Batavia's Graveyard (56 page)

The Meeuwtje mutiny
Ibid., pp. 28–31.

Discipline on board
Boxer, “The Dutch East-Indiamen,” pp.
98–9; C. R. Boxer,
The Dutch Seaborne Empire 1600–1800
(London:
Hutchinson, 1965), p. 71. Nevertheless, knife fights certainly did occur, and not just in
the service of the VOC. One authority on the Spanish treasure fleet has estimated that
half of all Iberian sailors bore the scars of such an encounter. Pérez-Mallaína, op.
cit., pp. 220–1.

Keelhauling and dropping from the yard
Bruijn and van Eyck van Heslinga,
op. cit., pp. 23–4; Pérez-Mallaína, op. cit., p. 206.

“A man in whom Jacobsz had full confidence . . .”
Another of the
skipper’s relatives, a brother-in-law, also served on the
Batavia.
He was one
of the two under-steersman. Pelsaert’s journal is not precise on this point, but the
skipper must have meant either Gillis Fransz or Jacob Jansz. In any event, the man was not
told of the plan to mutiny, Jacobsz confiding to Jeronimus that he could “put little
trust” in him. Confession of Jeronimus Cornelisz, JFP 19 Sep 1629 [DB 164].

Jan Evertsz
Research in Monnickendam has revealed no new information about
the high boatswain of the
Batavia.
He does not feature in the town’s scant
surviving notarial archives, and Monnickendam’s registers of birth, marriage, and
death do not begin until 1641, 1643, and 1650, respectively. It is possible, however, that
a thorough search of the VOC archives at The Hague might reveal some details of his early
service with the Company.

The office of boatswain
Pérez-Mallaína, op. cit., p. 82. The high
boatswain’s badge of office was usually a whistle, which he used to coordinate the
activities of the crew. Although officers, many of the men who held the post were
functionally illiterate, at least in English service. It has been calculated that in 1588
only one English boatswain in three could sign his name. N. A. M. Rodger,
The Safeguard
of the Sea
(London: HarperCollins, 1997), p. 309.

“As the master is to be abaft the mast . . .”
Cited by K. R.
Andrews,
The Last Voyage of Drake and Hawkins
(London: Hakluyt Society, 2nd series
vol. 142, 1972) and quoted by Rodger, op. cit., p. 309.

Recruitment of the mutineers
There is very limited evidence as to the
mechanics of the recruitment. Under torture, Allert Janssen later confessed that
“Jeronimus has come to him on the ship and has made a proposal to him, whether he
would take a hand in the seizing of the ship.” Cornelisz, himself bound and made
ready for torture, confirmed it. Janssen himself also mentioned his relationship with
Jacobsz. Confession of Allert Janssen, JFP 19 Sep 1629 [DB 194–5]. For further,
fragmentary, details, see confession of Jeronimus Cornelisz, JFP 19 Sep 1629 [DB
161–2]; confession of Jan Hendricxsz [DB 162–3]; further confessions of
Hendricxsz and Janssen, JFP 28 Sep 1629 [DB 196–7]; verdict on Allert Janssen, JFP 28
Sep 1629 [DB 198] (which mentions in passing his killing of a man in the United
Provinces). Ryckert Woutersz was the man who betrayed the plot after the wreck (see
chapter 5). It is worth pointing out that under later interrogation Cornelisz changed his
story on many occasions, at first denying that he knew anything of the planned mutiny
until after the ship was wrecked, but the considerable weight of evidence against him is
compelling.

“Seducer of men”
JFP 2 Oct 1629 [DB 213].

Van Huyssen, Pietersz, and the mutiny
Confession of Jeronimus Cornelisz,
19 Sep 1629 [DB 162]; confession of Jan Hendricxsz, JFP 19 Sep 1629 [DB
162–3].

Separation of the ships
Drake-Brockman has written (
Voyage to Disaster,
p. 40) that the
Batavia
separated from the other ships in the convoy in a storm,
but she gives no reference and I have not been able to find any confirmation in the
primary sources. Indeed, according to the
predikant,
the
Batavia
simply
“wandered away” from the other ships; LGB. An anonymous sailor from the ship
wrote that the other four ships in the fleet “drifted away”; letter of 11 Dec
1629 in Anon.,
Leyds Veer-Schuyts Praetjen, Tuschen een Koopman ende Borger van Leyden,
Varende van Haarlem nae Leyden
(np [Amsterdam: Willem Jansz], 1630) [R 232–3].
Possibly Drake-Brockman was thinking of the storm that separated the vessels on the first
day out from the Texel.

“. . . the little warship
Buren . . .”
She was only half
the size of the
Batavia
and was possibly one of the new breed of fast frigates,
which the Dutch had just introduced to help combat the Spanish-backed pirates of Dunkirk.
Bruijn et al.,
Dutch-Asiatic Shipping,
II, pp. 60–1; Rodger, op. cit., p.
390.

“. . . somewhere between eight and 18 . . .”
Confession of Jan
Hendricxsz, JFP 19 Sep 1629 [DB 162–3].

“Without taking any thought . . .”
This quotation, and some of
the background material in this section of the book, is drawn from Pelsaert’s
“Declaration in short, of the origin, reason, and towards what intention Jeronimus
Cornilissen, under merchant, has resolved to murder all the people, with his several
plans, and in what manner the matter has happened from the beginning to the end,” JFP
nd (Dec 1629?) [DB 248–54].

“. . . readily accepted the caresses of the skipper . . .”
Ibid.

“. . . who has done his will with her . . .”
Confession of
Allert Janssen, 19 Sep 1629 [DB 196].

“He took from her the name and yoke of servant . . .”
“Declaration
in Short,” JFP nd (Dec 1629?) [DB 250].

“I am still for the Devil . . .”
Confession of Jeronimus
Cornelisz, JFP 19 Sep 1629 [DB 164].

Pelsaert’s illness
No details of the symptoms survive, and there are
only the vaguest hints that it was the recurrence of a fever Pelsaert had experienced
before. Drake-Brockman,
Voyage to Disaster,
p. 32, speculates that it was malaria.
This is not unlikely, but it is no more than a guess.

Frans Jansz
Research in the archives of Hoorn has failed to reveal any
definite trace of this man, whose name, unfortunately, was one of the most common in the
Dutch Republic at this time. The solicitors’ archives of the city, though indexed,
are extremely incomplete for the period up to 1660.

Barber-surgeons
The duality of their role was perhaps best expressed in
their equipment. Frans Jansz took with him a set of matching brass bowls, which fitted
together as a pair. One, which had a semicircle matching the diameter of a man’s neck
cut from one side, was for shaving his patients. The other, which had a circle matching
the diameter of an arm, was for bleeding them. The bowls were recovered from the seabed in
the Abrolhos in the 1970s. 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.

“. . . they would not cut veins instead of nerves . . .”
G. A.
Lindeboom, “Medical Education in the Netherlands 1575–1750,” in C. D.
O’Malley (ed.),
The History of Medical Education
(Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1970), p. 201.

Health care on board
Sick parades were held on the main deck twice daily,
immediately before or after morning and evening prayers. The provost summoned the sick by
striking his baton against the mainmast and chanting

Surgeons were naturally vulnerable to all manner of infectious diseases, and part
of their standard equipment was a brush with which to remove any lice that might leap from
their patients’ sick beds onto their own clothes. M. Boucher, “The Cape Passage:
Some Observations on Health Hazards Aboard Dutch East Indiamen Outward-bound,”
Historia
26 (1981); Jaap Bruijn and Femme S. Gaastra, “The Dutch East India Company’s
Shipping, 1602–1795, in a Comparative Perspective,” in Bruijn and Gaastra
(eds.),
Ships, Sailors and Spices: East India Companies and Their Shipping in the 16th,
17th and 18th Centuries
(Amsterdam: NEHA, 1993), p. 202; Iris Bruijn, “The Health
Care Organization of the Dutch East India Company at Home,”
Social History of
Medicine
7 (1994): 371–2. By the second half of the seventeenth century, the
typical staff of a
retourschip
was three surgeons, so the
Batavia
was in
effect understaffed.

Sea exams
Iris Bruijn, op. cit., p. 371. These examinations were easier to
pass than the equivalent exam for surgeons intending to work on land, and were
deliberately made so in order to attract candidates to the service of the VOC. Not every
chamber insisted on them in any case, though at least one—the Zeeland
chamber—introduced them as early as 1610.

Jan Loxe
Cited by Boxer, “The Dutch East-Indiamen,” p. 97. For a
while, late in the century, VOC surgeons were required to keep journals and submit them to
the Gentlemen XVII on their return. This archive provides rich detail concerning the
day-to-day activities of surgeons in the service of Jan Company.

Amputations
The contemporary English surgeon William Clowes set out the
approved method of amputating a limb as follows:

• The surgeon should secure a good strong operating table.

• One assistant should sit astride the patient, holding both
arms.

• Another should sit on the leg concerned athwart the thigh, holding it
in place and applying a tourniquet to deaden sensation and staunch blood
flow.

• Specially sharpened saws, double-edged amputation knives, and scalpels
were to be used to cut through bone and tissue, muscle, and sinew.

• Severed blood vessels were to be stoppered with plugs or powder, the
vessels stitched, and the wound packed.

As little as 4 oz. of blood, Clowes added, might be lost by this method. J. J.
Keevil, C. S. Lloyd, and J. L. S. Coulter,
Medicine and the Navy, 1200–1900
(4
vols., Edinburgh, 1957–1963), I, p. 133.

The sea surgeon’s apothecary’s chest
Ibid., pp. 32, 200; Iris
Bruijn, op. cit., p. 367.

Treatment of malaria
Laurence Brockliss and Colin Jones,
The Medical
World of Early Modern France
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 160n.

Sick bays and sick visitors
Bruijn et al.,
Dutch-Asiatic Shipping,
I, p. 161. The recovery of those in the sick bay must usually have owed more to the better
food they received there than to the quality of the medical treatment. Boxer, “The
Dutch East-Indiamen,” p. 97; Pérez-Mallaína, op. cit., p. 183.

“Uncircumcised idiots”
Boxer,
The Dutch Seaborne Empire,
p. 136.

13 May
“Declaration in Short,” JFP nd (Dec 1629?).

Zwaantie’s pregnancy
Interrogation of Allert Janssen, JFP 19 Sep 1629
[DB 194–7].

“The skipper and Jeronimus”
Ibid.

The assault on Creesje Jans
Ibid.; verdict on Cornelis Janssen, alias
Bean, [DB 241–3] JFP 3 Dec 1629 [DB 241–3]; letter of an anonymous survivor,
December 1629, published in
Leyds Veer-Schuyts Praetjen, Tuschen een Koopman ende
Borger van Leyden, Varende van Haarlem nae Leyden
(np [Amsterdam: Willem Jansz],
1630).

“We have an assault upon our hands”
Interrogation of Allert
Janssen, JFP 19 Sep 1629 [DB 194–7]. The men were assured by Evertsz that the attack
was no more than a “trick,” which may have lessened any concerns they had about
participating. See also Antonio van Diemen to Pieter Carpentier, 15 Dec 1629, ARA VOC
1009, cited by Drake-Brockman,
Voyage to Disaster,
pp. 62–3. This letter
refers to statements and enclosures concerning the assault on Creesje, which have, very
unfortunately, been lost. There is thus no direct statement in the few surviving letters
that mention the case or in the
Batavia
journals to suggest an actual assault,
though the whole attack had obvious sexual overtones. Committed as it was in an exposed
position, close to the Great Cabin and almost next to the steersman’s position, the
blackening of Lucretia Jans can hardly have lasted for more than a few seconds, however.
There would have been no time for a serious sexual assault or rape.

“Innate and incankered corruptness”
That at least was
Pelsaert’s view, though the boy actually killed no one during the mutiny and
eventually received a relatively light punishment. Verdict on Cornelis Janssen of Haarlem,
JFP 3 Dec 1629 [DB 241–3].

Cornelis Dircxsz
Interrogation of Allert Janssen, 19 Sep 1629 [DB 195].
“I will not have anything to do with it, for surely something else will follow on
that,” the gunner is reported to have said. “Not at all,” Evertsz is
recorded as answering. “I shall take the consequences, whatever comes from it.”
Unhappily for the high boatswain, this was all too true; see chapter 6.

“. . . very violently and in the highest degree . . .”
“Declaration
in Short,” JFP nd ?Dec 1629 [DB 250].

“This has been the true aim . . .”
Ibid.

“. . . the
commandeur
was merely biding his time . . .”
“So
that when the
Commandeur
should put the culprits of this act into chains,”
Pelsaert’s journal continues, “they would jump into the Cabin and throw the
Commandeur
overboard, and in such a way they would seize the ship.” “Declaration in
Short,” JFP nd ?Dec 1629 [DB 250].