Batavia's Graveyard: The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History's Bloodiest Mutiny

by Mike Dash

  A Note on Citation

  A large proportion of the existing primary source material on the Batavia has been published over the years—the first official documents by H. T. Colenbrander and W. Ph. Coolhaas, JP Coen: Bescheiden Omtrent Zijn Bedrijf in Indiï (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 7 vols., 1920–52), and the journals themselves, with extensive supporting material including Coolhaas’s sources, by Roeper and Drake-Brockman. Most readers will find it easier to obtain one of these books than to visit archives in the Netherlands and so, in referring to the primary sources, I have also added references to the printed editions as appropriate. These appear in the notes as [R], for Roeper, and [DB], for Drake-Brockman, followed by the relevant page numbers. Drake-Brockman has been my main source simply because my mother tongue is English; as it is by 30 years the older of the two works, it seems worth noting that Marit van Huystee, a Dutch linguist working for the Western Australian Maritime Museum, gives it as her opinion that its translations, by E. D. Drok, are excellent in almost every respect.

  Prologue: Morning Reef

  The details of the Batavia’s last hours at sea and of the aftermath of the wreck have been principally drawn from Pelsaert’s own account, JFP 4–8 June 1629 [DB 122–8]. I have made a few minor conjectures, based on standard Dutch nautical practice in this period—for which see Jaap Bruijn, F. S. Gaastra, and I. Schöffer, Dutch-Asiatic Shipping in the 17th and 18th Centuries (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 3 vols., 1979–1987) and C. R. Boxer, “The Dutch East Indiamen: Their Sailors, Navigators and Life on Board, 1602–1795,” The Mariner’s Mirror 49 (1963).

  The Dutch watch system Boxer, “The Dutch East Indiamen,” p. 93.

  Ariaen Jacobsz It has not been possible to discover much information about the skipper of the Batavia. Drake-Brockman, in Voyage to Disaster, pp. 61–3, records the essential details of his career from 1616 onward. The surviving records of his hometown, Durgerdam, are meager. We know he was (or had been) married, and that his wife was a Dutch woman—one of the Batavia’s under-steersmen was his brother-in-law, according to JFP 19 Sep 1629 [DB 162]—but although the Durgerdam marital registers survive for this period, no reference to the marriage of an Ariaen Jacobsz could be found.

  Already been a servant Records of Jacobsz’s service have not been traced back before 1616, when he was promoted to the post of high boatswain; Drake-Brockman, op. cit., p. 61. But this was a senior rank, and to reach it would almost certainly have required up to 10 years’ sea service, and quite possibly much longer. Jacobsz’s age is likewise unknown, but the records of his service, together with comments that he made to Jeronimus Cornelisz at the Cape (see chapter 4), imply he was significantly older than the upper-merchant, Pelsaert—who was 34. He was probably in his mid-40s in 1629, and it is not impossible that he was 50.

  Jacobsz’s culpability for the wreck Pelsaert’s declaration to the Council of Justice, Batavia, 20 July 1629, ARA VOC 1098, fol. 223r–224r [R 214]. There is no reason to doubt Pelsaert’s statement that Jacobsz ignored the lookout’s warnings, since the skipper himself signed his declaration to confirm its truth.

  Difficulty of identifying reefs in the dark It should not be assumed that Ariaen Jacobsz and Hans Bosschieter were uniquely negligent in allowing the Batavia to run aground. It was notoriously difficult to spot low-lying reefs by night, and the records of the period contain many similar instances of ships coming to grief after dark. The VOC ship Zeewijk, which was wrecked in the Southern Abrolhos in 1727, was also lost because members of her crew made the same mistake as Jacobsz: “ . . . We asked the look-out, who had sat on the fore-yard, if he had not seen the surf, and he answered that he had seen the same for even half an hour before, but had imagined it was the reflection of the moon.” Louis Zuiderbaan, “Translation of a journal by an unknown person from the Dutch East Indiaman Zeewijk, foundered on Half Moon Reef in the Southern Abrolhos, on 9 June, 1727” (typescript, copy in Western Australian Maritime Museum), entry for 9 June 1727. Similarly, the Spanish maritime historian Pablo Pérez-Mallaína cites a virtually identical incident that occurred when the New Spain fleet of 1582 neared Veracruz one night: “[One] ship was commanded by an impulsive and imprudent master who wanted to be the first to enter Veracruz, but in the darkness he was surprised by a strange brightness, first attributed to the light of the dawn but which finally proved to be the deadly whiteness of a reef, against which the ship crashed and broke into pieces. ‘And because for half an hour [the master] saw the sea whitening, like to foam of waves breaking, he asked the sailors to be on guard . . . and they all said it was the light of day.’ ” Pérez-Mallaína, Spain’s Men of the Sea: Daily Life on the Indies Fleets in the Sixteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), p. 179.

  Timing of the wreck Pelsaert, in JFP 4 June 1629 [DB 122], gives the time as “about two hours before daybreak,” which, after making allowance for the time of year and prevailing local conditions, Drake-Brockman (op. cit., p. 122) put at about 4 a.m. I think it must have been slightly earlier, given that the watch would have changed at 4 and that it seems most unlikely Jacobsz would have stood the early morning watch.

  “First a coral outcrop . . .” Pelsaert’s declaration, 20 July 1629 [R 212–4].

  “Flung to the left . . .” Excavation of the ship in the 1970s revealed that the Batavia had settled on her port (i.e., left-hand) side. The wreck was found in a shallow depression some 800 yards east of the southwest corner of Morning Reef at a spot where there is a noticeable drop of about six feet to the seabed at the stern. Hugh Edwards, Islands of Angry Ghosts (New York: William Morrow, 1966), pp. 134–5; Jeremy Green, The Loss of the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie Retourschip Batavia, Western Australia 1629: an Excavation Report and Catalogue of Artefacts (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1989), p. 5.

  Another 270 people . . . This figure assumes 50 of the Batavia’s 150 sailors were on watch. The ship had originally set sail with 332 people (List of those on board the Batavia, ARA VOC 1098, fol. 582r [R 220–1]), but 10 had died en voyage—rather a low total for the period, as will be seen.

  Actions after the wreck JFP 4 June 1629 [DB 122–3]. For the various dimensions of the Batavia, see Willem Vos, Batavia Cahier 1: De Herbouw van een Oostindiïvaarder: Bestek en Beschrijving van een Retourschip (Lelystad: np, 1990).

  “What have you done . . . ?” JFP 4 June 1629 [DB 123].

  “The smallest of the Batavia’s eight anchors” This anchor was eventually recovered by marine archaeologists from a position some distance from the wreck. A woodcut in OV shows a cable run out through one of the Batavia’s stern gunports. This ancient method of hauling a ship off rocks is still sometimes used today. It is known as “kedging off.”

  The sounding lead Dutch leads were about 18 inches long and cast with a hollow, bowl-shaped end. This would have been filled with sticky tallow, which would bring up traces of mud or sand where the bottom was soft. In unknown waters the lead was swung regularly from the bows and the results reported to the officer of the watch by loudly singing out the depth. For the details of the soundings, see Governor-General in Council, Batavia, 9 July 1629, in H. T. Colenbrander, JP Coen: Bescheiden Omtrent zijn Bedrijf in Indiï, V, pp. 756–7 [DB 44].

  “Dutch East Indiamen were built strong . . .” Boxer, “The Dutch East-Indiamen,” p. 82.

  View of the Abrolhos from the wreck site Hugh Edwards, “Where Is Batavia’s Graveyard?,” in Jeremy Green, Myra Stanbury, and Femme Gaastra (eds.), The ANCODS Colloquium: Papers Presented at the Australia-Netherlands Colloquium on Maritime Archaeology and Maritime History (Fremantle: Australian National Centre of Excellence for Maritime Archaeology, 1999), pp. 88–9.

  “The largest island” This was East Wallabi (Pelsaert’s “High Island” in the journals), which, with a 50-foot hill as its highest point, is visible from considerably farther off than any other island in the Wallabi Group.

  “The great Yammer . . .” JFP 4 June 1629 [DB 124].

  “There was no order to the
evacuation . . .” In truth, the men of the Batavia were no better and no worse than the other sailors of their day. In the 1620s—and indeed for the next 200 years—perhaps only 1 in every 7 people could swim, and it was rare indeed for the crew of any vessel to remain disciplined in the aftermath of a shipwreck. Skippers were much more likely to save themselves than they were to remain at their posts until the last of their men had been rescued. Sailors frequently commandeered the ship’s boats for themselves and left their passengers to drown. There was no recognized emergency drill for the men to follow. The concept of “women and children first” did not exist, and the very idea of carrying lifeboats sufficient to save all passengers and crew on a vessel the size of an East Indiaman was regarded as preposterous. See the numerous examples cited by Edward Leslie, Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls: True Stories of Castaways and Other Survivors (London: Papermac, 1991). For the contemporary Spanish view, see Pérez-Mallaína, op. cit., pp. 214–5.

  Death of a dozen people by drowning Pelsaert’s declaration, 20 July 1629, ARA VOC 1098, fol. 223r–224r [R 212–4].

  Food and water from the wreck JFP 4 June 1629 [DB 124–5]. There was much more food than water—66 gallons of bread (the Dutch measured their food supplies by volume) to 17 1/2 gallons of water, according to Pelsaert’s journal (ibid.) and his declaration on arrival at Batavia.

  Value of the jewels taken from the wreck The total was first calculated, with an exactness entirely typical of the VOC, at 20,419 guilders and 15 stuivers. (There were 20 stuivers in one guilder.) This figure was later revised upward to 58,000 guilders, for reasons that are not clear (see chapter 5). Antonio van Diemen to Pieter de Carpentier, 30 November–10 December 1629, ARA 1009 [DB 42, 49].

  “It won’t help at all . . .” JFP 4 June 1629 [DB 124].

  Indiscipline below Interrogation of Allert Janssen, JFP 19 Sep 1629 [DB 194–6]; interrogation of Lenert Michielsz Van Os, JFP 23 Sep 1629 [DB 185–6]; interrogation of Mattys Beer, ibid. [DB 189]; verdict on Cornelis Janssen, JFP 30 Nov 1629 [DB 242]; verdict on Jean Thirion, ibid. [DB 243].

  Further actions after the wreck JFP 5–8 June 1629 [DB 125–8].

  Houtman’s Abrolhos J. A. Heeres, The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606–1765 (London: Luzac, 1899), pp. 14–8; Günter Schilder, Australia Unveiled: The Share of Dutch Navigators in the Discovery of Australia (Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1976), pp. 75–6.

  Naming Batavia’s Graveyard Green, Stanbury, and Gaastra, op. cit., p. 99.

  “It was better and more honest . . .” JFP 5 June 1629 [DB 125–6].

  Chapter 1: The Heretic

  The full history of Jeronimus Cornelisz has never been written before and has had to be pieced together from fragmentary references in surviving Dutch archives—in particular the Old Solicitors’ Archive, Haarlem, and the Municipal Archive, Leeuwarden. The most useful general study of Dutch Anabaptism is still Cornelis Krahn, Dutch Anabaptism: Origin, Spread, Life and Thought, 1450–1600 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968), but James Stayer’s Anabaptists and the Sword (Lawrence, KA: Coronado Press, 1976) deals specifically with the Anabaptists’ attitudes to violence and relations with the state. For details of the Torrentian scandal, I have relied on Govert Snoek’s unpublished Ph.D. thesis, De Rosenkruizers in Nederland: Voornamelijk in de Eerste Helft van de 17de Eeuw. Een Inventarisatie, and the biographies of A. Bredius, Johannes Torrentius (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1909) and A. J. Rehorst, Torrentius (Rotterdam: WL & J Brusse NV, 1939). On the peculiar story of the Rosicrucian order and their supposed beliefs, I turned to Snoek and to Christopher McIntosh, The Rosy Cross Unveiled: The History, Mythology and Rituals of an Occult Order (Wellingborough: The Aquarian Press, 1980), and on the social structure of Haarlem in the 1620s to the work of Gabrielle Dorren, particularly “Communities Within the Community: Aspects of Neighbourhood in Seventeenth Century Haarlem,” Urban History 25 (1998). No history of medicine in the Netherlands is as detailed as Brockliss and Jones’s recent The Medical World of Early Modern France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), and I have used this work, with some caution, as a guide to the equivalent “world” of the Dutch Republic.

  Life expectancy in the Indies Jaap Bruijn, F. S. Gaastra, and I. Schöffer Dutch-Asiatic Shipping in the 17th and 18th Centuries (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 3 vols., 1979–1987), I, 170; Giles Milton, Nathaniel’s Nutmeg: How One Man’s Courage Changed the Course of History (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1999), p. 242.

  “A great refuge . . .” Quoted in Bruijn et al., Dutch-Asiatic Shipping, I, 151. The VOC’s soldiers were “louts from the depths of Germany,” it was commented, and according to a saying current in the Holy Roman Empire at the time, “Even a man who has beaten his father and mother to death is too good to go to the East Indies.” C. R. Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empire 1600–1800 (London: Hutchinson, 1965), p. 135; R. van Gelder, Het Oost-Indisch Avontuur: Duitsers in Dienst van de VOC, 1600–1800 (Nijmegen: SUN, 1997), p. 149.

  “Cornelisz came originally from Friesland . . .” Earlier authorities have generally been content to label Jeronimus a Haarlemmer, assuming he was born in the town where he lived immediately prior to joining the Batavia. However, one passing contemporary reference does describe him as a Frisian (anonymous Batavia survivor’s letter, printed in Anon., Leyds Veer-Schuyts Praetjen, Tuschen een Koopman ende Borger van Leyden, Varende van Haarlem nae Leyden (np [Amsterdam: Willem Jansz], 1630) [R 236]. This suggestion appears to be confirmed by the extensive Frisian links uncovered in the course of research for this chapter.

  Distinctness of Friesland P. H. Breuker and A. Janse (eds.), Negen Eeuwen Friesland-Holland: Geschiedenis van een Haat-Liefdeverhouding (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 1997), pp. 15–17, 20, 30–1, 42–3, 120–1.

  Cornelisz’s possible origins in Leeuwarden or Bergum Jeronimus was one of the heirs of Griete Douwes, a widow who died in Bergum, and was possibly apprenticed to a Leeuwarden apothecary named Gerrit Evertsz, as will be seen. See ONAH 129, fol. 63 and below. Griete Douwes’s son, Sijbrant, who was with Jeronimus coheir to her fortune, also seems to have had some involvement with the local apothecaries; see RAF HTI 89, fol. 83v. It seems likely that Cornelisz and his family were somehow related to the Douwes family, either as business partners or through marriage. The marital records of Bergum are unfortunately absent for the period 1618–1674, and Cornelisz, possibly for reasons that will be discussed, does not make an appearance in the baptismal registers of the town. Nor does he appear in Leeuwarden’s Burgerboek (citizen book) or the marital registers of that city. It is, in short, impossible to say with any certainty that he came from this area of Frisia—merely that his relationship with Griete Douwes and Gerrit Evertsz suggests it. On the population of Leeuwarden at this time, see Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall, 1477–1806 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 332.

  Elementary schools Ibid., pp. 686–90.

  Latin schools Ibid., pp. 43–5. Jeronimus must surely have attended one of these establishments, since a good knowledge of Latin was one of the main prerequisites of a career as an apothecary.

  Wealth of London apothecaries Harold Cook, The Decline of the Old Medical Regime in Stuart London (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 48–9.

  Diseases and the intercessory saints Brockliss and Jones, The Medical World of Early Modern France, pp. 44, 74–5. For St. Fiacre, see The Catholic Encyclopaedia, vol. 6 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909).

  The Dutch guild system Paul Zumthor, Daily Life in Rembrandt’s Holland (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1962), pp. 141–3.

  Gerrit Evertsz For his dates and occupation, see CLE I, fol. 2; CLE II fol. 297, 441; HLE 23, fol. 233. For his status, see ALE 1611–1624, fol. 206, 270, 280, 437, 540, 719. All in GAL. For his appointment as Cornelisz’s agent in Friesland, see ONAH 129, fol. 63. Cornelisz was disputing the actions of Sijbrant Douwes, who had apparently sold his mother’s lands in Bergum to a certain Goossen Oebes of Lutgegeest without the ap
proval of his coheir.

  Cornelisz’s apprenticeship Apothecaries in Haarlem served apprenticeships of three years and were not permitted to become masters before the age of 25—at least according to the regulations of 1692, which are the earliest to have survived. See D. A. Wittop Koning, Compendium voor de Geschiedenis van de Pharmacie van Nederland (Lochem: De Tijdstroom, 1986), p. 131. Cornelisz would have been 25 in 1623–24.

  The medical trinity in early modern Europe Brockliss and Jones, The Medical World of Early Modern France, esp. pp. 9–10, 164–5, 175, 188–9, 191. The great majority of what Brockliss and Jones say applies equally to the situation in the Netherlands.

  The scarcity of physicians Haarlem, in 1628, had nine doctors for a population of 40,000 people. A. T. van Deursen, Plain Lives in a Golden Age: Popular Culture, Religion and Society in Seventeenth Century Holland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 237.

  Ingredients of potions See Brockliss and Jones, The Medical World of Early Modern France, pp. 160–2; Cook, The Decline of the Old Medical Regime in Stuart London, p. 134; Sarah Bakewell, “Cooking with Mummy,” Fortean Times 124 (July 1999): 34–8. The whole notion that real “mummy” was made of human flesh was, incidentally, a mistake. The original “mummy” was a black, bituminous substance called mumia, which was thought to have healing properties and was popular in ancient Persia. The Greeks thought it was used by the Egyptians for embalming and slowly, over the centuries, the original meaning of the word was forgotten. Embalmed Egyptian bodies became known as “mummies” and were associated with the alleged healing properties of mumia.

  Theriac Gilbert Watson, Theriac and Mithridatium: A Study in Therapeutics (London: The Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1966), pp. 4–5, 98, 102–4; Charles LeWall, Four Thousand Years of Pharmacy: An Outline History of Pharmacy and the Allied Sciences (Philadelphia: JB Lippincott, 1927), pp. 215–8; Brockliss and Jones, The Medical World of Early Modern France, p. 160. Analysis of surviving recipes suggest that theriac would have possessed mild antiseptic qualities, thanks to its balsemic ingredients, which may account for its great popularity.