To Die a Dry Death: The True Story of the Batavia Shipwreck (43 page)

In contrast, my picture of the captain was of a tough, strong, capable man. A hard drinker, a womaniser sure enough; but a true leader, somebody these hardened seamen would follow. One has only to read between the lines; Jacobsz got the longboat to Batavia against all odds, not Pelsaert. Zwaantie, the young woman who won Jacobsz’s affection, is depicted in the journal as a tart. But again, some of the evidence for that conjecture comes from Cornelisz. I think the mere fact that Jacobsz took Zwaantie with him in the longboat indicates a little more than a casual fling.

As I discuss in my article
Getting into the Mind of a Psychopath
(
http://gretavanderrol.net/2012/02/25/getting-inside-the-mind-of-a-psychopath/
) Cornelisz was silver-tongued, charismatic, an accomplished liar who would say anything to save himself. The main evidence for the existence of a piracy plot involving Jacobsz comes from Cornelisz. Corroborating testimony is given by some of his henchmen, but others claimed they knew nothing about a plot until after the wreck. Remember, too, that statements were extracted through torture. I began to wonder if I could build a case that Cornelisz deliberately wove a tale of a plot to seduce his followers. He needed sailors to pull off his plan to capture a rescue ship when it arrived and he was a merchant, not a seaman. What better way to add validity to his scheme than to imply that the popular captain had approved of and supported the move? Pelsaert and Jacobsz had a history, going back to previous voyages. The two men despised each other, a fact well known to all. That Jacobsz would participate in a move to overthrow Pelsaert was certainly plausible. For his part, Pelsaert jumped at the notion of a plot which would incriminate Jacobsz even more.

The other two main characters in the story, Lucretia and Wiebbe Hayes, are merely bit players in the journal. In accordance with Dutch judicial practice of the time, no evidence is presented from either of them, although it is hard to imagine they would not have discussed events with Pelsaert. Dash and Drake-Brockman gave me the wherewithal to paint Lucretia as a real woman, a grieving mother going off to join her husband in a far-off land. Combine that with the perilous situation of a high-born lady left with a mob of louts and it’s easy enough to imagine how difficult it would be for her. I took the opportunity to use her as the eyes of the victims, if you like, interpreting events on Batavia’s Graveyard from her point of view.

Dash also gave me a start with Hayes, probably a junior son of a fairly well-born family. From there, the unwritten story emerges in the journal. A leader who could pull together a disparate bunch of men and forge them into a group that could threaten armed thugs.

One final, vital consideration when writing a book like this is to remember that people didn’t think the same way we do about many issues. In seventeenth century Holland life was cheap and brutal. Children often died before reaching their teens, justice was rough and harsh. Executions were entertainment. Heaven and hell, angels and demons, and sea monsters were all as real to them as the local football team is to us. I had to take care not to foist modern-day behavior on my characters—especially the women.

Of course I made some things up. It’s a novel, after all. As well, the journal leaves holes where the hows and wherefores were not important for the task at hand—to document events. For Pelsaert it was enough to state that Cornelisz’s spy delivered his letter to the French soldiers on the High Island, but I needed to show how. Or why Cornelisz hesitated for a month before approaching Hayes and his group after his initial defeat?

I guess every historian has a duty to examine the facts and interpret them and in a way, that’s what I’ve tried to do in this book. One reader (who knew the history) describes the novel as dramatization rather than fiction. I’ll take that, with a bow.

“That’s One Ticked off the Bucket List”

By Greta van der Rol, August 2013

Originally published at:
http://gretavanderrol.net/

A visit to the Abrolhos Islands has been on my bucket list for a long time and now I’ve finally done it. On a picture-perfect day we flew out of Geraldton airport on a small plane, headed for the Abrolhos archipelago, 55 to 60 km off the coast.

I’ve seen the maps and other people’s pictures but seeing the place for yourself is very different. The islands are spread over a long distance, organised in four groups. We flew over the Pelsaert Group and the Easter Group before heading for the Wallabi group, which is where the VOC ship
Batavia
was wrecked in 1629. That was my focus; how well had I depicted the setting in my book
To Die a Dry Death
, and what effect would this place have on me.

To start with, we flew over West Wallabi, where the soldiers under their inspirational leader Wiebbe Hayes, defended themselves against Jeronimus Cornelisz’s thugs. There, I took a picture of the ‘fort’. Fort is the wrong word, I think. They probably built a shelter to protect them from the everlasting wind. Our visit took place on a rare day when the wind didn’t blow.

Then we landed on West Wallabi. If anything, I think I underestimated the term ‘High Island’. Certainly East and West Wallabi are much higher than anything else out there – but most of the islands are pancake flat, little more than reefs left exposed above the sea. The High Islands are low sandhills built on a limestone platform. That said, they’re positively spacious in comparison to Beacon Island (Batavia’s Graveyard), the Long Island and Traitor’s Island. Wildlife is abundant. We saw lizards everywhere, a number of the resident wallabies, sea birds, dolphins cruising the reefs, every variety of fish. Because of the Leeuwin current, the water is warmer out there, so coral gardens grow in the shallow water.

The plants on the islands are another story. All the growth is stunted, with most bushes not much more than knee high. A few plants grow a little higher but shade would have been hard to find. I stood on the highest point of East Wallabi and looked across the sea to the line of bright sand which was the Long Island and the smaller low island which was Batavia’s Graveyard. Yes, I’m sure Wiebbe would have posted lookouts here when he learned of Cornelisz’s reign of terror.

We flew over Batavia’s Graveyard on the way back and also saw Traitor’s Island, where the survivors were first landed from the shipwrecked
Batavia
. It was from here that the ship’s longboat, loaded with all the senior officers, set sail for the city of Batavia (now known as Jakarta), leaving the rest of the survivors to fend for themselves. The fishing shacks on the islands are now empty and the plan is to remove them so that this island where so many horrendous events took place, can be properly excavated and its ghosts left in respectful peace.

After nearly 400 years, the hole the
Batavia
gouged in the reef is still visible.

The Dutch ships
Batavia
and
Zeewijk
are just two of a large number of ships wrecked on these treacherous islands. On a normal day, when the white caps would cover the ocean, it’s easy to imagine mariners in peril of running onto these reefs. At night – well, it’s hardly surprising.

And me? What did this trip do for me? It was sobering. It was so easy to imagine people from another world landing here, maybe grateful to be alive but faced with the enormous problem of survival in a harsh, uncaring land. Complicate that with a psychopath and you have a horror story that no novelist could have dreamed up in a nightmare. Yet it’s also a story of great courage, ingenuity and the strength of the human spirit. Seeing what those people faced all those years ago simply highlights those qualities.

If you’d like to know more about the wreck of the
Batavia
, check out my history blog:

http://gretavanderrol.net/books-2/historical-fiction/