by Judy Nunn
Her head bowed, Lucretia held the hand of Judick, the eldest daughter, who had sought out her friendship, but Lucretia was not listening to the predikant whose pontificating sounded meaningless, she was praying in her own way. Simply and fervently. ‘Dear God, if we are about to die, please let it be quick and merciful.’ She tried to swallow but she couldn’t, her mouth was so parched, her throat so dry. The scant supply of drinking water had run out and this, the fourth day, had been the harshest yet in their fight for survival. A miracle was needed. Another day like this and they would all be dead. Lucretia had seen people drinking their own urine. Others had drunk sea water and she’d watched them go mad. A number had died. With a hand to her heart, Lucretia felt beneath her bodice, the outline of the locket as she prayed. ‘And please, dear God, should I die, look after my Boudewijn.’
On the morning of the wreck, Lucretia had been amongst the first forty passengers brought ashore in the longboat, along with other women and the children. The island to which they’d been transported was little more than a mile from where the Batavia remained foundering on the rocks, and the longboat had made three successive trips, bringing the sick and the weaker of the men also, until soon 180 people were crowded onto the barren triangular-shaped platform of coral. The island measured less than 340 yards in length and on average 70 yards in width, and with the meagre supplies allotted them, the hapless survivors were forced to set up camp amongst the spindly bushes between the two small coral beaches. The luckier ones acquired the strips of canvas which had once been sails and made rudimentary tents. It had been a relief, nonetheless, to be away from the ship. The hours following the wreck, those two hours of dark before dawn, had been a nightmare. Convinced they were destined to be plunged into the churning black sea, panic-stricken passengers had screamed in terror, soldiers had jostled the crew, demanding to know what was going to happen, and sailors had been hindered by the hysteria as they’d tried to go about their duties, Captain Jacobsz screaming all the while above the melee.
‘Let my sailors do their work! Quiet, you cattle!’ But no-one heeded him.
The morning light had brought little relief. The hysterical passengers still believed they were destined to drown. And when Adriaen Jacobsz returned from his exploration in the longboat to report to Commandeur Pelsaert that the nearest island would not flood at high tide and could accommodate survivors, hysteria reached its peak as people fought to get into the longboat. The smaller yawl, a dinghy which could take only ten passengers, threatened to capsize as they clambered aboard. Weak, frightened men trampled over women; women, parted from their children, wailed; sailors tried desperately to fend the frail craft from the ship’s side as they loaded barrels of bread and water.
Eventually, however, all those who wished to go ashore had been transported, and those left on the Batavia could then assess the damage and possibility of repair. There was none. The Batavia was crippled and dying. Jacobsz had known it. Cornelisz, the undermerchant, with his lack of seamen’s knowledge, had hoped that somehow they might salvage her, float her and her precious cargo off the reef, leave the others behind and reap the riches. Jacobsz scorned such naivety.
‘Her back’s broken, you fool, she’ll sink to the bottom like a stone,’ he scathingly replied.
Jeronimus Cornelisz was displeased by Jacobsz’s disdainful reaction, and later that day he watched from the bulkhead as Jacobsz took the Commandeur ashore; Pelsaert was needed to restore order and leadership to those marooned on the island, the skipper said. Did this mean that the skipper was no longer allied to him now that their mutinous plans had miscarried? Such a notion was dangerous. Was Jacobsz considering an alliance with the Commandeur whom he detested in order to save his own skin? Was he about to desert his colleagues in crime? Cornelisz surveyed the treasure chests and the wealth of cargo which had been hauled out onto the deck. No, he satisfied himself, Adriaen Jacobsz would never desert such riches, he would be back. In the meantime, with the Commandeur safely out of the way, they’d have fun tonight. The ruffians amongst the soldiers, those with no loyalty to the United East India Company, were already plundering the vessel and their drunken roars could clearly be heard from the hold where they’d broken open casks of gin and bottles of Spanish wine from the stores.
Not to be outdone, the sailors joined in the destruction, breaking into Pelsaert’s cabin and making a mockery of his personal possessions, and Cornelisz himself took great delight in reading aloud from the Commandeur’s journal. He was rewarded for his trouble by guffaws of laughter and ribald remarks when he parroted, in an imitation of Pelsaert’s voice, the passage relating to the outrage perpetrated upon the person of Lucretia van den Mylen. When they had tired of this sport, they fouled the journal. ‘Give it the same treatment afforded the van den Mylen slut,’ Cornelisz suggested, and the men obeyed with alacrity. Then they tossed the journal into the sea.
A soldier attacked one of the money chests with an adze. Grasping the wooden handle of the adze, which was at right angles to the heavy chisel-like tool, he raised it above his head and, in a drunken frenzy, swung again and again at the chest until finally it burst open. Greedy hands grabbed coins and the men, staggering in their drunkenness and bellowing with laughter, threw the money in each other’s faces.
That night Cornelisz gathered his fellow conspirators about him, at least those who were still conscious, and in the great cabin, the ship’s main dining room, they gorged themselves on food from Pelsaert’s larder and drank yet more wine from his fine personal collection. It was just a taste of things to come, Cornelisz assured them, he had plans and there were still riches to be had. He wasn’t sure what his plans were, like the others he was too drunk to think or to care, but he had no intention of giving up his treasure.
Pelsaert and Jacobsz did not set up their encampment on the island with the marooned passengers, but rather on a small, rocky cay halfway between the wreck and the island itself. There, with their crew of seamen, having commandeered not only the longboat and the dinghy, but provisions and barrels of water containing some twenty gallons, they made their plans.
The following day, watching the Commandeur and the Captain from the larger island, the survivors named the cay Verraders’ Eylandt, ‘Traitor’s Island’, convinced that those who were to have led them had deserted them.
Perhaps they were right, for forty-eight hours after the wreck of the Batavia, before dawn on 6 June, the longboat slipped away. Pelsaert had ordered Adriaen Jacobsz to set sail, convinced there was only one possible chance of survival for those remaining on the island. He must reach Java and the city of Batavia, after which his ship had been named, and he must return with a rescue vessel. Although he trusted in Adriaen Jacobsz’s ability to skipper the longboat to safety, he did not trust in the man’s integrity. He doubted Jacobsz would return for the others, and so, heavy-hearted with the enormity of his undertaking and the fact that some would see it as desertion, Pelsaert took command and set sail. Jacobsz himself had no such misgivings. The survivors were doomed and he was only too eager to rescue himself.
The last instructions Pelsaert relayed to the seventy men still aboard the Batavia’s wreck were, ‘Make some rafts and leave the ship as quickly as you can, and God help you.’ Then, with his crew, which included his skipper, Adriaen Jacobsz, the High Boatswain, Jan Evertsz and the buxom Zwaantie Hendrix, Pelsaert left the survivors to fend for themselves.
Barely twenty-four hours later, the smaller dinghy also departed with a crew of ten; a speedier lighter vessel, she sought to catch up with the longboat and sail in unison. Small wonder that the 250 men, women and children who remained on the island and aboard the rapidly disintegrating wreck felt abandoned.
At first Lucretia tried to defend the Commandeur. ‘Perhaps he has gone in search of water,’ she suggested, and most certainly Pelsaert had made several explorative searches for nearby water supplies, with little success. Even on the fourth day, when people were dying of thirst, Lucretia weakly maintained his inn
ocence. ‘He will return with a rescue ship,’ she said, and although she believed this to be Pelsaert’s intention, she did not think it possible. If he ever did return it would be to find them all dead.
On the fifth day the miracle happened. It rained. The skies opened and a life-saving deluge poured down upon the survivors, who held their faces to the heavens and wept with relief. When they had sated their thirst, they rigged their canvas tents to catch the rain and funnel it into barrels.
‘God is merciful, he has not forgotten us,’ the predikant cried.
The numbers on the island swelled as men risked the perilous swim from the ship which was fast breaking up, forty of them drowning in the process.
Jeronimus Cornelisz was the last man to leave the Batavia. His purpose in staying aboard was not a grand gesture, nor did he remain in order to guard his treasure; unable to swim, and having witnessed the deaths of others who’d made the attempt, he was simply terrified of drowning.
For eight days he stayed on board as heavy seas pounded the vessel and she splintered and broke apart beneath him. Then, finally, he had no choice. Sitting astride a section of the bowsprit, he braved the waves, leaving the hulk of the Batavia behind him as he made his way towards the island, a small plank serving as a paddle.
It took him two days and, when he was finally washed up on the island’s shore, he was exhausted, floundering in the shallows, neither able to speak nor to walk.
He was granted a hero’s welcome. People cried out with joy at the sight of him. The undermerchant lived, they had thought he’d drowned, and they carried him ashore and clothed him in warm garments and fed him water and then food when he had recovered enough to eat. At last they had a leader. With the departure of their Commandeur and their Captain, the undermerchant was the most senior member of the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, and as the official representative of the VOC, he was afforded every entitlement his rank demanded.
When he had regained his strength, Cornelisz quickly realised that the situation was nowhere near as drastic as he had presumed it to be. There were barrels of rain water, and other barrels had been washed up on the shores from the wreck. And not only barrels of water, but of gin and wine, of food and cargo. A regular watch was kept to rescue any valuable debris which drifted past in the current. The mainmast had been rescued, supplying enough canvas in its sails to provide tents for everyone. Carpenters, of which there were a number amongst the survivors, were already constructing flat-bottomed boats from the wreckage timber. He would be able to salvage some of the wealth from the Batavia’s hulk.
Given the leadership they had granted him, Cornelisz made his plans. A council had been set up amongst the survivors to protect their community and to mete out punishments for misdeeds, but Cornelisz displayed no interest in becoming a member. He had his own hierarchy, consisting of those loyal followers who had been part of the intended mutiny, and he was disturbed to hear from his men that word of the mutiny had spread in various quarters.
‘It was the day the skipper left,’ Coenraat informed him. Coenraat van Huyssen, a handsome young military cadet whose aristocratic exterior belied the true evil of his nature, was one of Cornelisz’s most loyal supporters. ‘Ryckert broke open a barrel of gin,’ Coenraat said. ‘He was staggering in the drink and he told anyone who would listen that Jacobsz had deserted him, said that he’d been prepared to risk the gallows for the skipper and this was his reward.’
Cornelisz glared angrily. Ryckert Woutersz, a gunner, was a weak milksop of a man, Cornelisz had known him to be so from the outset, a man fond of talking and frightened of action. ‘Kill him,’ he said.
‘We did,’ Coenraat replied, ‘that very night, a dagger between the ribs. But his disappearance was remarked on the following morning and the rumour persists, I don’t know how many believe it.’ In his handsome eyes was the gleam of a fanatic. ‘We need to kill more, Jeronimus. We need to kill them all. The food and water can’t last forever, what is the point in feeding so many useless mouths.’
‘Calm yourself, Coenraat,’ Cornelisz said smoothly. The young man was impetuous but he was an invaluable supporter. ‘All in good time, we must tread softly, nothing will be gained by frightening the people, there are too many soldiers to protect them. We must gain their confidence and somehow rid ourselves of the military who are loyal to the VOC. Keep your peace, you and the others, laugh off the rumours as drunken foolishness and do nothing to arouse suspicion.’
Over the days which ensued, Cornelisz not only ingratiated himself with the people, both he and his followers imbued them with confidence. His hierarchy consisted of the most senior and educated men amongst them, clerks of the Company and officer cadets who came from aristocratic families. The common people were accustomed to accepting the authority of such men.
It was these same men who had conspired to mutiny and yet, if any person or persons now attempted to disobey them, then they themselves would be accused of mutiny. For, as Cornelisz dictated, he and his followers acted in the name of the Company and, as the senior VOC representative, who could contest him? The irony of the situation delighted Cornelisz.
Lucretia observed, with dire misgivings, the burgeoning power of Jeronimus Cornelisz. Did the people not recognise his depravity? And she trusted none of those with whom he surrounded himself. But Cornelisz manipulated everyone with consummate ease, and even Lucretia had to admit that so far his plans had made sense.
The most urgent and basic requirement was a source of fresh water, the barrels would not last forever, they could not rely on the rain, and so Cornelisz had sent out boats on exploratory expeditions. One such expedition to the nearest island, a thin strip of land with visible clumps of vegetation, had revealed a colony of seals, and the two carcasses the men had brought back had provided a feast for all.
‘Many more there for the taking,’ they assured the others, ‘and they’re easy to catch, they just bask in the sun.’
‘God is kind,’ the predikant had proclaimed, ‘we will not starve.’
During calm weather, Cornelisz had also sent boats to the hulk of the wreck, and they had returned with riches. A casket of jewels fit for a king and a chest of heavy silver coin. Brocades and gold braids, fine apparel and boots of best leather, and even a trunk containing the clothes and uniforms of Commandeur Francisco Pelsaert. The people were imbued with fresh hope, their situation had improved tenfold since the arrival of the undermerchant, they declared.
What good were caskets of jewels and silver coin, Lucretia thought. Furthermore, she’d seen the greedy gleam in Cornelisz’s eyes, the man looked upon the treasure as his own. But she said nothing. To speak ill of the undermerchant would be regarded as traitorous by many. But when Cornelisz turned his charm upon her, as he so often did, she felt the bile rise in her throat. She could still hear his blasphemous whispers and the repugnant intimacy of his tone, ‘Do you believe in the teachings of Torrentius, my dear?’ She detested the man and she knew him to be evil. She tried, whenever she could, to avoid him.
Cornelisz was pleased overall, so far he had suffered just one major disappointment. Of the twelve bound chests filled with heavy silver coin, eleven had sunk to the depths of the ocean, the only one retrieved being that which the soldier had broken open with his adze, and half the coin had gone, thrown about as it had been in the men’s drunken frenzy. But the chest of jewels was worth a king’s ransom, more than enough to set him up for life.
Cornelisz’s plan was simple. He and his cohorts would seize the rescue ship when it arrived. He strongly believed in Adriaen Jacobsz’s skills. If anyone could navigate the longboat to Batavia it was Jacobsz, and Pelsaert would return for the survivors, Pelsaert was an honourable man. There would be no survivors, however, except for Cornelisz and his followers. All others would have perished. At this point the plan became a little more complicated, for Cornelisz and his men were severely outnumbered, the soldiers loyal to the Company being of particular concern.
Cornelisz had won
a number of soldiers to his cause, but there remained a hardcore group of older men, seasoned regulars, who were known to be incorruptible. He had not dared to approach them. It was a pity, Cornelisz thought, he could have made use of their abilities with a blade in ridding himself of the others. The soldiers’ undisputed leader was Weibbe Hayes. The epitome of his kind, Hayes was tough and strong, a man of great courage and unswerving loyalty to the VOC. Cornelisz would turn the man’s qualities to his own advantage by exploiting Hayes’ commitment to duty.
Weibbe Hayes and his twenty or so men were to be sent on a life-saving mission, Cornelisz announced. ‘The discovery of a fresh water source is imperative,’ he instructed them. They were to be taken to the High Islands which could be seen on the horizon to the north. There they would be left to continue their expedition for as far and as long as necessary in order to discover drinking water. ‘Our lives may well depend upon your discovery,’ Cornelisz emphasised. He then confiscated their arms just prior to their departure, weapons being a hindrance, he maintained. ‘You will need all your strength to carry the water barrels,’ he said. The soldiers were ordered to light a fire as a signal when they had discovered water, at which time, Cornelisz promised, the boats would come to collect them and their valuable cargo.
‘We shall never collect them and we shall never see such a signal,’ he said to Coenraat van Huyssen as they watched the boats depart, ‘there is no water up there.’ One of his boats had returned from an expedition only a few days previously to report that the High Islands were a wasteland of rocks and sand and mudflats. He’d told his men to keep such knowledge to themselves. ‘Weibbe Hayes can walk his feet off searching,’ he said to Coenraat, ‘I have no doubt he will, and then he’ll die of thirst.’