier Decker, the cabin boy whose province of operations includes caring for the needs of the Onderkoopman, Jeronimus Cornelisz. Despite the wide chasm separating master and servant, in terms of age as well as status, something of a bond has been established between the two in these early days of the voyage. This does not extend to sodomy – a common enough occurrence between high officers and cabin boys, despite the extreme penalties for being caught – but is more a meeting of the minds.

  In conversations, Jeronimus has detected in the young man a certain naivety, a lack of gravitas, which attracts him greatly. It has been his experience that lads like this are a fairly blank canvas upon which he can work, ideally to steer him towards becoming a man of whom Torrentius himself might be proud. Behind closed doors in Jeronimus’s tight cabin, thus, the two often sit on the Onderkoopman’s cot together, the older man sharing with the lad the broad outline of his Rosicrucian philosophy. Flattered by the attention and fascinated by the idea of ‘no heaven, no hell, no consequences’, young Decker soaks it all up like a sponge. Day by day, Jeronimus is amused to see a new confidence growing in him, a certain contempt for others being expressed, a loss of respect for authority simply for authority’s sake. It all is very promising.

  The key punctuation points of the day, apart from changing watches, are mealtimes. For the common herd below decks, salted beef and pork, dried fish, apples and prunes, beans, buckwheat and peas, and the hardtack biscuits manufactured in bakeries north of Amsterdam – all of them prepared to last a long time – make up the basic diet. Early in the voyage, it is not bad. But, while the ship’s hull has been fiercely protected against the shipworm and other parasites, the same cannot be said of the food. Put simply, although the bread-room, where they store bread and cheese, is lined with a thin layer of tin, there is little protection against maggots, weevils and beetles, and as the voyage goes on, just as bedbugs and cockroaches abound in the bedding, a constant part of eating is clearing as much of these vermin away from the food before consuming each mouthful. (It is for this reason that sailors in the city are always recognisable to the rest of the population for their notorious habit of automatically tapping their bread on the table, to make as many worms and weevils as possible fall out before eating it.)

  Breakfast for those below decks usually consists of bread and porridge washed down by servings of low-alcohol beer (het Engels, the English, otherwise referred to as ‘small beer’). The porridge is served out in enormous wooden bowls, to be shared between six or seven mess-mates holding large wooden spoons, who go at it like ravenous dogs on a small piece of meat, each eager to get at least their share. ‘When the sailors are done feeding like animals,’ a roughly contemporary account runs, ‘for they don’t eat like people, they say: “There, he who can’t fart has to clean out the bowl.”’

  And so he does, while the rest take their place ahead of him in the queue to get their beer. Each man is allowed half a quart from the barrels kept near the mainmast,
and each serving into his individual cup is strictly marked off against his name. Those with the rank of bosun and above are allowed double this ration. While the supplies hold out – usually for the first six weeks of the voyage – the beer is safer to drink than the water. (Even the beer deteriorates, however, and begins to stink after a month. Water is even worse. The VOC buys its supply from an orphanage on the island of Texel, which boasts many freshwater wells with a high iron content. The iron helps stop the water from becoming slimy too quickly, but still, after some months, sailors are obliged to suck their portion between their teeth to filter from it both algae and a variety of tiny beasties that delight in making such slimy water their home.)

  As to lunch, served at noon, it varies between half a pound of ham with beans on Sundays and such things as fish or pork with beans on the other days – also washed down with beer.

  At the sound of four bells signalling the beginning of dog watch at 6 pm, dinner is generally a much lighter meal, usually consisting of leftovers and followed, too, by beer.

  Among the elite of the ship in the Great Cabin, meals could not be more different to the fare served below decks. This is partly because the soldiers on the orlop deck are eating in near darkness, whereas those privileged to eat in the Great Cabin are in the only chamber on the whole ship that has genuine lattice windows, throwing an ethereal light on proceedings. It is also partly because those eating there don’t have to fight for food from a common bowl like those below.

  But mainly it is because, here in the Great Cabin, there is full table service, with polished silver cutlery, crystal decanters and all crockery embossed with the official seal of the VOC, all of it served by cabin servants. The meals are without rationing of any kind, and during lunch and dinner particularly there may be as many as a dozen courses. These rely on meat from the freshly slaughtered chickens, pigs and lambs, or perhaps the fish caught that day, together with salads and vegetables grown on the upper poop deck, leavened with spices, cheeses, dried fruit and the like, followed by fine wines drunk from crystal glasses.