Batavia's Graveyard: The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History's Bloodiest Mutiny

by Mike Dash

  The nature of Francisco Pelsaert’s malady is nowhere specified, but it kept him in his bunk for weeks and came so close to killing him that his recovery was not expected. His illness appears to have been a fever of some sort, possibly malaria contracted during his time in India. Had the upper-merchant succumbed, Cornelisz and Jacobsz could have taken control of the ship by right, without the need for mutiny. So—unknown to all but a handful of the passengers and crew—throughout late April and early May 1629 the fate of the ship lay in the hands of one of the most important of all the members of the Batavia’s crew. He was named Frans Jansz and he came from the old North Quarter port of Hoorn.

  Jansz was the Batavia’s surgeon. His practice was conducted from the tiny dispensary on the gun deck, which was scarcely more than five feet square, and his only tools were a set of surgeon’s saws, a small apothecary’s chest, and—because all seventeenth-century surgeons doubled as barbers—a handful of razors and some bowls. With these scant resources, and the assistance of an under-barber, Aris Jansz, he was responsible for the health of all 320 people on the ship.

  Of all the officers on board Batavia, Frans Jansz was probably the most popular among the passengers and crew. In the course of a typical journey from the Netherlands to Java, almost 1 in 10 of a retourschip’s crew would die, and a much larger number would fall ill and require treatment. If the proportion of the sick and the dead exceeded certain ratios, the ship would become unmanageable and might be lost together with its crew. Jansz, then, was the chief hope not only of Francisco Pelsaert, but of all those on the Batavia who wished to reach the Indies without undue drama.

  It is not possible to say whether or not the Batavia’s surgeon was worthy of the trust that the ship’s crew placed in him, but the likelihood is that he was not. The Gentlemen XVII always experienced great difficulty in attracting competent medical men. The dangers of the journey east were such that no successful physicians or apothecaries could possibly be induced to go to Java. Even reputable barber-surgeons were hard to come by. Unlike merchants, surgeons had relatively few opportunities to profit in the East, and since they endured similar risks, the standard of those who could be lured to serve at sea was often very low.

  On a good many East Indiamen, indeed, the problem of obtaining decent treatment was exacerbated by the dangers of the job. Shut up in their dispensaries below decks and constantly exposed to sick and dying men, the mortality rate among sea surgeons was far higher than it was among surgeons on land. Though most retourschepen did carry at least two barbers, it was far from uncommon for both men to expire in the course of a voyage, and if that happened, an untutored sailor would be pressed into service as a make-do surgeon. Men who found themselves in such a situation had no idea how to bleed a patient or amputate a shattered limb. They were simply expected to get on with it.

  On ships such as the Batavia where the barbers did survive, the quality of care could occasionally be good. Seventeenth-century surgeons had one inestimable advantage over the physicians and the apothecaries who were their nominal superiors: they were practical men, and learned their trade from experience.*22 Freed from reliance on the false principles of the physicians, surgeons were generally effective in setting broken bones and treating the normal run of shipboard injuries. Some were undeniably conscientious men, who did all they could for the sailors in their care, and a few had passed special “Sea Exams” that qualified them to deal with the full range of shipboard injuries—“fractures, dislocations, shot-wounds, concussions, burns, gangrenes, etc.”

  Jan Loxe, a sea surgeon who sailed later in the seventeenth century, left notes that indicate the unpleasant nature and likely extent of Jansz’s work. “First thing in the morning,” he wrote in his journal,

  “we must prepare the medicines that have to be taken internally and give each patient his dose. Next, we must scarify, clean and dress the filthy, stinking wounds, and bandage them and the ulcerations. Then we must bandage the stiff and benumbed limbs of the scorbutic patients. At midday we must fetch and dish out the food for sometimes 40, 50, or even 60 people, and the same again in the evening; and what is more, we are kept up half the night as well in attending to patients who suffer a relapse, and so forth.”

  Stamina, then, was one requirement for a surgeon. Another was great strength—enough to hold down a conscious, screaming man while amputating a shattered limb without the benefit of anesthetic. But Jansz, and sea surgeons like him, were also required to have a working knowledge of Cornelisz’s art, and it was to the apothecary’s chest, packed by the Gentlemen XVII’s own pharmacist in Amsterdam, that Frans Jansz would have turned in order to treat Pelsaert.

  A typical sea surgeon’s apothecary’s chest opened to reveal three drawers, each minutely subdivided into small rectangular compartments and packed with the products of the contemporary pharmacy: approximately 200 different preparations in all. In treating Pelsaert, Jansz may well have turned to theriac, which was often administered to patients suffering from malaria two hours before a paroxysm was anticipated in order to strengthen them for the coming ordeal. Mithridatium—a 2,000-year-old antidote, originally from Persia, which was supposed to neutralize venom and cure almost any disease—was another well-known treatment. Elsewhere in the chest other drawers contained “Egyptian ointment,” a sterilizing balm made from alum, copper, and mercury; the sovereign remedy of mummy; and a variety of oils and syrups fortified with fruits and spices, as well as cinnamon water, camphor, aloes, myrrh, and extract of rhubarb.*23 As a contemporary English book, The Surgeon’s Mate, explained, the provision of so many medicines was hardly excessive, “for although there may seeme many particulars, yet there wanteth at the least forty more.”

  For 20 long days, the surgeon dosed and purged the commandeur, trying a variety of treatments in an attempt to cure his illness. And as the Batavia surged onward through the boiling waters of the Roaring Forties at the bottom of the world, the upper-merchant’s fever slowly ebbed away. Whether his recovery was attributable to Jansz’s ministrations or, more likely, to a robust constitution, it is impossible to say. Whatever the reason, three weeks after he had taken to his bunk, and to the consternation of the mutineers, Francisco Pelsaert reappeared on deck.

  Ariaen Jacobsz had been enjoying himself in the upper-merchant’s absence. For almost a month he had been the undisputed master of the ship, and his self-confidence had increased proportionately. He had faced down those who sneered at his dalliance with the servant Zwaantie Hendricx, and publicly acknowledged the girl as his companion. Indeed, so enamored was he of her blowsy favors that he vowed (as Pelsaert later heard) “without taking any thought of his honour or the reputation of his office, that if anyone made even a sour face to the foresaid Zwaantie, he would not leave it unrevenged.”

  Jacobsz made a powerful protector, and it is not surprising Zwaantie “readily accepted the caresses of the skipper with great willingness and refused him nothing, whatsoever he desired.” Nevertheless, Ariaen remained either unable or unwilling to commit himself fully to her; south of the Cape, when their frequent couplings led Hendricx to suspect she had conceived, the skipper shied away and asked her to spend an evening with his friend Allert Janssen. He got the pair of them drunk and left Zwaantie alone with Janssen, “who has done his will with her, because [Jacobsz] thought that she was pregnant and that she should wed Allert.”

  The serving girl seems not to have minded this, and the skipper soon missed having her in his bed when it transpired the pregnancy was a false alarm. Within days they were together once again. But something must have changed in their relationship, for Ariaen now took to making dangerous promises to Zwaantie. Convinced Pelsaert was as good as dead, the records of the voyage relate, “he took from her the name and yoke of servant, and promised that she should see the destruction of her Mistress and others, and that he wanted to make her a great Lady.” Pelsaert’s recovery was thus a setback for the skipper and for Zwaantie. In consequence, Jacobsz resigned himself to action, sh
rugging: “I am still for the Devil; if I go to the Indies then I have come to shame in any case.”

  It was now 13 May, and so confident had Jeronimus been that the commandeur would die that for the best part of a month he and Ariaen had not bothered to seek out further mutineers among the crew. Pelsaert’s unexpected recovery forced a rapid reassessment of their plans. If they were to be successful now, Cornelisz and Jacobsz needed to more than double the number of men they could rely on when the moment came to mutiny. Apparently, the two malcontents had already approached their own most trusted acquaintances, and those of Jan Evertsz and Jacop Pietersz, too. To sound out others, in whom they had less confidence, would be to take a considerable risk. A better way of proceeding, they now decided, would be to rouse the whole crew against the commandeur.

  They selected as their instrument the unattainable Lucretia Jans. She was, they knew, as desired by Pelsaert as she had been by the skipper. By arranging for her to be attacked by masked members of the crew, they expected to provoke the upper-merchant into punitive retaliation; and by concealing the identity of her assailants, they hoped that any measures that were taken would be manifestly unfair to the majority of the men on board. Thus, they thought, a larger number of the crew could be persuaded to support their mutiny.

  “The skipper and Jeronimus,” Pelsaert later recorded in his journal,

  “in the presence and with the knowledge of Zwaantie, decided after long debates and discourses, what dishonour they could do the foresaid Lady, which would be most shameful to her and would be supposed the worst by the commandeur. In order therefore that confusion might be sought through her and through the punishment of those who took a hand in it, Jeronimus proposed that she should be given a cut over both cheeks with a knife, which could be done by one person, and few would perceive that they had been the instigators of it. The skipper was of another mind, that it would be better that many should have a hand in it, then the commandeur could not punish the many, or there would be a big outcry, and if the commandeur should let it go unnoticed, then there was time enough to give her cuts on the cheeks.”

  This strange plot, which is unique in all the annals of the sea, was hurriedly conceived within a day of Pelsaert’s emergence from his cabin. It must have owed a good deal to Jacobsz’s desire to revenge himself upon the woman who had spurned him off the coast of Africa. The skipper’s hand, and Zwaantie’s too, can certainly be discerned in the selection of Jan Evertsz as the man to assault Creesje, and also in the bizarre and humiliating way in which the high boatswain carried out his task.

  The plotters decided to seize Lucretia as she left the merchant’s table to return to her own cabin on the evening of 14 May. It would be pitch-dark by then, and many of the crew would already be asleep. Swiftly, Evertsz set about recruiting men willing to take part in the assault. Some, and perhaps all, of the group that he approached were established mutineers. There were eight of them in all, including Allert Janssen and Ryckert Woutersz, all lounging on the Batavia’s foredeck in the early afternoon. The most senior was the quartermaster, Harman Nannings. The youngest was Cornelis Janssen, the 18-year-old Haarlem sailor known to all as “Bean”; though still little more than a boy, his “innate and incankered corruptness” made it natural for Evertsz to think of him. All but one of the others were gunners, and thus probably friends of Woutersz and Allert Janssen. “Men,” Evertsz told them, “there is an assault on our hands. Will you help to give the prince a pleasant outing?”*24

  There was a good deal of enthusiasm for the “trick” that was to be played on Creesje. Only one member of the group, an Alkmaar man named Cornelis Dircxsz, declined to have anything to do with the idea, and he did nothing to prevent the attack. Plainly, Evertsz felt sure that none of his sailors would dare betray him. His confidence was not misplaced.

  With the high boatswain at their head they were eight strong, and much more than a match for one young woman taken by surprise. It was already late when Creesje left the Great Cabin after dinner. She stood silhouetted for a moment against the lanterns that swayed back and forth over the table, and they could see that it was her as the door swung shut. There was a momentary rustle in the darkness; she gasped and started, then she was being forced onto the deck. Hostile eyes glinted from behind cloaks drawn tightly over faces. As she sprawled on her back, uncomprehending, helpless, they seized her by the legs and dragged her across the deck into an unfrequented corner of the gallery. She felt her skirts lifted, and rough hands groping underneath. Other fingers spread a sticky, stinking mess across her face. There were no cuts; she did not scream; the assault lasted only seconds and then she was alone and huddled, shaking, against the rail. Her dress was filthy, and her face and legs and genitals had been thickly smeared with tar and dung.

  Word of the attack on Creesje Jans spread rapidly throughout the ship. It was by far the most sensational event that had occurred since their stranding on the Walcheren Banks and must have been the principal topic of conversation on board for many days. The commandeur himself, as Jacobszoon and Corneliszoon had anticipated, took the news “very violently and to the highest degree.” Pelsaert was no policeman, but he investigated the assault as thoroughly as he was able, and Evertsz was soon back at work, spreading rumors:

  “This had been the true aim which they thought to have brought off: to let it be spread by the High Boatswain that the people would be punished or brought to grief for the sake of Women or Whores, which the skipper would never permit to happen, so long as he lived.”

  Yet to the chagrin of the conspirators, Pelsaert actually took no action that might render him disagreeable to the crew.

  The upper-merchant’s restraint can only have one explanation. It was quickly evident that while Creesje herself had no idea who the majority of her assailants might have been, she had recognized Jan Evertsz, and unsupported though her testimony was, Pelsaert could have had the high boatswain arrested and punished on this evidence alone. He failed to do so, partly because he was still ill, but also because he had at last begun to glimpse the nature of the forces ranged against him. The merchant “especially suspected,” the Batavia’s journal observed, “from many Circumstances of which he had become aware during his illness, that the skipper had been the Author of it.” If so, he no doubt also recognized the risk he himself might run by ordering the arrest of both Evertsz and Ariaen Jacobsz—two of his highest-ranking sailors.

  The skipper remained sanguine, unaware that he himself was now suspected. He was certain that the commandeur was merely biding his time. Once the Batavia neared Java—and the support of the Dutch authorities there—Pelsaert would surely act, arresting suspects and clapping them in chains. This development could still be the signal for a mutiny.

  By now, the plot was fairly well developed. Led by Jacobsz, a small group of dependable men would rise up in the small hours of the morning, when the great majority of those on board were asleep. They would batter their way into the commandeur’s cabin, seize Pelsaert and toss him into the sea, while the main body of mutineers broke out their concealed weapons and nailed down the hatches to the orlop deck to prevent the soldiers intervening. Once it became clear that the rebels had control of the Batavia, fear and greed would make it a simple matter to recruit the 120 or so sailors and gunners needed to run the ship. In the absence of any spare boats, or a convenient island on which to maroon them, the rest of those on board—200 or so loyal officers, useless passengers, and unwanted men—would have to follow the commandeur over the side.

  The remainder of the plot was equally straightforward. With a powerful new ship at their disposal, the mutineers would turn to piracy. Putting in to Mauritius or Madagascar for supplies, they would prey on the rich commerce of the Indian Ocean for a year or two, until they had accumulated sufficient loot to make every man on board wealthy. When that had been achieved, they would settle down to enjoy their money well out of the reach of the VOC.

  So the skipper and the under-merchant sat back and waited for
Pelsaert’s reprisals. The commandeur would act, Ariaen predicted, when Batavia sighted the Australian coast.

  For the men of the retourschip, the great red continent was little more than a void on the charts they carried. “Terra Australis Incognita,” they called it: “the unknown South-Land.” Even in 1629, its very existence was based more on supposition than on fact. Early geographers, such as the Greco-Egyptian Ptolemy, writing in a.d. 140, had imagined a world divided into four gigantic continents. Europe, and what was known of Africa and Asia, was believed to occupy the northeast portion of the globe. This massive land mass seemed to require a counterbalance. From the earliest days, therefore, world maps showed a giant continent south of the equator, girdling the Earth and in many cases joining South America and Africa to China.

  As the Portuguese and Spaniards pressed southward in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it gradually became apparent that the South-Land could not be as big as had been supposed. Ships rounded the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn without sighting it and sailed northwest across the Pacific and east through the Indian Ocean without finding any trace of the mysterious continent. By the time the VOC was founded, almost the only place left to look was the great blank that still lay south of the Indies and west of the Americas.

  Contemporary globes and maps continued to indicate the presence of Terra Australis in this area. Over the years, elements of fantasy had crept into descriptions of the South-Land, and in the sixteenth century faulty interpretation of the works of Marco Polo led to the addition of three nonexistent provinces to maps of the southern continent. The most important of the three was Beach, which appeared on many charts with the alluring label provincia aurifera, “gold-bearing land”; sailors often referred to the whole South-Land by this name. The other imaginary provinces were Maletur (scatens aromatibus, a region overflowing with spices) and Lucach, which was said as late as 1601 to have received an embassy from Java. The existence of these provinces was an article of faith for most Europeans; in 1545 the Spaniards had actually appointed a governor of the nonexistent Beach—a certain Pedro Sancho de la Hoz, who was one of the conquistadors of Chile. Even the more pragmatic Dutch did not entirely disbelieve, for their ships had occasionally stumbled unexpectedly across a coast that they believed must be part of Terra Australis.