Batavia's Graveyard (21 page)

The first part of Jeronimus’s plan was now complete. The dispatch of
landing parties to the four outlying islands had reduced the population of Batavia’s
Graveyard by one-third, to somewhere between 130 and 140 people, and nearly four dozen
able-bodied men and two dozen boys had been lured onto other cays where they posed no
threat and would most likely die. Cornelisz and his followers were still outnumbered by
the loyalists among the crew, but the under-merchant guessed that few of the 90 other
adult males still with him on Batavia’s Graveyard had much stomach for a fight. He
now guessed he could survive until a rescue ship arrived. The trick would be to seize it
when it came.

The notion of capturing a
jacht
was certainly enticing, but Jeronimus knew
that it would be no easy task. A frontal assault was out of the question; even the
smallest VOC craft had cannon, boarding pikes, and muskets enough to fend off an attack.
Nor was it likely to be possible to surprise and seize a ship at anchor in the
archipelago, since the attackers’ boats would be seen approaching from a
distance.

A better way, the under-merchant thought, might be to lure the
jacht
’s
crew onto land. If a boatload of sailors from a rescue ship were to come ashore on
Batavia’s Graveyard, they would be outnumbered by Cornelisz’s men. And if the
mutineers could cut the landing party’s throats, they would probably leave themselves
no more than 20 men to deal with on the ship.

Jeronimus, we know, believed that this idea had merit. But he also saw at once
that it could not succeed while there were so many people on the island. For one thing,
the supplies of food were still so low that they might all starve before a rescue ship
arrived. For another, most of the
Batavia
survivors were still loyal to the VOC;
there was every chance that they would try to warn their rescuers of the danger they were
in. Once again, the solution to the problem struck the under-merchant as self-evident. The
people in his way would have to die.

Most leaders would have balked at the idea of slaughtering 120 of their own men,
women, and children, but Cornelisz regarded the prospect with his customary detachment. He
was the leader of the ship’s council and thus invested with the power of the VOC. In
his warped view those who opposed him, or were likely to, were mutineers themselves. As
for the remainder of the survivors, those on the other islands, perhaps he simply believed
that they would soon be dead, and never bothered to consider what might happen if they
lived.

The killing began in the first week of July.

Jeronimus had waited several days for the opportunity to spring his mutiny. He
wanted, first of all, to snuff out dissent, and since the members of the
raad,
were
the most likely source of opposition, that meant finding a pretext to dissolve the
existing council. The chance to do this arose when the under-merchant was informed that a
soldier named Abraham Hendricx had been caught tapping one of the barrels in the stores.
Under interrogation, Hendricx confessed to having crept into the store tent several times
before, and to sharing his bounty with one of the
retourschip
’s gunners. In
the survivors’ straitened circumstances, the theft was punishable by death. The
gunner’s culpability was, however, harder to establish, and there seemed to be a good
chance that the
raad
would spare his life. Jeronimus, it seems, decided to exploit
this fact by demanding that both the guilty men be executed, fully expecting to be met
with opposition.

“On 4 July, when Abraham Hendricx, from Delft, had tapped a
Wine barrel several times and drank himself drunk—and had also given up some to a
gunner, Ariaen Ariaensz, so that he also became drunk—Jeronimus proposed to his
council, which he had called together, that they were worthy of death without grace or
delay, and must be drowned forthwith.

“The council consented insofar as it concerned Abraham
Hendricx, because he had tapped the barrel, but insofar as it concerned the other, Ariaen
Ariaensz, they made difficulties and would not vote to sentence him to Death. Whereupon
Jeronimus burst out, and said, ‘How can you not let this happen? Nevertheless, you
will soon have to resolve on something quite else.’ At which words each one became
afraid, and could not understand what he meant by that.”

Precisely what Cornelisz intended became clear enough next day, 5 July, when the
under-merchant suddenly dissolved the
raad
and removed all the other councillors
from their posts. This extreme, but not illegal, move allowed him to “choose for his
new council such persons as accorded with his desires, to wit, Coenraat van Huyssen,
cadet; David Zevanck, assistant; and Jacop Pietersz Cosijn, lance
corporal.”

With this council of mutineers in place, Cornelisz at last felt secure. Zevanck
and the others could be relied on to follow his instructions, and the other people on the
island were unlikely to take issue with their edicts, so long as they were dressed up with
a veneer of legality.

The under-merchant proved this point immediately by executing Hendricx
^*30
and
accusing two carpenters named Egbert Roeloffsz and Warnar Dircx of plotting to make off in
one of the little homemade yawls. The latter charge seems to have been based on nothing
more than island gossip, but the new
raad
had no compunction in passing death
sentences on both men and, significantly, there was no sign of dissent among the
rank-and-file survivors. Roeloffsz and Dircx were killed later the same day by two of
Jeronimus’s men, Daniel Cornelissen and Hans Frederick, both cadets.
“Daniel,” the
Batavia
journals relate, “has pierced the foresaid
Warnar with a sword; of which he boasted later, saying that it went through him as easily
as butter  . . . [and Hans Frederick] has let himself be used very willingly [and] has also
given two or three hacks to Warnar.”

Cornelisz thus contrived to rid himself of not one but three possible opponents
within a day of seizing control of the ship’s council. He was, however, perfectly
aware of the overriding need for caution in the methods he employed. He and his men were
still heavily outnumbered, and it was important to proceed so that the people of the
island did not suspect that their numbers were being systematically reduced. Some better
way had to be found of disposing of the strongest loyalists covertly, so that even their
friends did not realize they had gone.

Batavia’s Graveyard itself was useless for such purposes. It was so small
that a missing man would soon attract attention, and so barren that a body would be
difficult to hide. Cornelisz’s solution was simple but effective. He announced that
he was sending reinforcements to assist Wiebbe Hayes in the search for water. Several
small parties—three or four people at a time—were to leave for the High Land in
the coming week. These men, it was made clear, were likely to be gone some time. They were
to remain with the soldiers until water had been found.

The
Batavia
survivors saw nothing unusual in such a plan. Jeronimus had
made no secret of his desire to reduce the numbers on Batavia’s Graveyard, and it was
obvious, from the absence of signals, that Hayes and his men had been unable to find
water; they would no doubt welcome some assistance. Since there were no rafts to spare, it
also made sense for the reinforcements to be rowed north by boatmen who would—of
course—return alone. Only the under-merchant knew that the oarsmen would be chosen
from the ranks of the most determined mutineers.

Cornelisz’s scheme was put into action immediately. The first party of
reinforcements consisted of two soldiers and two sailors, who were to be rowed to the High
Land by Zevanck and six of his strongest men. Four of the mutineers were Company cadets,
and they were reinforced by Fredricx, the locksmith, and a soldier, Mattys Beer.
Cornelisz’s followers thus outnumbered their intended victims by almost two to
one.

The little group set off on a raft from Batavia’s Graveyard, rowing along
the deep-water channel until the island had almost vanished in the distance. As soon they
were well away from any help, the unsuspecting loyalists were set upon and taken by
surprise. Their hands and feet were tightly bound and three of them were tipped overboard
to drown. The fourth, a Company cadet called Andries Liebent, begged for his life and he
was spared on condition that he pledged his loyalty to the mutineers. No one on
Batavia’s Graveyard seems to have thought it odd that Liebent had returned, and the
trap was judged to have worked so well that it was used again only two days later, when
Hans Radder, a cadet, and the
Batavia
’s upper-trumpeter, Jacop Groenwald, were
drowned. These men were enemies of Mattys Beer, who had maliciously denounced them to
Jeronimus as “cacklers.” The pair were trussed up by Zevanck and his friends and
held under the water while they drowned. Again, however, Zevanck spared an intended
victim. This man was an assistant from Middelburg by the name of Andries de Vries, who was
only in his early twenties and begged loudly for mercy. “Having been bound, he was
set free and his life was spared for the time being,” the
Batavia
’s
journals note. But De Vries, like Liebent, had to pay a price to save his life: he was
sworn to serve Jeronimus and to do as he was told.

Thus far, Cornelisz’s schemes had all succeeded admirably. The
under-merchant had quietly recruited at least a score of determined men to do his bidding.
He had successfully reduced the numbers on Batavia’s Graveyard, limiting the demand
on his supplies and dividing his potential enemies into four separate camps, none of which
had any contact with the others. He had silenced dissent by dissolving Frans Jansz’s
raad
and made his principal lieutenants councillors in its stead. Then he had begun to murder
the
Batavia
survivors—the very people he was sworn to protect. By the end of
the first week of July, he had killed eight of them, five covertly and three publicly, as
thieves, and there seemed to be no reason why he could not deal with the remainder in the
same manner, at least until the ranks of loyalists on the island had been so thinned that
it would hardly matter if he revealed himself. As for the 14 men with Pieter Jansz, the 20
who had gone with Hayes, and the 45 whom he had ferried to Seals’ Island, they posed
no immediate threat and could safely be ignored.

Hayes’s party was, it seems, the only one to cause Jeronimus concern. The
survivors who had gone to Seals’ and Traitors’ Islands were mixed groups of men,
women, and children, unlikely to put up much of a fight, but the men on the High Land were
all soldiers—tough, self-reliant, and capable of making trouble. It was perhaps for
this reason that the under-merchant had sent Wiebbe’s party as far away from
Batavia’s Graveyard as he could and left the men without a boat on islands where he
knew that they would struggle to survive. As days and then weeks passed without signals
from the High Land, Cornelisz may have assumed that his enemies had died of thirst. That
would have been to his advantage, but his plans did not depend on it. He was content to
leave Hayes where he was for the time being—so long as he did not find any
water.

In any normal circumstances, the discovery of wells on the High Land would have
come as a huge relief to the survivors of a wreck. Jeronimus’s scheme for the capture
of a rescue ship, however, depended on dividing the
Batavia
’s people into
different camps, which he could deal with one by one. If water were found, however, the
survivors would expect Cornelisz to gather all four of his parties at the wells, with the
inevitable result that the mutineers would once again find themselves in a small minority.
This was something that the under-merchant could not allow to happen.