Batavia's Graveyard (37 page)

The
Sardam
sailed for the Indies on 15 November 1629 carrying 77
survivors from the
Batavia.
Of this total, 45 had fought with Wiebbe Hayes; three,
including Pelsaert, had reached Java in the longboat and returned on board the
jacht;
and the other 29 had been members of Cornelisz’s band, unwilling associates, or
concubines of the mutineers. Only five of the survivors were women—Creesje Jans was
one of them—and just one was a child. Among the men, fewer than half a dozen of those
who had survived Batavia’s Graveyard had done so without throwing their lot in with
the mutineers or signing one of Jeronimus’s oaths of obedience. These
people—none of them are named—were almost certainly artisans: carpenters, cooks,
or coopers whom even Cornelisz could see were more valuable alive than dead. Every other
man, woman, and child who had survived the wreck had been murdered in the six weeks from 3
July to 16 August. The killings on the islands had ceased for no other reason than that
the mutineers had run out of victims.

The gales of the preceding weeks had at last given way to beautiful spring
weather, and the
jacht
made excellent progress along the coast of the Great
South-Land. She dropped anchor at Batavia on 5 December, a little under three weeks after
leaving the Abrolhos. The return journey was thus accomplished in less than a third of the
time that Pelsaert had taken to sail from the Indies to the archipelago two months
earlier.

Only two incidents of any significance occurred during the voyage. On the morning
of 16 November, less than a day after leaving Batavia’s Graveyard, Pelsaert spotted
smoke rising on the South-Land. The weather was considerably more moderate than it had
been on his first trip along the coast, and—hoping that the smoke might come from a
signal fire lit by Jacob Jacobsz and the men who had gone missing in the
Sardam
’s
boat—the
commandeur
managed to put in at an inlet on the coast, not quite 50
miles north of the Abrolhos. No trace of the missing sailors could be found, but the place
was evidently inhabited—the landing party found plenty of naked footprints, though
“the Blacks kept themselves hidden and did not show themselves to
anyone”—and there was fresh water in a gully.
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It struck Pelsaert that this
would be a good spot to carry out the sentences on Jan Pelgrom and Wouter Loos, and later
in the day the two mutineers were rowed ashore and abandoned on a gently shelving beach
close to the stream. Pelgrom and Loos thus became—improbably—the first white
settlers in Australia, nearly 160 years before the arrival of the British convicts of the
First Fleet of 1787.

Once again, the mutineers had been exceptionally fortunate. Despite its
later—and romantic—reputation, marooning frequently meant little more than a
slow death. Many maroons were abandoned on waterless cays, much like those in the
Abrolhos, with nothing but a water bottle and a gun; once the water was all gone, they
were expected to shoot themselves. Pelgrom and Loos received a good deal more—a
boatload of equipment, materials to barter with the natives, access to a good supply of
water, and even instructions from the
commandeur
on how best to ingratiate
themselves with the people they encountered. Their prospects of survival were not
bad.

The second incident of note did not take place until the end of November, by
which time the
Sardam
was almost within sight of the coast of Java. Eight of the
mutineers on board had still not been told what their sentences would be. The members of
this group now begged Pelsaert to review their cases and pronounce judgment immediately,
before they reached Batavia. It was an unusual request, not least because the men’s
petition was supported by the remainder of the crew, and it was almost certainly made
because the surviving mutineers knew of the light sentences handed out to Deschamps,
Gellisz, Loos, and their companions and suspected that they would be treated more
leniently by Pelsaert than they would by the unforgiving Council of the Indies. In this
they were undoubtedly correct.

The members of Pelsaert’s Broad Council took some time to debate the
men’s request. On one hand they suspected Governor-General Coen would probably wish
to try the mutineers himself. On the other, they may have felt some slight compassion for
the men, and wondered—as Pelsaert noted in his journals—if it might be better
“not to trouble further the Hon. Lord Gov. Gen. in his many duties, as we fear that
the Javanese war is causing him enough heartburning, although [we] hope such is not
so.” In the end a compromise was reached. Seven of the rebels were brought up from
below to hear their sentences. The eighth was the last surviving member of
Jeronimus’s council: the unfortunate lance corporal, “Stone-Cutter”
Pietersz, who was the one major mutineer still in Pelsaert’s custody. He was kept
bound and chained to await the pleasure of the governor-general.

The first man called before the council was Daniel Cornelissen. The enthusiastic
young cadet had killed four men and helped to kill three more before he was captured by
Wiebbe Hayes; he was sentenced to be keelhauled three times and then severely flogged, and
was also to suffer the confiscation of his last year’s wages. Hans Jacob Heijlweck,
who had brained the surgeon with a morning star, was also guilty of murder, and he
received a similar sentence. So did Cornelis Janssen, the sailor, who had killed no one.
His crimes were plotting mutiny on board the
Batavia,
helping to assault Creesje
Jans, and looting the
commandeur
’s cabin after the wreck.

Three more of those who had sworn loyalty to Jeronimus—the soldiers Andries
Liebent and Hans Frederick, and Isbrant Isbrantsz, an assistant—had assisted in the
murders, though Liebent and Frederick had killed willingly, while Isbrantsz had acted
under duress. Their punishment was to be dropped three times from the mast, then flogged;
Liebent and Frederick were also fined six months’ wages. Jean Thirion, a soldier who
had hacked open one of the VOC’s money chests on the wreck, was sentenced to be
keelhauled, flogged, and fined a similar amount.

Two prisoners still had to be dealt with. The last remaining member of
Cornelisz’s gang, Olivier van Welderen, seems to have been suspected of a good deal,
including, perhaps, membership of the group of mutineers that had formed on the
Batavia.
But illness had confined Van Welderen to his tent on Batavia’s Graveyard for weeks on
end, and he had played no direct part in any of the events on the islands. Pelsaert
plainly felt he had retained a good deal of influence over his murderous brother Gsbert,
but Olivier remained steadfast under questioning and confessed to nothing more than
sleeping with Zussie Fredericx, one of the married women kept “for common
service.” It did him little good; his punishment—“that he shall be dropped
three times from the mast, and be flogged with 100 strokes”—was identical to
that handed out to men guilty of far more.

The last man to be sentenced on the
Sardam
was a French soldier, Jean
Renou of Miombry, who had never been part of Jeronimus’s gang. He had, in fact, been
one of the Defenders and had served loyally throughout the siege of Hayes’s island.
The Frenchman’s crime was a peculiar one; he was charged not with murder or mutiny
but with slander—which was, thanks to the huge importance that the Dutch attached to
their personal honor, an almost equally serious offense at this time. The particulars of
the case, as set out by Pelsaert, were that Renou had defamed Zussie Fredericx by
recounting to a whole tent full of people how she had willingly given herself to three
men, including Renou himself and Wiebbe Hayes, during a short visit to Hayes’s
Island. This allegation, the
commandeur
agreed, was “a matter of very evil
consequence,” not least because Renou had announced that Zussie “did him
evil” as a result, no doubt by infecting him with a venereal disease. The Frenchman,
Pelsaert said, deserved stern punishment for besmirching a married lady’s
name.

It may appear surprising that the
commandeur
was much concerned with the
honor of one woman at such a time—and a sailor’s wife at that. Probably
Pelsaert’s real motive was quite a different one: to protect the reputation of the
new hero, Wiebbe Hayes. In doing so, he sentenced the loose-tongued Renou to be dropped
three times from the mast and flogged—the same punishment that Liebent and Frederick
had just received for their part in the murder of two people. The only difference between
them was that Renou was allowed to keep his wages.

A good deal had changed in Batavia since Pelsaert had last seen the town. It was
now the monsoon season, and the climate, never pleasant for a European, was at its most
unbearable. Batavia was still hot, but with the onset of the rains it had been drenched as
well. On average, almost six feet of rain fell within the walls during the summer months,
and in the intervals between the storms the weather became unpleasantly humid and seemed
to breed fever.

At least the military situation had improved while the
commandeur
had been
in the Abrolhos. Coen’s foreboding that he faced a second siege had come true toward
the end of August, when the Susuhunan of Mataram returned to invest Castle Batavia with a
substantial army. But only six weeks later, on 2 October—the same day that Jeronimus
and his followers had been hung on Seals’ Island—Agung had given up the siege
“with dishonor,” as the VOC’s Batavia Day Book put it, “and in an
ignominious manner.” Hampered by lack of food, the Javanese troops had abandoned
their positions overnight and streamed back into the forests before the Dutch became aware
that the enemy was fleeing. The successful conclusion of the siege marked the end of Jan
Company’s war with Mataram, which had put a considerable dent into the Indies trade
and devastated the town and its surroundings. Both soon recovered; indeed the environs of
Batavia reverted to jungle so swiftly that before long the governor-general was offering
money for every rhinoceros killed in the immediate vicinity. By 1700 this bounty was being
paid out about 30 times a month.

The other great change had taken place within the walls of Castle Batavia itself.
Coen had not lived to see the triumph of his armies. The governor-general had collapsed
and died, aged 42, on 21 September—the day before Jacques Specx and the remainder of
the VOC’s autumn fleet (of which Pelsaert’s squadron had once formed a part)
came to anchor in the roadstead outside the town. The cause of death was apparently heart
failure. Coen had been ill before, with dysentery, but his death was sudden and so
unexpected that it gave rise to some startling rumors. The most popular attributed his
seizure to the arrival of Specx, whose daughter, Sara, Coen had only recently had flogged
before the town hall. It was said that Coen had been promenading on the balcony of his
quarters on the afternoon before his death when he saw the autumn fleet appear on the
horizon. “There is Sir Specx, my successor,” he is supposed to have prophesied,
before dropping dead from the fear of what Specx would do to him when he discovered what
had happened to his daughter.

Whether he truly died this way or not, Jan Coen’s last prediction did come
true. Jacques Specx was appointed governor-general of the Indies three days after his
predecessor’s death. It thus fell to him, and to the
fiscaal,
Antonij van den
Heuvel, to consider the case of the surviving
Batavia
mutineers, who were landed
from the
Sardam
late in the first week of December and—it seems safe to
assume—taken at once to the appalling dungeons beneath the citadel, where Ariaen
Jacobsz was still confined pending further investigation of his role in the
mutiny.

There were 14 of them in all: the eight men whom Pelsaert had just dealt with,
another five, including Salomon Deschamps and Lucas Gellisz, whose cases had been
considered in the Abrolhos, and finally the lonely figure of Stone-Cutter
Pietersz—once lieutenant general of Jeronimus’s band but now a mere lance
corporal once again—who had still not been heard at all. At least some of those who
had come before the
Sardam
’s council had already been punished by the time the
jacht
reached Batavia (there is some doubt whether Pelsaert had dealt with Daniel
Cornelissen and the others sentenced at the end of November), but even those men could not
be certain they would be released. The governor-general of the Indies enjoyed absolute
power within his dominions, and he could do with them as he liked.

The men were left to rot in prison while Specx and his councillors considered how
to handle the
Batavia
affair, and their cases were not finally decided until the
end of January. Pelsaert’s leniency seems to have struck Specx as quite excessive,
and as the mutineers had feared, the governor-general had no compunction in setting the
commandeur
’s
verdicts to one side. On 31 January 1630, the survivors of Cornelisz’s gang were
brought up from the cells and told they faced much sterner punishments for the crimes they
had committed on Batavia’s Graveyard.