Batavia's Graveyard (29 page)

“Because Ariaen Jacobsz, skipper of the wrecked ship
Batavia,
is
notorious through allowing himself to be blown away by pure neglect; and also because
through his doings a gross evil and public assault has taken place on the same ship  . . .
it has been decided by His Hon. [Coen] and the Council to arrest the mentioned skipper and
bring him to trial here in order that he may answer those accusations made to his
detriment.”

Unlike Evertsz, the skipper does not seem to have been put to the torture.
Perhaps he was protected by his rank; perhaps the governor-general and his council were
simply less convinced of his guilt than they were of the high boatswain’s. In truth,
however, there was really no need to rely on Pelsaert’s accusations in this case. It
was beyond dispute that Jacobsz bore responsibility for the faulty navigation that had
piled the
Batavia
onto a reef; and as the officer of the watch on the night in
question he had been doubly responsible for the disaster. Whether or not he had had
anything to do with what had happened to Creesje Jans, the skipper could be held
indefinitely just for hazarding his ship.

The
Sardam
cleared Batavia on 15 July, a Sunday. The crew had set out one
day before the date ordered by Coen, so anxious was the
commandeur
to be on his
way.

Three of the men who had sailed north with Pelsaert were with him on the
jacht.
Two were steersmen, Claes Gerritsz and Jacob Jansz Hollert; their navigational skills
would be needed to help relocate the Abrolhos, whose position at this time was still most
uncertain. The third was the
Batavia
’s upper-trumpeter, Claes Jansz Hooft. The
trumpeter was on the
Sardam
for an altogether different reason. He had left his
wife, Tryntgien Fredericx, on Batavia’s Graveyard and must have been desperately
anxious to rescue her.

The voyage from the islands to Batavia had taken 30 days, and even though the
jacht
would be sailing against the prevailing winds, she was a fast ship and Pelsaert probably
hoped to reach the wreck site around the middle of August. By then it would be 10 weeks
since his ship had gone aground, and the
commandeur
must have recognized that the
people he had abandoned on Batavia’s Graveyard could only have survived by finding
water. He knew, however, that heavy rain had fallen in the area three days after he had
left—memories of the violent gale of 10 June would have been all too vivid for the
people in the longboat—and he no doubt hoped to discover some, if not all, of the
remaining passengers and crew alive.

The
Sardam
made reasonable time. The ship was south of Java by 17 July,
and three weeks later, on 10 August, they reached latitude 27 degrees 54 minutes and found
themselves less than 50 miles from Batavia’s Graveyard, which lies at 28 degrees 28
minutes south. What followed was more than a month of intense frustration. In the chaos
that ensued after the loss of the
Batavia,
Ariaen Jacobsz and his steersmen had
obtained no more than rough bearings for the wreck site. Calculating latitude required a
navigator to “shoot the sun.” Persistent bad weather in the Abrolhos had made
this very difficult, and the position given by the skipper was no more than an estimate.
In consequence, Pelsaert knew only that the
Batavia
lay at about 28 degrees south,
and since he had almost no idea of the wreck’s true longitude, it followed that the
best way of finding the
Batavia
was to zigzag east along Jacobsz’s estimated
line of latitude until the Abrolhos were sighted. The skipper had, however, miscalculated
by about a third of a degree, placing the
retourschip
and the islands around 30
miles north of their true position. In most circumstances this would not have been an
error of any moment, but when it came to searching for a few lumps of low-lying coral amid
the endless swells of the eastern Indian Ocean it was a significant mistake. Pelsaert and
the crew of the
Sardam
spent the last two weeks of August and the first half of
September cruising fruitlessly to and fro some way to the north of Houtman’s
Abrolhos.

It was not until 13 September that they at last chanced on the most northerly
part of the archipelago. They were then no more than 17 miles from the wreck site, but the
weather soon closed in and the
Sardam
had to spend another two days lying at
anchor, riding out the storm. On 15 September the winds had abated somewhat, but the
jacht
made no more than six miles into a strong southeasterly and it was not until the evening
of 16 September that Pelsaert at last sighted Hayes’s islands on the horizon. Night
was falling and the sailors were all too aware that there were reefs about, so they
anchored for the evening and got under way again at dawn. Soon the
Sardam
was only
a few miles from the islands, her men lining the decks and climbing into the rigging to
look for signs of life. At last, at about 10 in the morning, they found it: “smoke on
a long island west of the Wreck, [and] also on another small island close by.”
Pelsaert could hardly contain his joy.

There was still someone alive on Batavia’s Graveyard.

7

“Who Wants to Be Stabbed to Death?”

“What a godless life is that which has been lived
here.”

FRANCISCO PELSAERT

G
IJSBERT BASTIAENSZ SETTLED HIMSELF DOWN on the sand and stared disconsolately
out to sea. It was now August in the archipelago, and the mutineers had kept him hard at
work since the murder of his family some weeks earlier. The
predikant
was employed
as the island’s boatman, launching the mutineers’ flotilla in the morning and
hauling the skiffs and rafts back onto the little beach when their crews returned from a
day’s fishing. For the remainder of the day he was merely required to remain near the
landing place, and for the most part he spent those hours on the strand, seeking
consolation in his Bible.

Gijsbert had not been allowed to mourn his murdered family. The day after his
wife and children had been killed, the mutineers had found him “weeping very
much,” and ordered him to stop. “Said that I ought not to do so,” the
preacher noted. “Said, that does not matter; be silent, or you go the same way.”
Nor did Bastiaensz receive, in Jeronimus’s kingdom, the respect and special treatment
normally accorded to a minister. He not only worked, as everybody had to work, but ate the
same meager rations as the other people on Batavia’s Graveyard. And, like them, the
predikant
heard Zevanck and the others freely discuss who they would kill next and how, and he
feared daily for his life:

“Every day it was, ‘What shall we do with that Man?’ The one
would decapitate me, the other poison me, which would have been a sweeter death; a third
said, ‘Let him live a little longer, we might make use of him to persuade the folk on
the other Land to come over to us.’  . . . And so, briefly, this being the most
important thing, my Daughter and I, we both went along as an Ox in front of the Axe. Every
night I said to her, you have to look tomorrow morning, whether I have been murdered  . . .
and I told her what she had to do if she found me slaughtered; and that also we must be
prepared to meet God.”

Gijsbert was rarely allowed to preach. Religious affairs in the Abrolhos were
now in the under-merchant’s hands, and—having made himself the ruler of the
island—Jeronimus felt free to drop his old pretense of piety. To his followers, he
openly espoused the heretical beliefs that had once been furtively discussed at Geraldo
Thibault’s fencing club, so that “daily [they] heard that there was neither
devil nor Hell, and that these were only fables.” In the place of these old
certainties, Jeronimus preached the heterodox doctrines of the Spiritual Libertines, which
he used to justify his actions and assuage the guilty consciences of his men.

“He tried to maintain  . . . that all he did, whether it was good or bad (as
judged by others), God gave the same into his heart. For God, as he said, was perfect in
virtue and goodness, so was not able to send into the heart of men anything bad, because
there was no evil or badness in Himself; saying that all he had done was sent into his
heart by God; and still more such gruesome opinions.”

Even this summary of the apothecary’s views, written—as it
was—after the fact by someone who scarcely began to comprehend such heresies, only
scratches at the surface of Cornelisz’s beliefs. As a Libertine, Jeronimus held to a
theology based on the central tenets of the Free Spirit as they had been set down in the
fourteenth century. One of these beliefs, as written in a medieval manuscript, was that
“nothing is sin except what is thought of as sin.” Another explained that
“one can be so united with God that whatever one may do one cannot
sin.”

What the other mutineers made of Cornelisz’s ideas it is difficult to say.
The majority of them were barely educated men, and they could not have been expected to
grasp the subtleties of the Libertine philosophy. But the general thrust of the
apothecary’s thought was easy enough to understand; and his men had every reason to
accept it, since it promised to absolve them from wrongdoing. Some of them evidently did
embrace the new theology; it is certainly possible to hear garbled echoes of
Jeronimus’s thinking in the pronouncements of his men. Still, the under-merchant was
no prophet. There is no sign that Cornelisz much cared whether he made converts, and, as
we have seen, his own grasp of the Free Spirit’s doctrine was incomplete. Though it
seems likely that Jeronimus did think of himself as a Libertine, he also used the
philosophy to further his own ends.

One of the under-merchant’s aims was to strengthen his own position by
removing his followers from contact with the one authority in the islands that might have
had the power to restrain them: the Dutch Reformed Church. By silencing the
predikant,
Cornelisz shielded the mutineers from the fear of criticism and divine retribution; and by
introducing his men to a new theology he in effect began to create a new society in the
Abrolhos—one in which his followers owed personal loyalty to him and were bound
together not only by their crimes, but also by their rejection of conventional
authority.

Once Cornelisz had assumed control of Batavia’s Graveyard, the mutineers
were urged to reject the rules and laws that had until then restricted them. They were
incited to blaspheme and swear—which was strictly prohibited by VOC
regulations—and absolved from the requirement to attend religious services. Above
all, they were encouraged to ridicule the
predikant.
On the one occasion that
Bastiaensz did call on the men to pray, one mutineer shot back that they would rather
sing; and when the minister beseeched God to take all those on the island “under His
wings,” he looked up to find Jeronimus’s men capering about behind his tiny
congregation. The mutineers were flapping the bloody, severed flippers of dead sea lions
above their heads and sneering at his piety. “No need,” they hooted, “we
are already under them.”

Jeronimus’s methods did help to bind him and his men together; nevertheless,
it is clear that the under-merchant did not entirely trust the mutineers. Surrounded as he
was by heavily armed soldiers, Cornelisz must have been painfully aware that he owed his
position not to any military prowess—indeed, his actions all suggest that he himself
was a physical coward—but to his unusually clever tongue; and he may have doubted he
was strong enough to resist a real challenge to his authority. So, on 12 July, he required
all two dozen of his followers to sign an “Oath of trust,” swearing loyalty to
each other; and he also took oaths separately “from the Men he wanted to save, that
they should be obedient to him in every way in whatever he should order them.” A
second oath, sworn on 20 August, reinforced these vows. This one was signed by 36 people,
including the
predikant.
By then the mutineers’ ranks had been swollen by
fear.

It did not take long for a hierarchy to emerge among Jeronimus’s men. In
theory they were equal, “assisting each other in brotherly affection for the common
welfare,” but in fact Stone-Cutter Pietersz, the lance corporal, became the
under-merchant’s second-in-command. Pietersz’s elevation no doubt owed a good
deal to his influence among the soldiers, but since he was far junior to Cornelisz in
rank, and a relatively colorless personality to boot, it was likely also because Jeronimus
found him easy to manipulate. The corporal was certainly less of a potential threat than
David Zevanck and Coenraat van Huyssen, who were both self-confident, if junior, members
of the officer class. Zevanck had not only led but orchestrated many of the killings on
Batavia’s Graveyard, and Jeronimus had struggled to control Van Huyssen’s
hotheadedness on the ship. The apothecary may have thought it wise to keep both men
somewhat at arm’s length and invest more authority in the malleable
Pietersz.

Cornelisz and the corporal set themselves apart from the other mutineers in
several ways. They determined who would live or die, but they themselves did not kill,
leaving Zevanck and Van Huyssen to carry out their orders. They were the only men to adopt
new titles—Jeronimus renouncing the rank of under-merchant for that of
“captain-general” of the islands, and Pietersz promoting himself all the way to
“lieutenant-general”—and wasted no time in creating liveries to match their
grandiose new ranks. Cornelisz, who had already requisitioned Pelsaert’s clothing,
led the way, transforming the
commandeur
’s existing finery into a series of
comic-opera uniforms. “He gave free rein to his pride and devilish arrogance,”
the
Batavia
journals observed:

“The goods of the Company which they fished up  . . . were very shamefully
misused by making them into clothes embroidered with as much
passementerie
^*39
as
possible, [and Cornelisz] set the example  . . . by changing daily into different clothes,
silk stockings, garters with gold lace, and by putting on suchlike adornments belonging to
other persons. Moreover, to all his Followers whom he could best trust, and who were most
willing to murder, he gave clothes made from red
laken
^*40
sewn with two or more
bands of
passementeries.
And created a new mode of Cassock, believing that such
evil vain pleasure as this could last for ever.”

The other mutineers soon followed suit, each man outfitting himself according to
his status. The old Company ranks still counted for something on the
island—assistants and cadets seem to have been treated more respectfully than
ordinary soldiers and sailors—but even among the rank and file, some mutineers were
more equal than others. The men the captain-general depended on most, and summoned most
frequently, were the tried and tested killers who could be relied on to tackle and subdue
full-grown men. This murderous elite included Jan Hendricxsz, Gsbert van Welderen, Mattys
Beer, and Lenert van Os. The likes of Andries Jonas, whose victims were mostly pregnant
women and young boys, enjoyed a lesser status, and the dozen or so men who signed
Jeronimus’s oaths, but never took part in the killing, were no doubt looked down on
by their murderous cohorts.

The elite mutineers seem to have enjoyed their work. Men such as David Zevanck
and Coenraat van Huyssen had been of minor consequence on board the
Batavia;
now
they reveled in their status as men of consequence, possessed of the power of life and
death. Others, including Jan Hendricxsz—who butchered between 17 and 20
people—and Lenert van Os—who slaughtered a dozen—were efficient killers,
seemingly unburdened by conscience, who enjoyed moving among Cornelisz’s inner
circle. Nevertheless, killing, in itself, was not the prime motive of the rank and file.
These men murdered because the alternative was to become one of the victims, and because
the favor of the captain-general meant improved rations and access to the island’s
women.

There had not been many more than 20 females on the
Batavia
when she had
left the Netherlands, and most of those were already dead—drowned, killed by thirst
after the ship was wrecked, or cut down in the massacre on the rafts or on Seals’
Island. The mutineers had ruthlessly exterminated those too old or too pregnant to
interest them. The handful of young women who remained were gathered on Batavia’s
Graveyard, where Jeronimus and his men took their pick.

There were seven of them in all. Creesje Jans and Judick the preacher’s
daughter were the only women from the stern. The others came from the lower deck: Anneken
Bosschieters, the sisters Tryntgien and Zussie Fredricx, Anneken Hardens and Marretgie
Louys, all of whom were probably married to soldiers or sailors among the crew.
Tryntgien’s husband had found himself with Pelsaert on the longboat, and Anneken
Bosschieters’s had gone with Wiebbe Hayes, leaving them without protectors.
Hardens’s husband, Hans, was a soldier and a minor mutineer, and it is a mystery why
he did not act to stop her from being corralled with the others. But he did not, and the
women from the lower deck were set aside “for common service,” which meant
simply that they were available to any of the mutineers who wished to rape them.

Jeronimus’s men were not entirely indiscriminate. Some of the officers
behaved relatively well, and Coenraat van Huyssen, in particular, seems to have remained
faithful to his fiancée, Judick. But many of the mutineers were less punctilious. It was
normal for the women kept for “common service” to have had relations with two or
three of the mutineers at least, and those who had been with only one man were envied.
“My Daughter has been with Van Huyssen about five weeks,” noted Bastiaensz.
“He has protected her very well, so that no disaster has befallen her, other than
that she had to remain with him; the other Women were very jealous of her, because they
thought that too much honour was accorded her.”

Of all the seven women, Creesje Jans was by far the most desirable, and Jeronimus
claimed her as his own. Almost as soon as he took power in the island, the captain-general
had Lucretia taken to his tent, where rather than assaulting her he made every effort to
seduce her. For nearly two weeks, he wrote her sonnets, poured her wine—tried
everything, in fact, to persuade her that he was not a monster. Cornelisz’s
remarkable behavior suggests that he wanted to possess her not just physically but
mentally—and that he also possessed a great capacity for self-delusion, for she
resisted stubbornly, just as she had resisted Ariaen Jacobsz, and eventually Jeronimus
gave up his attempts at gallantry. The story of what happened next somehow reached the
ears of others on the island:

“In the end [Jeronimus] complained to David Zevanck that he could not
accomplish his ends either with kindness or anger. Zevanck answered: ‘And don’t
you know how to manage that? I’ll soon make her do it.’ He had then gone into
the tent and said to Lucretia: ‘I hear complaints about you.’ ‘On what
account?’ she asked. ‘Because you do not comply with the Captain’s wishes
in kindness; now, however, you will have to make up your mind. Either you will go the same
way as Wybrecht Claasen, or else you must do that for which we have kept the women.’
Through this threat Lucretia had to consent that day, and thus he had her as his
concubine.”