Batavia's Graveyard

by Mike Dash

  That was the last anyone saw of Jacob Jacobsz and his men. Two days of storms prevented Pelsaert from launching a search for the missing yawl until 16 October, when a boat commanded by Jacob Jansz Hollert searched all the outlying islands without success; and though several columns of smoke were seen rising from the mainland on 4 November, giving rise to definite hopes that the men might have made a landfall there, a brief search of the Australian coast revealed no sign of the crew. The five sailors had to be given up for lost.

  So obsessively did Pelsaert search for wreckage that his salvage work was not completed until the middle of November, six weeks after Jeronimus’s execution. During this time the hundred soldiers and sailors under his command had to guard the 30 survivors of the group that had signed oaths of allegiance to Cornelisz. The most dangerous of the surviving mutineers—they included Daniel Cornelissen and Hans Jacob Heijlweck, both of whom had killed several men—were still kept, bound hand and foot, in isolation on Seals’ Island. The remainder, though, were not confined, and since there were at least a score of them the possibility of another uprising could not entirely be discounted. In the circumstances it is hardly surprising that Pelsaert decided to deal with another six of the remaining mutineers before leaving the Abrolhos.

  The men concerned were Wouter Loos, Lucas Gellisz, Rogier Decker, Abraham Gerritsz, Claes Harmansz, and Salomon Deschamps, Pelsaert’s clerk, whose role in the death of Mayken Cardoes’s child had finally emerged. Loos, who was the only major figure in the group, was charged with allowing himself to be “made Captain of a troop of Murderers” and attacking Wiebbe Hayes and his Defenders, but not, at first, with any killings. The other five had all confessed to murder, but in each case Pelsaert and the members of the Broad Council observed that there had been extenuating circumstances. Deschamps, Gerritsz, and Harmansz, who had been forced to kill by Zevanck and his men, were all found to have acted under duress, and each was spared the death sentence. Decker and Gellisz were still more fortunate. Both had killed men in cold blood, “without any protest,” as the commandeur noted in Decker’s case, and even “to show good faith,” as he observed of Gellisz’s involvement in the bloody murder of Frans Jansz. Yet Decker was spared on account of his youth, and Gellisz apparently for no better reason than that the council wished to show him mercy. Instead of death, each of the five mutineers was sentenced to be dropped from the yard or keelhauled, followed by “100 strokes before the mast” and, in Lucas Gellisz’s case, the confiscation of six months’ wages.

  Compared with what Jeronimus had suffered, these punishments were merciful, and Wouter Loos—who had, after all, succeeded Jeronimus in overall command of the mutineers—was treated even more leniently. Rebellion against Jan Company in itself meant an automatic death sentence at the time, but for some reason Pelsaert attached comparatively little weight to Loos’s role as Cornelisz’s successor. In addition, the commandeur noted only in passing that Loos had indeed been guilty of “several murders,” though he had actually killed two people—Bastiaen Gijsbertsz and Mayken Cardoes—tied up at least two others so that they could be drowned, and bore a good deal of responsibility for the death of Jan Dircxsz, the Defender, in the final assault on Hayes’s Island. Nor was any mention made of the prominent part Loos had played in the plot to entice the Sardam’s crew ashore and murder them. Pelsaert’s view was that Loos had actually “committed more with his tongue, by means of advice, than with his hands,” and certain factors may have weighed in the soldier’s favor: he had saved the life of Jan Willemsz Selyns, refused to launch an attack on the Sardam, and no one had died on Batavia’s Graveyard after he assumed command of the captain-general’s gang. On the whole, however, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Loos was treated with leniency simply because he was not Jeronimus Cornelisz. The mutineers’ last leader was sentenced not to death but to be marooned, with Jan Pelgrom the cabin boy, somewhere on the South-Land’s coast.

  The Sardam sailed for the Indies on 15 November 1629 carrying 77 survivors from the Batavia. Of this total, 45 had fought with Wiebbe Hayes; three, including Pelsaert, had reached Java in the longboat and returned on board the jacht; and the other 29 had been members of Cornelisz’s band, unwilling associates, or concubines of the mutineers. Only five of the survivors were women—Creesje Jans was one of them—and just one was a child. Among the men, fewer than half a dozen of those who had survived Batavia’s Graveyard had done so without throwing their lot in with the mutineers or signing one of Jeronimus’s oaths of obedience. These people—none of them are named—were almost certainly artisans: carpenters, cooks, or coopers whom even Cornelisz could see were more valuable alive than dead. Every other man, woman, and child who had survived the wreck had been murdered in the six weeks from 3 July to 16 August. The killings on the islands had ceased for no other reason than that the mutineers had run out of victims.

  The gales of the preceding weeks had at last given way to beautiful spring weather, and the jacht made excellent progress along the coast of the Great South-Land. She dropped anchor at Batavia on 5 December, a little under three weeks after leaving the Abrolhos. The return journey was thus accomplished in less than a third of the time that Pelsaert had taken to sail from the Indies to the archipelago two months earlier.

  Only two incidents of any significance occurred during the voyage. On the morning of 16 November, less than a day after leaving Batavia’s Graveyard, Pelsaert spotted smoke rising on the South-Land. The weather was considerably more moderate than it had been on his first trip along the coast, and—hoping that the smoke might come from a signal fire lit by Jacob Jacobsz and the men who had gone missing in the Sardam’s boat—the commandeur managed to put in at an inlet on the coast, not quite 50 miles north of the Abrolhos. No trace of the missing sailors could be found, but the place was evidently inhabited—the landing party found plenty of naked footprints, though “the Blacks kept themselves hidden and did not show themselves to anyone”—and there was fresh water in a gully.*49 It struck Pelsaert that this would be a good spot to carry out the sentences on Jan Pelgrom and Wouter Loos, and later in the day the two mutineers were rowed ashore and abandoned on a gently shelving beach close to the stream. Pelgrom and Loos thus became—improbably—the first white settlers in Australia, nearly 160 years before the arrival of the British convicts of the First Fleet of 1787.

  Once again, the mutineers had been exceptionally fortunate. Despite its later—and romantic—reputation, marooning frequently meant little more than a slow death. Many maroons were abandoned on waterless cays, much like those in the Abrolhos, with nothing but a water bottle and a gun; once the water was all gone, they were expected to shoot themselves. Pelgrom and Loos received a good deal more—a boatload of equipment, materials to barter with the natives, access to a good supply of water, and even instructions from the commandeur on how best to ingratiate themselves with the people they encountered. Their prospects of survival were not bad.

  The second incident of note did not take place until the end of November, by which time the Sardam was almost within sight of the coast of Java. Eight of the mutineers on board had still not been told what their sentences would be. The members of this group now begged Pelsaert to review their cases and pronounce judgment immediately, before they reached Batavia. It was an unusual request, not least because the men’s petition was supported by the remainder of the crew, and it was almost certainly made because the surviving mutineers knew of the light sentences handed out to Deschamps, Gellisz, Loos, and their companions and suspected that they would be treated more leniently by Pelsaert than they would by the unforgiving Council of the Indies. In this they were undoubtedly correct.

  The members of Pelsaert’s Broad Council took some time to debate the men’s request. On one hand they suspected Governor-General Coen would probably wish to try the mutineers himself. On the other, they may have felt some slight compassion for the men, and wondered—as Pelsaert noted in his journals—if it might be better “not to trouble further
the Hon. Lord Gov. Gen. in his many duties, as we fear that the Javanese war is causing him enough heartburning, although [we] hope such is not so.” In the end a compromise was reached. Seven of the rebels were brought up from below to hear their sentences. The eighth was the last surviving member of Jeronimus’s council: the unfortunate lance corporal, “Stone-Cutter” Pietersz, who was the one major mutineer still in Pelsaert’s custody. He was kept bound and chained to await the pleasure of the governor-general.

  The first man called before the council was Daniel Cornelissen. The enthusiastic young cadet had killed four men and helped to kill three more before he was captured by Wiebbe Hayes; he was sentenced to be keelhauled three times and then severely flogged, and was also to suffer the confiscation of his last year’s wages. Hans Jacob Heijlweck, who had brained the surgeon with a morning star, was also guilty of murder, and he received a similar sentence. So did Cornelis Janssen, the sailor, who had killed no one. His crimes were plotting mutiny on board the Batavia, helping to assault Creesje Jans, and looting the commandeur’s cabin after the wreck.

  Three more of those who had sworn loyalty to Jeronimus—the soldiers Andries Liebent and Hans Frederick, and Isbrant Isbrantsz, an assistant—had assisted in the murders, though Liebent and Frederick had killed willingly, while Isbrantsz had acted under duress. Their punishment was to be dropped three times from the mast, then flogged; Liebent and Frederick were also fined six months’ wages. Jean Thirion, a soldier who had hacked open one of the VOC’s money chests on the wreck, was sentenced to be keelhauled, flogged, and fined a similar amount.

  Two prisoners still had to be dealt with. The last remaining member of Cornelisz’s gang, Olivier van Welderen, seems to have been suspected of a good deal, including, perhaps, membership of the group of mutineers that had formed on the Batavia. But illness had confined Van Welderen to his tent on Batavia’s Graveyard for weeks on end, and he had played no direct part in any of the events on the islands. Pelsaert plainly felt he had retained a good deal of influence over his murderous brother Gsbert, but Olivier remained steadfast under questioning and confessed to nothing more than sleeping with Zussie Fredericx, one of the married women kept “for common service.” It did him little good; his punishment—“that he shall be dropped three times from the mast, and be flogged with 100 strokes”—was identical to that handed out to men guilty of far more.

  The last man to be sentenced on the Sardam was a French soldier, Jean Renou of Miombry, who had never been part of Jeronimus’s gang. He had, in fact, been one of the Defenders and had served loyally throughout the siege of Hayes’s island. The Frenchman’s crime was a peculiar one; he was charged not with murder or mutiny but with slander—which was, thanks to the huge importance that the Dutch attached to their personal honor, an almost equally serious offense at this time. The particulars of the case, as set out by Pelsaert, were that Renou had defamed Zussie Fredericx by recounting to a whole tent full of people how she had willingly given herself to three men, including Renou himself and Wiebbe Hayes, during a short visit to Hayes’s Island. This allegation, the commandeur agreed, was “a matter of very evil consequence,” not least because Renou had announced that Zussie “did him evil” as a result, no doubt by infecting him with a venereal disease. The Frenchman, Pelsaert said, deserved stern punishment for besmirching a married lady’s name.

  It may appear surprising that the commandeur was much concerned with the honor of one woman at such a time—and a sailor’s wife at that. Probably Pelsaert’s real motive was quite a different one: to protect the reputation of the new hero, Wiebbe Hayes. In doing so, he sentenced the loose-tongued Renou to be dropped three times from the mast and flogged—the same punishment that Liebent and Frederick had just received for their part in the murder of two people. The only difference between them was that Renou was allowed to keep his wages.

  A good deal had changed in Batavia since Pelsaert had last seen the town. It was now the monsoon season, and the climate, never pleasant for a European, was at its most unbearable. Batavia was still hot, but with the onset of the rains it had been drenched as well. On average, almost six feet of rain fell within the walls during the summer months, and in the intervals between the storms the weather became unpleasantly humid and seemed to breed fever.

  At least the military situation had improved while the commandeur had been in the Abrolhos. Coen’s foreboding that he faced a second siege had come true toward the end of August, when the Susuhunan of Mataram returned to invest Castle Batavia with a substantial army. But only six weeks later, on 2 October—the same day that Jeronimus and his followers had been hung on Seals’ Island—Agung had given up the siege “with dishonor,” as the VOC’s Batavia Day Book put it, “and in an ignominious manner.” Hampered by lack of food, the Javanese troops had abandoned their positions overnight and streamed back into the forests before the Dutch became aware that the enemy was fleeing. The successful conclusion of the siege marked the end of Jan Company’s war with Mataram, which had put a considerable dent into the Indies trade and devastated the town and its surroundings. Both soon recovered; indeed the environs of Batavia reverted to jungle so swiftly that before long the governor-general was offering money for every rhinoceros killed in the immediate vicinity. By 1700 this bounty was being paid out about 30 times a month.

  The other great change had taken place within the walls of Castle Batavia itself. Coen had not lived to see the triumph of his armies. The governor-general had collapsed and died, aged 42, on 21 September—the day before Jacques Specx and the remainder of the VOC’s autumn fleet (of which Pelsaert’s squadron had once formed a part) came to anchor in the roadstead outside the town. The cause of death was apparently heart failure. Coen had been ill before, with dysentery, but his death was sudden and so unexpected that it gave rise to some startling rumors. The most popular attributed his seizure to the arrival of Specx, whose daughter, Sara, Coen had only recently had flogged before the town hall. It was said that Coen had been promenading on the balcony of his quarters on the afternoon before his death when he saw the autumn fleet appear on the horizon. “There is Sir Specx, my successor,” he is supposed to have prophesied, before dropping dead from the fear of what Specx would do to him when he discovered what had happened to his daughter.

  Whether he truly died this way or not, Jan Coen’s last prediction did come true. Jacques Specx was appointed governor-general of the Indies three days after his predecessor’s death. It thus fell to him, and to the fiscaal, Antonij van den Heuvel, to consider the case of the surviving Batavia mutineers, who were landed from the Sardam late in the first week of December and—it seems safe to assume—taken at once to the appalling dungeons beneath the citadel, where Ariaen Jacobsz was still confined pending further investigation of his role in the mutiny.

  There were 14 of them in all: the eight men whom Pelsaert had just dealt with, another five, including Salomon Deschamps and Lucas Gellisz, whose cases had been considered in the Abrolhos, and finally the lonely figure of Stone-Cutter Pietersz—once lieutenant general of Jeronimus’s band but now a mere lance corporal once again—who had still not been heard at all. At least some of those who had come before the Sardam’s council had already been punished by the time the jacht reached Batavia (there is some doubt whether Pelsaert had dealt with Daniel Cornelissen and the others sentenced at the end of November), but even those men could not be certain they would be released. The governor-general of the Indies enjoyed absolute power within his dominions, and he could do with them as he liked.

  The men were left to rot in prison while Specx and his councillors considered how to handle the Batavia affair, and their cases were not finally decided until the end of January. Pelsaert’s leniency seems to have struck Specx as quite excessive, and as the mutineers had feared, the governor-general had no compunction in setting the commandeur’s verdicts to one side. On 31 January 1630, the survivors of Cornelisz’s gang were brought up from the cells and told they faced much sterner punishments for
the crimes they had committed on Batavia’s Graveyard.

  Five more mutineers were hanged. The worst of them, Daniel Cornelissen, had his right hand amputated before the sentence was carried out. Hans Jacob Heijlweck joined him on the gallows, and so did Lucas Gellisz. Salomon Deschamps, the pathetic clerk who had been forced to strangle Mayken Cardoes’s half-dead baby, died alongside them; the commandeur had protected him in the Abrolhos, but even Deschamps’s long acquaintance with Pelsaert was not enough to save him from the vengeance of the Council of the Indies.

  The identity of the fifth man to hang has never been certain. When the time came to pass sentence on the minor mutineers, Specx and his Council seem to have found themselves torn between the urge to punish all of Jeronimus’s men and the feeling that the youngest and most impressionable of them might deserve some mercy. Confronted with Rogier Decker, who was 17, and Abraham Gerritsz, the 15-year-old runaway whom Pelsaert had picked up in Sierra Leone, they ruled that only one should die. The manner in which the matter was decided was a torment in itself. The boys were to