Batavia's Graveyard

by Mike Dash

  There is little evidence of any solidarity among soldiers of the VOC; thievery and casual violence were rife, and the only bonds that seem to have formed were friendships of convenience between men who hailed from the same town or district. Friends would keep an eye on each other’s possessions, share food and water, and nurse each other if they fell sick. It was important to find a companion like this. Those who had no friend to turn to when they succumbed to illness might be left to die; retourschepen were fitted with sick bays in the bows, but officers and seamen received priority for treatment. A typical Dutch sailor, it was observed, “shows more concern for the loss of a chicken in the coop than for the death of a whole regiment of soldiers.”

  On the Batavia the majority of the troops were German. A number came from the North Sea ports of Bremen, Emden, and Hamburg, where the VOC maintained recruiting centers to gather up the dregs of the waterfront. Though some were decent men—it was not unknown for the younger sons of honorable but impoverished families to seek their fortunes in the Company’s army—they were, on the whole, a potentially dangerous group of malcontents.

  The soldiers were led by a Dutch corporal, Gabriel Jacobszoon, who had come on board with his wife. Jacobszoon was assisted by a lansepesaat (lance corporal) from Amsterdam called Jacop Pietersz, whose nicknames—he was variously known as steenhouwer, “stone-cutter,” and cosijn, which means “window-frame”—suggest a man with the considerable strength and bulk required to control the brutal men under his command. The Stone-Cutter and the corporal were in turn responsible to the young VOC cadets who were the only military officers on board, and who did not themselves share the discomforts of the orlop deck.

  These youths were frequently junior members of old noble families whose lands, in the time-honored tradition, were passed down from a father to his eldest son, leaving any other male children to make their own way in life. The crew of the Batavia included a dozen such cadets, at least four of whom—Coenraat van Huyssen, Lenert van Os, and the brothers Olivier and Gsbert van Welderen—appear to have had pretensions to nobility.

  Van Huyssen is the only cadet of whom it is possible to say much. The predikant noticed him as a “handsome young nobleman” who came from the province of Gelderland, and it would appear that he was a junior member of the Van Huyssen family that owned the manor of Den Werd, a fief near the German border in the county of Bergh. Over the years the Van Huyssens produced several members of the knighthood of the province, but their estate at Den Werd was small and not particularly productive. If Coenraat were indeed a scion of this family, it would not be surprising to find him seeking a living in the East. Perhaps he joined the Company’s army with some friends; the Van Welderen brothers came from the provincial capital of Gelderland, Nijmegen, and it is not impossible that the three young nobles knew each other.

  If the Batavia’s soldiers endured appalling hardships, conditions were only marginally better for the seamen on the gun deck. Their quarters stretched forward from the galley to the bows. Here there was headroom, and gunports offered light, but 180 unwashed men still lived together, crammed into less than 70 feet of deck that they shared with their sea chests, a dozen heavy guns, several miles of cable, and other assorted pieces of equipment. The gun deck was wretchedly cold in winter and unbearably hot and stuffy in the tropics. Hammocks, which had been introduced in the previous century, were still not widespread, and many sailors used sleeping pads instead, squeezed into whatever spaces they could find on deck. Worst of all, the gun deck was almost always wet, rendering even off-duty hours wretched for the many men who worked in heavy weather without an adequate change of clothes.

  The very sight of an ordinary seaman was alarming to the genteel merchants in the stern, and it is not surprising that they were kept as far away from the passengers as possible. Dutch sailors in general stood apart by virtue of their shipboard dress—loose shirts and trousers offered the necessary freedom of movement in an era of stockings and tight hose—and they had a reputation for being unusually rough and raw, even by the standards of the time. But those desperate or destitute enough to risk their lives on a voyage to the East had a particularly poor reputation, and ordinary merchant skippers and even the Dutch navy would not recruit men who had served the VOC.

  “For sailors on board Indiamen,” one passenger observed, “cursing, swearing, whoring, debauchery and murder are mere trifles; there is always something brewing among these fellows, and if the officers did not crack down on them so quickly with punishments, their own lives would certainly not be safe for a moment among that unruly rabble.” A retourschip sailor, wrote another, “must be ruled with a rod of iron, like an untamed beast, otherwise he is capable of wantonly beating up anybody.”

  Nevertheless, the seamen of the VOC did form a more or less cohesive group, united by the bonds of language and experience. Most were Dutch, unlike the soldiers, and all shared the unique dialect of the sea. The jobs they were expected to perform, from weighing anchor to making sail, required cooperation and encouraged mutual trust, and they were in general more disciplined and less disruptive than the troops.

  The bulk of the mainmast, which ran right through the ship, marked the limit of the sailors’ quarters. Here, halfway along the gun deck, there were two small rooms—one the surgeon’s cabin and the other a galley lined with bricks and full of copper cauldrons. The galley was the only place on a wooden ship where an open fire was permitted, and in this tiny space the Batavia’s gang of cooks were required to prepare more than 1,000 meals a day. Then came a capstan and the pumps, and farther back again the quartermaster and the constable occupied two little cabins between the bread store and the armory. Their quarters were directly below Pelsaert’s Great Cabin, but for all those who lived down on the gun deck, the wooden beams that separated them from the more privileged inhabitants of the stern were much more than a purely physical barrier. They protected the merchants from the artisans and kept the officers safe from the men. On most East Indiamen, this was a necessary precaution. On the Batavia, it was to prove no protection at all.

  The Gentlemen XVII had originally decreed that fleet president Specx would assume overall command of the winter fleet, a substantial convoy of 18 vessels. Francisco Pelsaert, in the Batavia, was to have sailed with them, his responsibilities extending no further than the ship under his command. Toward the end of the month, however, Specx was unexpectedly recalled to Amsterdam on business, and in view of the deteriorating weather the VOC took the unusual decision to split the fleet in two. Eleven ships would wait and sail with the president when he was ready. The other seven were to depart immediately under the command of the most experienced upper-merchant available.

  Thus it was that Pelsaert found himself appointed commandeur of a whole flotilla of merchantmen: three retourschepen—the Dordrecht and ’s Gravenhage as well as the Batavia—and three other vessels, the Assendelft, the Sardam, and the Kleine David. The final vessel in the squadron was the escort warship Buren. One ship, the Kleine David, was to sail to the Coromandel Coast of India to take on textiles, dyes, and pepper. The rest were bound for the Spice Islands—which, God willing, they might expect to reach in the summer of 1629.

  Jeronimus Cornelisz and Creesje Jans probably had only the sketchiest ideas of the dangers they would face during such a voyage, but experienced merchants knew better than to underestimate the difficulties of the eastward passage. The distance from Texel to the Indies was almost 15,000 miles—more than halfway around the world. The voyage was the longest that any normal seventeenth-century ship would ever undertake, and conditions along much of the route were harsh. Most ships took eight months to reach Java, traveling at an average speed of two and a half miles per hour, and though one or two of the most fortunate reached their destination after only 130 days at sea, it was not unknown for East Indiamen to be blown off course and left becalmed for weeks or sometimes months at a time. The Westfriesland left the Netherlands in the early autumn of 1652 and eventually limped home two yea
rs later, having endured a succession of disasters and sailed no farther than the coast of Brazil. The Zuytdorp, which sailed in 1712, found herself becalmed off the coast of Africa and made the fatal decision to sail into the Gulf of Guinea in search of fresh water. Lack of wind trapped her there for five more months, and four-tenths of her crew died of fever and disease. The ship finally rounded the Cape of Good Hope nearly a year after leaving the United Provinces.

  The Gentlemen XVII were roused to fury by the thought of such delays and even resented the need for all retourschepen to put into land at least once to rest and take on fresh supplies of food and water. In the early years of the VOC, ships had visited Madeira and the Cape Verde Islands, and sometimes St. Helena as well, but these calls could add several weeks to the voyage. By the 1620s most fleets outward bound called only at the Cape, about 150 days’ sailing from the Dutch Republic. Most ships tarried there for about three weeks, long enough to nurse the sick, and restock, and the Cape became so useful that the VOC built a fort there in the middle of the century and settled colonists to provide fresh food for its ships. It was popular with the sailors, too, who took to calling it “The Tavern of the Ocean” for the bounties that it promised them. To the directors of the VOC, however, the Cape was at best an unfortunate necessity, which slowed down the all-important flow of profit. They offered bonuses to merchants, skippers, and steersmen whose vessels made fast passages—600 guilders for a voyage of only six months, 300 guilders for one of seven, and 150 for those who arrived in the Indies less than nine months after setting sail. Such measures seem to have had little effect. Some ships did make extraordinarily short passages; in 1621 the Gouden Leeuw*14 completed the voyage from the Netherlands to the Indies in 127 days, and in 1639 the Amsterdam established a new record of just 119. But such speedy voyages were rare. The masters of most ships evidently preferred the comforts of the Cape to the lure of guilders in their pockets.

  Francisco Pelsaert had never had to consider such necessities before. The additional responsibility that he now assumed was all the more daunting for being so unexpected. Still, even the most experienced fleet commanders had relatively little control over their ships; the vessels of a departing convoy could well spend weeks at anchor, waiting for good winds, and the order to sail—when it eventually came—could easily lead to chaos as unwieldy retourschepen maneuvered in the tight confines of their roadsteads. Minor collisions were common and, though the ships all lit their huge stern lanterns to keep track of each other in the dark, it was rare for a convoy to stay together all the way from the Channel to the Indies.

  Pelsaert’s flotilla did not even leave the Zuyder Zee together. The Batavia was left behind when the other six ships in the convoy sailed on 28 October 1628, and the commandeur’s new flagship did not finally get under way until the following day. The most likely explanation is that there was trouble in loading the Batavia’s cargo of silver and trade goods, but, whatever the reason, the retourschip’s passengers and crew soon had cause to regret the short delay.

  On the first day at sea, Batavia ran into an exceptionally violent storm while still off the Dutch coast. The crew was still green and untested, and before the ship could be got properly under control, she ran aground on the treacherous Walcheren sandbanks. Stuck fast and battered by the steep waves that built up quickly in the shallows, both passengers and crew had good reason to fear for their lives.

  Storms were the greatest danger an East Indiaman could face, and stranding was one of the worst calamities that could befall her in a storm. Even in open seas, heavy waves could swamp a retourschip, or smash her sides, or make her roll until the masts dipped into the water and the sails filled with sea and carried the whole ship down. Aground, the waves could open up her seams, and if they were big enough to make the ballast shift, the weight of the guns, masts, and yards could tip her over, too.

  The Walcheren Banks were a particularly deadly obstacle; though well within the home waters of the Dutch Republic, they claimed one ship in every five of the total lost by the VOC between Amsterdam and the Indies. The threat to the Batavia was considerable, and it took all Ariaen Jacobsz’s skill as a seaman to get her off the banks without serious damage. The skipper not only bullied and encouraged his men to shorten sail and check the stowing of the ballast, but kept the ship intact until the storm had blown itself out. Then he floated the Batavia off on the tide. Careful checks revealed the hull was not too badly damaged and by morning on 30 October the ship was able to continue on her way.

  Jacobsz steered west, heading for the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic. At some point during the passage down the Channel, it appears, the Batavia came upon the battered survivors of the rest of Pelsaert’s convoy. They had been savaged by the same storm that had nearly sunk their flagship, and the smallest of the retourschepen, ’s Gravenhage, had been so badly damaged that she had been forced to run into the Dutch port of Middelburg for repairs that were to keep her there for about four months. The other six ships continued to steer west.

  It was November now; the northern winter was drawing in, and the days were mostly short and cold and wet. For novice sailors such as Jeronimus Cornelisz, this was their first experience of the sea and it took time to get used to the constant motion of the ship, particularly in the stormy waters of the Bay. Surviving accounts written by voyagers to the East are full of the misery of these early days at sea, when seasickness was rife. Even the livestock on the main deck—carried to ensure a supply of fresh meat—suffered in this way. The pigs in particular were prone to bouts of mal-de-mer.

  The shock of life at sea would have been considerable for Jeronimus and his companions. Within a week of sailing even basic cleanliness became a dreamed-of luxury for the passengers and crew of a retourschip. There was no fresh water to spare for washing, and although one of the largest ships of her day, the Batavia was equipped with no more than four latrines. One pair was located on either side of the Great Cabin and reserved for the use of the people in the stern. The rest of the crew had to line up to use the remaining pair in the bow, which were nothing more than holes in the deck under the bowsprit. These heads were open to the elements and in full view of all those waiting in line. The only additional amenity was a long, dung-smeared rope that snaked through the hole in the latrine. The frayed end of the rope dangled in the sea and could be hauled up and used to wipe oneself clean.

  This miserable existence was compounded in bad weather. All the gunports and the hatches had to be closed and battened down, and little fresh air penetrated below deck. The men stank of stale sweat and garlic (a popular cure-all at the time); everything was permanently damp, and it became too dangerous to venture to the latrines. Soldiers and sailors relieved themselves in corners or crouched over the ladders down to the hold,*15 and if the weather was bad enough for the pumps to be called into action, the urine and feces that had been deposited below made an unwelcome reappearance. Rather than discharging into the sea, the Batavia’s pumps simply brought up filth and water from the bilges, “fuming like hell and reeking like the devil” as one contemporary put it, and sent it cascading down the gun deck to slosh around sleeping seamen until it found its own way out through open ports and sluices. When the weather finally improved, the men would scrub the decks with vinegar and burn frankincense and charcoal down below in an attempt to clear the air, but for much of the passage the lower decks of the Batavia smelled like a cesspit. Those fortunate enough to travel in the stern were spared the worst of this unpleasantness, but every account of the journey east makes it plain that, during the first weeks at sea, even the most distinguished passengers endured discomforts they could scarcely have dreamed of back at home.

  At length Pelsaert’s convoy left the worst of the weather behind it and headed south. The winds became lighter as the ships entered the Horse Latitudes off the North African coast, and though there were occasional excitements—the first sight of dolphins, which often came to play around Dutch ships, and seaweed in the water, heralding the ap
proach to the Canaries and the Cape Verde Islands—for the most part the voyage quickly became tedious. When the winds dropped there was relatively little for even the sailors to do, and for the soldiers, merchants, and passengers on board, day followed day with scarcely a break in the general routine.

  In these circumstances, food quickly became a subject of consuming importance for the inhabitants of the Batavia. The passage of time was marked by the hot meals served three times a day: at eight in the morning, noon, and 6 p.m. These could be grand occasions; Pelsaert and Jacobsz ate in the Great Cabin, usually with the ship’s senior officers and the most distinguished passengers as guests. Jeronimus Cornelisz and Lucretia Jans dined at the upper-merchant’s table, along with Gijsbert Bastiaensz and his wife. Claas Gerritsz the upper-steersman would have been there, too, along with his deputies, the watch-keepers Jacob Jansz Hollert and Gillis Fransz—whose nickname, somewhat unnervingly, was “Half-Awake.” Further down the table sat the provost, Pieter Jansz, and perhaps some of the junior merchants: young VOC assistants such as Pelsaert’s favorite clerk, Salomon Deschamps of Amsterdam, who had been with him in India. But even these privileged people could not take an invitation to the merchant’s table entirely for granted; there was another well-stocked table in the passenger accommodation at the stern to which they might occasionally be relegated and where the predikant’s children and the less-favored merchants and officers ate. Here and in the Great Cabin there were napkins and tablecloths, pewter plates and tin spoons, cabin boys to bring the food and the steward to serve wine. The sailors and soldiers, on the other hand, dined where they slept, sitting on their sea chests and eating from wooden dishes with wooden spoons. There were no servants before the mast. Instead the men were grouped into messes of seven or eight, and one man from each mess acted as orderly to his shipmates in weekly rotation, fetching food from the galley in pails and washing the dishes afterward. The cook and his mates ate last of all, standing watch while the rest of the crew had their meals.