Batavia's Graveyard (60 page)

“. . . a pleasant outing . . .”
Confession of Andries Jonas, JFP
27 Sep 1629 [DB 204].

Murder of the
predikant’s
family
Ibid; sentence on Jeronimus
Cornelisz, JFP 28 Sep 1629 [DB 174]; confession of Jan Hendricxsz, JFP 19 Sep 1629 [DB
180–1]; sentence on Jan Hendricxsz, JFP 28 Sep 1629 [DB 184]; confession of Mattys
Beer, JFP 23–24 Sep 1629 [DB 190–1]; confession of Wouter Loos, 24 Sep 1629 [DB
224–5]; testimony of Judick Gijsbertsdr, JFP 27 Oct 1629 [DB 225–6]; sentence on
Andries Liebent, JFP 30 Nov 1629 [DB 243–4].

Murder of Hendrick Denys
Confession of Jan Hendricxsz, JFP 19 Sep 1629 [DB
181]. The skull of a
Batavia
victim, now in Geraldton Museum, has been identified
as possibly that of Denys; see Juliïtte Pasveer, Alanah Buck, and Marit van Huystee,
“Victims of the
Batavia
Mutiny: Physical Anthropological and Forensic Studies
of the Beacon Island skeletons,”
Bulletin of the Australian Institute for Maritime
Archaeology
22 (1998): 47–8. My description of the wounds is largely based on an
interview with Dr. Alanah Buck of the Western Australian Centre for Pathology and Medical
Research in Perth, 12 June 2000. This skull (the jaw is missing and the remainder of the
body still lies buried under the foundations of a fisherman’s house on Beacon
Island), catalogue number BAT A16136, was originally excavated in 1964, during filming for
a television reconstruction of the
Batavia
story (Hunneybun, op. cit., section
4.11), and in 2000 was the subject of detailed reconstruction by a forensic dentist, Dr.
Stephen Knott. See the epilogue for additional details. The identification with Denys is
conjectural; the wounds agree with the description given in the journals, but nothing
definite is said about the disposal of the body. In general it may be stated that the sex,
age, and wounds found on the bodies so far excavated on the island do not agree very well
with the descriptions of the murders and burials listed in Pelsaert’s journals, which
casts some doubt on the accuracy of the survivors’ recollections and the
upper-merchant’s record.

Murder of Mayken Cardoes
Confession of Andries Jonas, JFP 24–27 Sep
1629 [DB 201–2]; sentence on Andries Jonas, JFP 28 Sept 1629 [DB 202–4]. Jonas
denied repeatedly, even under torture, that he had entered the
predikant
’s
tent that night, but admitted freely to murdering Mayken Cardoes.

Attempted murder of Aris Jansz
Testimony of Aris Jansz, JFP 27 Sep 1629
[DB 196–7]; sentence on Allert Janssen, JFP 28 Sep 1629 [DB 199].

Chapter 6: Longboat

Phillip Playford’s books provide the best description of the Western
Australian coastline between the Abrolhos and Shark Bay. I found Jean Gelman Taylor,
The
Social World of Batavia: European and Eurasian in Dutch Asia
(Madison, WI: University
of Wisconsin Press, 1983) particularly useful in reconstructing early seventeenth-century
Batavia, and R. Spruit,
Jan Pietersz Coen: Daden en Dagen in Dienst van de VOC
(Houten: De Haan, 1987), is the most up-to-date authority on the remarkable and
controversial governor-general of the Indies. The only reasonably full account of the
bizarre incident concerning Sara Specx and her lover, Pieter Cortenhoeff (which for its
sheer awfulness deserves much more space than it has been possible to accord it here) that
could be found is C. Gerretson,
Coen’s Eerherstel
(Amsterdam: Van Kampen,
1944). The fact that Gerretson felt compelled to give his book this title—it means
“Coen’s Rehabilitation”—says a good deal about twentieth-century
historians’ general disapproval of this most remarkable of Dutch empire
builders.

Description of the longboat
A reconstruction of the boat, based on
contemporary plans, was completed in the Netherlands some years ago. I saw it in Sydney,
where the full-size replica of the
Batavia
built in Lelystad (see epilogue) had
gone as part of the 2000 Olympic celebrations; it seems tiny, and far too small ever to
have held 48 people. A photo of the reconstructed longboat can be found in Philippe
Godard,
The First and Last Voyage of the
Batavia (Perth: Abrolhos Publishing, nd,
c. 1993), p. 150.

The plan
Pelsaert’s resolution of 8 June 1629, JFP [DB
127–8].

The crew
Neither the bos’n’s mate nor Nannings, both of whom
were active mutineers, are mentioned among Jeronimus’s band, so they must either have
been on board the longboat or—less likely—have been among the dozen men who
drowned when the
Batavia
was wrecked. For other members of the crew, see Antonio
van Diemen to Pieter de Carpentier, 30 Nov–10 Dec 1629, ARA VOC 1009 [DB 42–3];
Pelsaert’s resolution of 8 June 1629, JFP [DB 127–8].

The voyage up the coast
JFP 8 June–7 July 1629 [DB 128–33];
Phillip Playford,
Carpet of Silver: The Wreck of the Zuytdorp
(Nedlands, WA:
University of Western Australia Press, 1996), pp. 69–71; Godard, op. cit. pp.
149–56. De Vlamingh’s views are quoted in Playford’s
Voyage of Discovery
to Terra Australis by Willem de Vlamingh in 1696–97
(Perth: Western Australian
Museum, 1999), pp. 49–50.

The first landing
JFP 14 June 1629 [DB 129–30]. The breakers were
still far too fierce to permit a landing, but six sailors managed to swim ashore through
the heavy surf. It did no good; they found no water and did not even see the Aborigines
who were undoubtedly present in the area until the end of the day, when the
commandeur
noted a frightening incident: “Saw four men creeping towards [our men] on hands and
feet. When our folk, coming out of a hollow upon a height, approached them suddenly, they
leapt to their feet and fled full speed, which was clearly seen by us in the boat; they
were black savages, entirely naked, without any cover.”

The second landing
JFP 15–16 June 1629 [DB 125n, 130].

The river of Jacop Remmessens
It had been discovered by the boatswain of
the VOC ship
Leeuwin.
JFP 16 June 1629 [DB 131]; Günter Schilder,
Australia
Unveiled: The Share of Dutch Navigators in the Discovery of Australia
(Amsterdam:
Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1976), p. 77.

Decision to head for Java
JFP 16 June 1629 [DB 131].

Conditions in the longboat
Survivor’s letter, Dec 1629, published in
anon.,
Leyds Veer-Schuyts Praetjen, Tuschen een Koopman ende Borger van Leyden, Varende
van Haarlem nae Leyden
(np [Amsterdam: Willem Jansz], 1630) [R 235-6]. For
Bligh’s voyage, see John Toohey,
Captain Bligh’s Portable Nightmare
(London: Fourth Estate, 1999), pp. 62–4, 72–8. On psychological issues, see S.
Henderson and T. Bostock, “Coping Behaviour After Shipwreck,”
British Journal
of Psychiatry
131 (1977): 15–20. Henderson and Bostock, who made a particular
study of the case of 10 men cast adrift off the coast of Australia in 1973, are explicit
concerning the importance of “attachment ideation,” as they term it:
“Throughout the ordeal,” they write, “the most conspicuous behaviour was
the men’s preoccupation with principal attachment figures such as wives, mothers,
children and girl friends. . . . Every one of the survivors reported it as the most
helpful content of consciousness which they experienced” (p. 16). In contrast, one
man who died after five days adrift was said by the others to have “given
up.”

The mutineers’ prediction that Jacobsz would go to Malacca
JFP 17 Sep
1629 [DB 143–4].

One kannen of water left
Pelsaert declaration, op. cit.

Making Sunda Strait
JFP 3 Jul 1629 [DB 133].

Batavia
Taylor,
The Social World of Batavia,
pp. 3–32; Jaap
Bruijn et al.,
Dutch-Asiatic Shipping in the 17th and 18th Centuries
(The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 3 vols., 1979–1987), I, pp. 123–4; C. R. Boxer,
The Dutch
Seaborne Empire 1600–1800
(London: Hutchinson, 1965), pp. 189–93, 207;
Bernard Vlekke,
The Story of the Dutch East Indies
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1946), pp. 87, 91–2; Spruit,
Jan Pietersz Coen,
pp.
48–58.

Jan Coen
He was born in January 1587 and sent to Rome as a young merchant
at the age of 13. Returning to the United Provinces six years later, he signed on with the
VOC as an under-merchant, aged only 20. Revisiting the Netherlands in 1611, he presented
the Gentlemen XVII with a caustic report on the incompetence he had witnessed among its
servants in the East. Impressed, they promoted him to upper-merchant and sent him back
east in 1612 in command of a flotilla of two ships. He improved efficiency by cutting down
on the number of landfalls his vessels made, and kept his crews healthy by feeding them
lemons and plums, thus reducing the incidence of scurvy. These actions further commended
him to the Gentlemen XVII, who in 1613 named him director-general, the second most senior
position available in the Indies. Six years later Coen succeeded Governor-General Reael,
serving in the latter post until 1623, and again from September 1627 until his death in
1629. Coen was well rewarded for his work. In 1624, at the conclusion of his first term as
governor-general, the Gentlemen XVII awarded him the unheard-of gratuity of 20,000
guilders—money enough to set their servant up for life and enable him to make an
advantageous marriage. Spruit, op. cit., esp. pp. 9–10, 16–8,
41–4.

The expulsion of the English and the conquest of the Banda Islands
Spruit,
op. cit., pp. 47–50, 71–3; Jonathan Israel,
Dutch Primacy in World Trade
,
1585–1740 (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 172–6; Giles Milton,
Nathaniel’s
Nutmeg: How One Man’s Courage Changed the Course of History
(London: Hodder &
Stoughton, 1999), pp. 286–7, 298–314. The English retained a foothold in the
Spiceries thanks largely to the so-called Treaty of Defence (July 1619) between the Dutch
Republic and the English crown, which guaranteed the East India Company a third of the
produce of the Indies. The treaty had been signed before the authorities in the United
Provinces became fully aware of Coen’s successes in the East. When news of the
agreement at last reached Java, the governor-general was predictably apoplectic.
Nevertheless, by 1628, when the English East India Company finally abandoned its foothold
in Batavia, its only remaining factories in the Indies were in Bantam, Macassar, and
Sumatra.

Coen and the attempted conquest of China
Spruit, op. cit., pp. 74,
80–2.

The Amboina massacre
The total armament available to the English
contingent, it seems worth noting, consisted of three swords and two muskets. Ibid., pp.
89–92; John Keay,
The Honourable Company: A History of the English East India
Company
(London: HarperCollins, 1993), pp. 47–51; Milton, op. cit., pp.
318–42.

“An oriental despotism of the traditional kind”
Boxer, op. cit.,
p. 191.

Agung of Mataram
Spruit, op. cit., pp. 92–105; Boxer, op. cit., pp.
190–2; Vlekke, op. cit., pp. 88–9, 94; Israel, op. cit., p. 181. The Mataramese
war effort was covertly backed by the Portuguese. Mataram itself is nowadays known as
Jogjakarta.

“. . . a small proportion of their ships . . .”
Not all that
many. The Company had lost four vessels in the years 1602–24, and would lose another
16 (14 wrecked and two captured) in the next quarter of a century, about 3 for every
hundred voyages made during the period 1602–49. Jaap Bruijn et al., op. cit., I, p.
75.

“could never forget misdeeds . . .”
The opinion of the historian
Bernard Vlekke, cited by Drake-Brockman, op. cit., p. 45.

Sara Specx
Coen’s principal motive in prosecuting this case was to
assuage the disgrace done to the reputation of the Dutch in the eyes of the Javanese;
Sara’s lover, a standard-bearer named Pieter Cortenhoeff, had bribed some slaves to
allow him access to the girl’s chamber, and news of their actions had thus spread to
the native community. Sara Specx was the natural child of Jacques, the president of the
fleet Pelsaert was supposed to have sailed in. She was half-Japanese and was born on the
island of Hirado in 1617. Taylor,
The Social World of Batavia,
p. 16.

Pelsaert before the Council of the Indies
Minutes of the Governor-General
in council, 9 Jul 1629, cited by Drake-Brockman, op. cit., p. 44. During Pelsaert’s
time in Batavia, he was also interrogated by Anthonij Van den Heuvel, the
fiscaal,
as to the precise circumstances of the disaster. Pelsaert declaration, op. cit.

Coen’s encounter with the South-Land
J. A. Heeres,
The Part Borne
by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606–1765
(London: Luzac, 1899), p.
52; Schilder, op. cit., p. 100; Miriam Estensen,
Discovery: the Quest for the Great
South Land
(Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1998), p. 152. Coen’s estimates of
distance are given here in English miles; his original account gives them in Dutch
mijlen,
each of which was approximately 4H miles long.

“the other members of the council”
Although the Council
nominally had eight seats, there were in fact six vacancies at this time. Nor were the two
remaining members in any real sense independent. Van Diemen was an undischarged bankrupt
who had fled to the Indies, and Coen had shielded him from the Gentlemen XVII in spite of
this because he recognized his great ability; he thus owed his entire career to the
governor-general. Vlack was Coen’s brother-in-law. Gerretson, op. cit., p.
64.

Coen’s orders
Order of 15 July 1629, cited by Drake-Brockman, op.
cit., pp. 257–8.

Arrest of Jacobsz and Evertsz
Drake-Brockman, op. cit., pp. 46,
63.