Batavia's Graveyard (35 page)

Jeronimus, meanwhile—once he had been forced into confession—betrayed
his fellow mutineers without compunction. He had never cared remotely about how other
people felt, and now he saw no reason to risk further torture simply to help his men who
had sworn loyalty to him. When Rutger Fredricx begged his captain-general to confirm that
he, Fredricx, had been given a direct order to kill Andries de Vries, Cornelisz
obliged—but added maliciously “that he certainly believes that Rutger has done
more than he has confessed, because he was always very willing to offer his services if
anyone had to be put out of the way.” Next, the under-merchant gave a lengthy
statement implicating Lenert van Os in eight murders, the first massacre on Seals’
Island, and the slaughter of the
predikant
’s family, naming in addition Jan
Hendricxsz as the killer of Stoffel Stoffelsz and Mattys Beer as the murderer of Cornelis
Aldersz. Then he mentioned Lucas Gellisz as Lenert van Os’s accomplice in the killing
of Passchier van den Ende and Jacob Hendricxen Drayer, and named Rogier Decker as the
murderer of Hendrick Jansz. Perhaps Pelsaert would have got to the truth anyway; but
Jeronimus’s willingness to recall places, names, and dates must certainly have aided
the investigation, and it quickly broke down the remaining bonds of loyalty among the
mutineers. Before long each man was blaming his companions, and the whole truth about the
mutiny emerged.

Seven of the mutineers were examined in this first round of interrogations. They
were the worst of the murderers—Jan Hendricxsz, Andries Jonas, Mattys Beer, Lenert
van Os, Allert Janssen, Rutger Fredricx, and Jan Pelgrom—and only Andries Jonas, at
the end of his interrogation, blurted out, apparently spontaneously, “that he has
been very willing in murdering, and does not know how he wandered so far from God.”
The other six gave neither reasons for their crimes nor the least show of
remorse.

It would have made little difference if they had. The Broad Council’s
verdicts, when they were delivered on 28 September, were very nearly as severe as Pelsaert
could make them, and the
commandeur
seems to have made no allowance whatsoever for
the men who had cooperated more or less freely with his investigation. Each case had been
judged strictly on its merits.

All of the
retourschip
’s survivors, and the
Sardam
’s
crew, were assembled on Batavia’s Graveyard to witness the sentencing. The surviving
members of Cornelisz’s gang were present too. It was nearly evening by the time
Pelsaert was ready to proceed and the leading mutineers shuffled forward to hear the
verdicts on their cases.

The captain-general was the first man to be called. “Because Jeronimus
Cornelisz of Haarlem, aged about 30 years, apothecary, and later under-merchant of the
ship
Batavia,
has misbehaved himself so gruesomely,” Pelsaert
intoned,

“and has gone beyond himself, yea, has even been denuded of all humanity
and has been changed as to a tiger  . . . and because even under Moors and Turks such
unheard of, abominable misdeeds would not have happened, we, the undersigned persons of
the Council  . . . in order to turn us from the wrath of God and to cleanse the name of
Christianity of such an unheard of villain, have sentenced the foresaid Jeronimus
Cornelisz that he shall be taken to a place prepared to execute justice, and there first
cut off both his hands, and after that punish him on a gallows with a cord until death
follows—with confiscation of all his goods, Moneys, Gold, Silver, monthly wages, and
all that he may have to claim here in India against the VOC, our Lord
Masters.”

It was the maximum penalty available under Dutch law. And so the
commandeur
continued: Jan Hendricxsz, Lenert van Os, Allert Janssen, and Mattys Beer were sentenced
to have their right hands removed before they were hanged; the other three
mutineers—Jan Pelgrom, Andries Jonas, and Rutger Fredricx—received a slightly
lesser punishment. Presumably because their crimes had been less extensive, these men were
to go to their deaths unmutilated, but in each case they, like all the others, suffered
the confiscation of their goods and died knowing that Jan Company, not their families,
would inherit whatever meager worldly possessions they left behind.

Pelsaert had not yet finished. In the course of his investigation, the
commandeur
had also formed opinions of the remainder of the mutineers. Nine of them, he now
announced, were to be taken to Java for interrogation—“or to punish them on the
way, according to time and occasion.” They were Wouter Loos, Stone-Cutter Pietersz,
Hans Jacob Heijlweck, Daniel Cornelissen, Andries Liebent, Hans Fredérick, Cornelis
Janssen, Rogier Decker, and Jan Willemsz Selyns—by no means all of them minor figures
in the tragedy. Nineteen other men, who had signed Jeronimus’s oaths and had been
held on suspicion of active involvement in the mutiny, were freed “until later
decision, unless something detrimental arises.” Most of them had done little more
than pledge allegiance to Cornelisz—their numbers included relative nonentities such
as the steward, Reyndert Hendricxsz, Gillis Phillipsen, the soldier who had sharpened the
sword used to decapitate the net-maker Cornelis Aldersz, and the doubly bereaved Hans
Hardens. Bastiaensz the
predikant
was also cleared, at least provisionally. But
several of these men had been closer to Jeronimus than Pelsaert yet appreciated. Among
those who were now released was Olivier van Welderen, who was more than capable of causing
further trouble.

At least the
commandeur
could rely on Wiebbe Hayes. The Defenders’
leader, who was still a private soldier, was now promoted to the rank of sergeant at a
salary of 18 guilders per month—twice his former wage. He was thus placed in charge
of all the surviving soldiers, who had been without a commanding officer since the
Sardam
’s
arrival in the archipelago, a move that no doubt helped to reinforce their sometimes
doubtful loyalty to the Company. Hayes’s principal lieutenants on his island, the
cadets Otto Smit and Allert Jansz, were both made corporals at a salary of 15 guilders.
These promotions were the only ones that Pelsaert offered to the 48 loyalists who had
helped preserve the VOC’s interests in the Abrolhos.

The
commandeur
had other matters on his mind. His chief priority was now
to salvage what he could from the wreck site, but he also had to keep his men supplied
with food and water and ensure that Cornelisz and the mutineers were kept securely under
guard. The salvage work was proving difficult—fierce winds and high seas had kept
Pelsaert’s divers from the wreck on seven of the eight days that he spent on the
interrogations—and by the end of September the only goods recovered were two money
chests and a box of tinsel. Though the same weather conditions at least kept the mutineers
safely imprisoned on Seals’ Island, the members of the Broad Council were also
uncomfortably aware that these cases full of silver coins, which had already helped to
spark one mutiny, might yet cause trouble on the voyage back to Java.

It was the last consideration that caused the
commandeur
to wonder if it
would be wise to transport Cornelisz and his men all the way back to the Indies to be
executed. There were more than enough mutineers about to cause trouble on a ship the
Sardam
’s
size, and now that the most brutal of them were under sentence of death they had very
little to lose by plotting further violence. The thought of traversing nearly 2,000 miles
with Cornelisz alive and waiting for a chance to exploit the least sign of dissent was not
a pleasant one, and Pelsaert rapidly concluded that “it would not be without danger
for the ship and the goods to set off to sea with so many corrupt and half-corrupted
men.” The latter, he reasoned, “could easily become wholly corrupted by the
richness of the salvaged wealth,” and he and his men could still go the way of the
skipper of the
Meeuwtje.
The safer option was to carry out the hangings in the
Abrolhos, and it was soon decided that it would be safest if the ringleaders were
dispatched next day, 29 September. To reduce the risk of moving groups of desperate men
about the archipelago, the place of execution was to be Seals’ Island.

The
commandeur
did not announce this date in passing sentence, and
Jeronimus continued to dream up ways to buy himself more time. His next ploy was to
request a stay of execution, “because he desired to be baptized and so that he could
meanwhile have time to bewail his sins and think them over so that at last he might die in
peace and in repentance.” This, he cynically calculated, might buy him several weeks
of life; but though Pelsaert was pious enough to agree to a brief postponement, he was not
prepared to allow the under-merchant more than an extra 48 hours to confront his demons.
At dusk on 28 September the executions of the seven prisoners were moved back to Monday, 1
October, but once again the date itself was not revealed to the condemned men.

Jeronimus Cornelisz, who had kept the people of Batavia’s Graveyard in fear
of sudden death for two long months, found he could not stomach the agony of wondering how
long he had left to live. The apothecary begged Gijsbert Bastiaensz to reveal the date of
his execution, and when the preacher could not or would not tell him, he became quite
agitated. In the end “the
predikant
put him at ease for that day [28
September], and he behaved himself as if he had some solace, and was more
courageous,” but next morning this veneer swiftly fell away and again Jeronimus
pleaded to be told how many days he had, saying that he could not otherwise properly
prepare himself for death.

This time, Pelsaert told him. “Tut—nothing more?” Cornelisz
muttered in disgust. “Can one show repentance of life in so few days? I thought I
should be allowed eight or fourteen days.” Then his self-possession left him and he
altogether lost his temper, raging:

“I see well [you] want my blood and my life, but God will not suffer that I
shall die a shameful death. I know for certain, and you will all see it, that God will
perform unto me this night a miracle, so that I shall not be hanged.”

And that, the
commandeur
noted with concern, “was his tune all
day.”

Whether or not Jeronimus really believed, at this point, that his God would
intervene to save him is an interesting question; it would not have been out of character
for him to have entertained such thoughts. But Pelsaert plainly guessed that the
apothecary’s boasts meant that he intended to commit suicide. He issued special
orders to the guards, demanding extra vigilance and warning them not to allow anyone to
smuggle the prisoner anything that he could use in such an attempt.

Security was, however, still a problem in the Abrolhos. Although the mutineers
were kept safely away from the other survivors, they were not in any modern sense in
prison on Seals’ Island. There were no thick-walled cells to lock them in; their
quarters were merely tents, and it was impossible to prevent so many men from mixing with
their guards. In these circumstances, and especially when Pelsaert was still unaware of
the real extent of the mutineers’ support, it was unusually difficult to ensure that
the prisoners were kept isolated. Jeronimus had already been able to write two letters to
his friends back in the Netherlands, full of tall tales of the conspiracies against him
and outraged assurances of his innocence; these he had smuggled to Jacob Jansz Hollert,
the
Batavia
’s under-steersman, in the hope that he would send them home. As it
happened, Hollert had given the letters to Pelsaert instead, and they had been opened by
the Broad Council and found to be “contrary to the truth, in order to cover up his
gruesome misdeeds.” But if it was possible for Cornelisz to pass notes out of his
tent, it was also easy enough for him to receive contraband. At some time prior to 29
September the apothecary had obtained some poison, which was perhaps a remnant of the
batch that had been mixed to dispose of Mayken Cardoes’s child; and, that night, he
took it—either in fulfilment of his own prophecy, or because he had at last despaired
of divine intervention.

The effect was not at all what he had hoped. The poison, Pelsaert wrote, was not
strong enough to do its job, for although it “started to work at about one
o’clock in the morning, so that he was full of pain and seemed like to die,” it
left Jeronimus writhing in hideous agony without actually killing him. “In this great
anxiety,” the
commandeur
noted with just a trace of satisfaction,

“he asked for some Venetian theriac. At last he began to get some relief .
. . but he had to be got out of his prison certainly 20 times during the night, because
his so-called miracle was working from below as well as from above.”