Batavia's Graveyard (63 page)

“Confesses at last . . . He well knows . . .”
Ibid.

Hendricxsz put to the torture
Interrogation of Jan Hendricxsz, JFP 17 Sep
1629 [DB 177].

Torture of Andries Jonas
Interrogation of Andries Jonas, JFP 24 Sep 1629
[DB 201].

Cornelisz betrays his followers
Interrogation of Rutger Fredricx, JFP 20
Sep 1629 [DB 205–6]; interrogation of Lenert van Os, JFP 23 Sep 1629 [DB 168–9];
interrogation of Rogier Decker, JFP 24 Sep 1629 [DB 169]; interrogation of Mattys Beer,
JFP 23 Sep 1629 [DB 189–90].

Jonas’s contrition
Interrogation of Andries Jonas, JFP 27 Sep 1629
[DB 202].

Verdict on Cornelisz
Sentence on Jeronimus Cornelisz, JFP 28 Sep 1629 [DB
172–7].

Verdicts on the major mutineers
JFP 28 Sep 1629 [DB 154–6].

Men held and released
JFP 28 Sep 1629 [DB 156–7]; list of mutineers,
20 Aug, JFP 19 Sep 1629 [DB 166–7].

Hayes’s promotion
JFP 28 Sep 1629 [DB 157].

“Who had been without a commanding officer . . .”
Gabriel
Jacobszoon, the corporal, was dead, and Pietersz, the lance corporal, in prison.

“Keep his men supplied with food and water”
The main wells on
Wiebbe Hayes’s Island had begun to run dry, and it was only after careful searching
that new sources of fresh water were at last uncovered on the High Island.

“The only goods recovered . . .”
JFP 25 Sep 1629 [DB
150].

“It would not be without danger . . .”
JFP 28 Sep 1629 [DB
151].

Executions set for 29 September
This is the only date Pelsaert can have
had in mind, since it must have been almost dark when sentences were passed on the 28th,
and he states (JFP 28 Sep 1629 [DB 211]) that the executions would be
“postponed” to 1 October. It would have been proper to have carried them out on
the Sunday, 30 September.

Cornelisz requests a delay
Ibid.

“The
predikant
put him at ease . . .”
Ibid.

Jeronimus again begged to know . . .
JFP 29 Sep 1629 [DB
211–2].

“Tut—nothing more?”
Ibid.

Jeronimus’s letters
JFP 29 Sep 1629 [DB 171].

Jacob Jansz Hollert
The journals actually have “Jacop Jacopsz
Holloch” at this point, an apparent error since no one of this name is referred to
anywhere else in the text. Drake-Brockman interprets the name as a probable reference to
“Jacob Jacobsz Houtenman,” the skipper of the
Sardam;
but the name as
given actually seems closer to Jacob Jansz Hollert, the
Batavia
’s
under-steersman, who had returned with Pelsaert; and this man does seem a much more
probable recipient of the letters, since he would actually have known Cornelisz. Given
that Ariaen Jacobsz is said to have stated [Interrogation of Jeronimus Cornelisz, JFP 19
Sep 1629, DB 164] that he mistrusted both Claes Gerritsz and “the under-steersman, my
brother in law,” this reading would imply that Gillis Fransz Halffwaack was the
skipper’s relative, but that Fransz’s colleague, Jacob Jansz, was—at least
in Jeronimus’s eyes—more sympathetic to the mutineers. Before condemning Hollert
as a crypto-mutineer, however, it is worth recalling that by this stage in the story, the
under-merchant had wiped out all but a tiny handful of the people he had got to know in
the
retourschip
’s stern; of his immediate peer group, only Pelsaert, Claes
Gerritsz, Bastiaensz, and Creesje were both alive and present in the archipelago. Since
Gerritsz seems to have been kept busy on the Council and at the wreck, and neither the
predikant
nor Creesje were at all likely to act willingly as messengers, Hollert may have been
nothing more than a last, despairing hope. For a more conspiracy-oriented perspective, see
Philip Tyler, “The
Batavia
Mutineers: Evidence of an Anabaptist ‘Fifth
Column’ within 17th Century Dutch Colonialism?”
Westerly
(December 1970):
36–7.

“Was, perhaps, a remnant of the batch . . .”
The other
possibility is that the poison was obtained from the
Sardam
’s
apothecary’s chest. (Frans Jansz’s chest had evidently been lost with the
Batavia,
as the eventual rediscovery of some of its contents at the wreck site showed. 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), pp. 95–6, 99–101. This catalog lists two
different sets of ointment jars; in excess of 24 jars, or about one-eighth of the original
contents of the chest, were recovered from the seabed. It is however possible that the
remainder of the jars were recovered by the mutineers.

The suicide attempt
JFP 29 Sep 1629 [DB 211–2].

Pelsaert confronts Jeronimus’s religious views
JFP 30 Sep 1629 [DB
212].

“Godless”
Verdict on Andries Jonas, JFP 28 Sep 1629 [DB
203].

“Evil-minded”
Ibid.

“Innately corrupt”
Pelsaert to the Gentlemen XVII of Amsterdam,
12 Dec 1629, ARA VOC 1630 [DB259].

“See how miraculously . . .”
JFP 30 Sep 1629 [DB 212].

Site of the gallows
Edwards, op. cit., p. 177.

Creesje and Cornelisz
Testimony of Wiebbe Hayes, Claes Jansz Hooft et al,
2 Oct 1629, OV, pp. 59–60 [G pt. 2, p. 37]. As Drake-Brockman points out (op. cit.,
pp. 67–9), this testimony does not appear in JFP and there are no places in
Pelsaert’s journal from which it could reasonably have been excised. Its first
appearance was in Jan Jansz’s
Batavia
pamphlet of 1647. Drake-Brockman adds
that it may [1] be a genuine addition to the record, which the pamphleteer somehow got
hold of (it is in the first, rather than the third person, unlike JFP, but its content is
consistent with the unpublished records of the VOC, making outright forgery unlikely) or
[2] a fake, invented by someone who wished to make quite certain that Creesje Jans was
cleared of any imputation that she submitted willingly to Cornelisz. Both modern editors
of Pelsaert’s journals—Drake-Brockman and Roeper (op. cit., p. 210) tend to
favor its authenticity.

“So that their eyes could see . . .”
JFP 2 Oct 1629 [DB
213].

Amputation of hands
OV [G pt. 2, p. 37]. There is some uncertainty as to
whether the full sentence was carried out, as Bastiaensz, in LGB, mentions the amputation
of only Cornelisz’s right hand. I tend to think the
predikant
was simply being
inexact in what was not, after all, an official account.

“They all shouted . . .”
JFP 2 Oct 1629 [DB 213]

“If ever there had been a Godless Man . . .”
LGB.

Chapter 9: “To Be Broken on the Wheel”

Henrietta Drake-Brockman did invaluable work, in the 1950s and 1960s, on
the aftermath of the
Batavia
mutiny, and her
Voyage to Disaster,
while
inaccurate in some small details, includes almost all that is known about the later
history of Pelsaert, Gijsbert Bastiaensz and his daughter, Ariaen Jacobsz, and Creesje
Jans. My own research has added only a little to Drake-Brockman’s findings. The
archives of Dordrecht, Haarlem, and Amsterdam did provide some fresh information, and the
massive early Dutch histories of the Indies also proved invaluable—in particular the
first volume of J. Mooij’s
Bouwstoffen voor de Geschiedenis der Protestantsche
Kerk in Nederlands-Indiï
(Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1927), which translates as
“Building Blocks for the History of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands
Indies” and contains additional details concerning the fates of the
predikant
and his daughter.

Death by hanging
John Laurence,
A History of Capital Punishment
(New York: Citadel Press, 1960), pp. 41–5.

“He could not reconcile himself . . .”
JFP 2 Oct 1629 [DB
213].

“Dying as he had lived . . .”
Anonymous
Batavia
survivor’s letter, December 1629, in anon.,
Leyds Veer-Schuyts Praetjen, Tuschen
een Koopman ende Borger van Leyden, Varende van Haarlem nae Leyden
(np [Amsterdam:
Willem Jansz], 1630), pp. 19–20 [R 236]. For the identification of the author, see
the general comments at the beginning of the notes.

Final confessions of the
Batavia
mutineers
JFP 2 Oct 1629 [DB
213].

Display of executed prisoners at Haarlem
William Brereton,
Travels in
Holland, the United Provinces etc. . . . 1634–1635
(London: Chetham Society,
1844), p. 49.

Salvage operations
JFP 25–26 Sep, 3 Oct–14 Nov 1629 [DB
150–1, 213–22]. Pelsaert indicates, and other writers have assumed, that only
one chest remained unsalvaged. However, the numismatist S. J. Wilson, in
Doits to
Ducatoons: The Coins of the Dutch East India Company Ship
Batavia,
Lost on the
Western Australian Coast 1629
(Perth: Western Australian Museum, 1989), p. 9, reports
that salvage operations undertaken in the period from 1963 brought up so much
money—in excess of 10,000 coins—that the cash seems to have once filled two
chests rather than one.

“With heart’s regret”
JFP 12 Oct 1629 [DB 215].

“. . . well in excess of 150,000 guilders . . .”
The
Batavia
herself had cost about 100,000 guilders, and the cash in the missing money chests totaled
another 45,000 guilders. The value of the ship’s miscellaneous trade goods,
particularly some of Pelsaert’s silver, must have totaled at least 5,000 guilders
more. Wilson, op. cit., p. 9.

Loss of the
Sardam
’s boat
JFP 12–13 Oct, 15 Nov 1629 [DB
215–16, 234]. Drake-Brockman’s translation is a little confusing at this point.
As printed, it gives the distance from the
Sardam
to the yawl as “two
miles” as though they were English units of measurement, but the original manuscript
reads “2 mijlen,” seventeenth-century Dutch miles, each of which was equivalent
to about 4.6 English statute miles.

The possibility of a second mutiny
Allert Janssen had, indeed, warned
Pelsaert on the way to the gallows that the
commandeur
should “watch very well
on the Ship because quite many traitors remained alive who would seize an opportunity to
execute that which they had intended; without naming anyone, saying that he did not wish
to be called an informer after his death.” JFP 28 Sep–2 Oct 1629 [DB 157,
213].

Leniency shown to Wouter Loos
Pelsaert’s moderation in this case
still seems remarkable today. It was not until the end of October, when Judick Gijsbertsdr
belatedly came forward to testify against him, that the mutineers’ last leader was
closely questioned about his activities on Batavia’s Graveyard, and though he finally
confessed, under repeated torture, to the murders he had previously denied, there was
never any talk of increasing his sentence. Testimony of Judick Gijsbertsdr, 27 Oct 1629
[DB 225–6].

The trials on board the
Sardam
Sentences on Daniel Cornelissen,
Hans Jacob Heijlweck, Cornelis Janssen, Jean Thirion, Andries Liebent, Hans Frederick,
Olivier van Welderen, Jan Renou, and Isbrant Isbrantsz, JFP 24 Sep–20 Nov 1629; [DB
240-6].

Numbers of
Batavia
survivors
Pelsaert to the Gentlemen XVII, 12 Dec
1629, ARA VOC 1630 [DB 259–61]. The names of the survivors are nowhere given, but
Pelsaert seems definite that only seven women survived the disaster. Two of
them—Zwaantie Hendricxsz and her companion—had reached
Batavia
in the
longboat, so it would appear that either Anneken Bosschieters or Marretgie Louys, two of
the women kept for “common service,” must have died on the islands. Neither is
mentioned among Cornelisz’s victims, and both survived the wreck and the initial days
without supplies, so presumably the death can be attributed to injury or
disease.

The return to Batavia
JFP 15 Nov–5 Dec [DB 234–9,
247].

The marooning
The exact spot where the two mutineers were put ashore is
still debated. Henrietta Drake-Brockman favored the mouth of the Hutt River. Most modern
authors identify the location as a cove just north of Red Bluff, which stands at one end
of Wittecara Gully. The Red Bluff site is several miles to the north of
Drake-Brockman’s preferred location. Today a small memorial marks the spot. JFP 16
Nov 1629 [DB 237]; Phillip Playford,
Carpet of Silver: The Wreck of the Zuytdorp
(Nedlands, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 1996), pp. 237–42.

The
Sardam’s
council
Thanks to the loss of Jacob Jacobsz, the
council numbered only five on this occasion. The principal members were Pelsaert, Claes
Gerritsz, Sijmon Yopzoon, and Jan Willemsz Visch. For some reason Gijsbert Bastiaensz and
Jacob Jansz did not sit in judgment on the mutineers; possibly they were ill. Remarkably,
however, Salomon Deschamps retained his place even though he had been sentenced to be
keelhauled and flogged only a fortnight earlier. Once again, the only likely explanation
is that he alone among those on board had the clerical skills needed to keep the necessary
records.

Sentences passed on board the
Sardam
JFP 30 Nov 1629 [DB
239–47]. Daniel Cornelissen was sentenced to receive 200 strokes, twice the number
meted out to Deschamps and the other minor mutineers who had been sentenced in the
Abrolhos. Cornelis Janssen received 150 strokes and the fine of 18 months’ wages (the
larger fine may simply represent a longer service with the VOC) and Hans Jacob Heijlweck
was sentenced to 100 strokes and the loss of six months’ wages. The lightest flogging
was meted out to Isbrant Isbrantsz, who received only 50 strokes.