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

by Mike Dash

  Pelsaert’s original intention had been to search for water on the nearest stretch of coastline and bring back enough, in barrels, to supply the rest of the survivors for several weeks at least. This, in turn, would make it possible to send a boat north to fetch help. The chief problem with the plan was that the coast of Terra Australis was so poorly mapped that neither the skipper nor the commandeur had any real idea where to search; the VOC’s earlier encounters with the South-Land indicated that a river reached the coast about 360 miles north of their position, but locating supplies any closer than that would require luck as much as judgment, and there was no telling how long it would take to get them back to the Abrolhos.

  Lurking at the back of Ariaen Jacobsz’s mind was the thought that if no fresh water could be found they would have to sail the longboat straight to Java, where the Dutch trading settlement of Batavia was the one place they could be sure of finding help. The Indies were nearly 2,000 miles away, however, and even if such a lengthy voyage was possible, it would be at least two months before any survivors in the archipelago could be rescued; by that time it seemed likely that many of them, if not all, would have died of thirst. No doubt others in the skipper’s entourage had reached the same conclusion, for all 48 of the people who had been part of Jacobsz’s party insisted on sailing with him. They took with them all the remaining food and water. In consequence, the longboat, which was designed for no more than 40, was dangerously overloaded.

  The only people in the boat who really mattered were the sailors. All the senior officers of the Batavia—the skipper, the three steersmen, and the high boatswain, Evertsz—were on board, and they alone had the experience and skills required to keep a small vessel afloat on the open ocean and navigate to and from the Abrolhos. Of the other 43 passengers and crew, the great majority were surely able seamen; in addition, Jacobsz’s cousin, the bos’n’s mate, and Harman Nannings, the Batavia’s quartermaster, were probably on board. Only six of those who sailed from the Abrolhos—three men, two women, and a child—had no apparent knowledge of the sea. Zwaantie Hendricx was one; Ariaen had kept her close to him ever since the wreck and had no intention of leaving her behind now. Zwaantie was accompanied by a young mother (she is not named in Pelsaert’s journals) and her two-month-old baby, who had been born somewhere in the Southern Ocean. Also on board were Hans Jacobsz, a joiner; Claes Jansz, the Batavia’s chief trumpeter; and Francisco Pelsaert himself.

  They sighted the South-Land on the afternoon of 8 June, their first day at sea. The coast was bleak and utterly forbidding: flat; featureless; devoid of water, trees, or vegetation; and protected by an unbroken line of cliffs that stretched as far as could be seen in either direction. Huge breakers crashed endlessly against the rocks, churning the sea white with foam and making any approach to land extremely hazardous. By now night was only a few hours away, and Jacobsz did not dare remain inshore; instead, he steered back out to sea for several hours, turning east again at midnight and coming back upon the coast a few miles to the north at dawn. The sun rose to reveal an identically awe-inspiring cliffscape, and they sailed north along it for a whole day without finding anywhere to land.

  Pelsaert and Jacobsz had, in fact, chanced upon the South-Land coast at its most desolate. From Houtman’s Abrolhos the shoreline remains almost unremittingly hostile all the way to what is now Shark Bay, 200 miles to the north. Along the way, the cliffs rise precipitately to heights of up to 750 feet. There are almost no safe landing places, and the hinterland is parched and almost uninhabited.

  A few decades later, another Dutchman, Willem de Vlamingh, sailed along this stretch of coast and described it as “an evil place”:

  “The land here appears very bleak, and so abrupt as if the coast had been chopped off with an axe, which makes it almost impossible to land. The waves break with so great a fury that one should say that everything around must shake and become dismembered, which appears to us a truly terrible sight.”

  Pelsaert was of the same opinion. The cliffs, he noted gloomily, were “very steeply hewn, without any foreshore or inlets as have other countries.” Worse, the land behind them was uniformly unpromising: “a dry, cursed earth without foliage or grass.” There was no sign of any water.

  To make matters worse, another storm blew up toward evening on 9 June, and the longboat was caught dangerously close to the coast. Jacobsz and Pelsaert had been searching for a landing place when the wind rose in the west, and they were driven steadily toward the cliffs. For a while it seemed they would all be tipped into the surf to drown, but eventually the skipper got them clear. Even then, however, it took continued effort from the steersmen to keep the boat clear of the shore, and they passed a miserable night and the whole of the next day battling the rising seas.

  By the second evening, Jacobsz and his sailors were exhausted, soaked, and chilled, and still the gale showed no sign of abating. The wind started to gust out of the northwest, setting up a dangerous chop that slapped against the built-up sides and sometimes swilled into the longboat. The little yawl they had towed from the Abrolhos was taking on water too, and as it grew dark they were forced to cut the smaller boat adrift and bail their own craft frantically. They were so tightly packed there was little room for such energetic work, and before long the situation had become so desperate that Jacobsz ordered them to tip much of their food and spare equipment overboard. Two small barrels of fresh water in the bottom of the boat were spared.

  With most of the supplies gone, the boat rode a little higher in the water and there was more room to bail. Gradually the danger of swamping receded, and on the morning of 11 June the storm blew itself out. But the swell remained as high as ever, and the current pushed them ever farther north.

  For three more days they searched fruitlessly for a landing spot until, after a week at sea, they had reached latitude 24 degrees south. The longboat was now about 300 miles from the Abrolhos and one-sixth of the way to Java, and their own supply of water had nearly gone. Only strict rationing—half a pint per person per day—had made it last so long, but now they had enough for no more than another day or so. There could no longer be any question of turning back. They would die themselves if they could not find water farther up the coast.

  At length, on the afternoon of 14 June, Pelsaert managed to get a party of men ashore at a place where he had spotted smoke rising from the mainland, but there was nothing to be found. Next day they tried again, this time on the North-West Cape, where they found a way inside the reefs and into calmer water. Here at last there were beaches and dunes. It was the first time Jacobsz had been able to land the boat, and with many more hands available to search for water, the commandeur split his party into two. One group was set to digging in the dunes while the other went to hunt among the rocks inland.

  The dunes yielded only brine, but the men who had ventured inland had better luck. They chanced upon the remains of an Aboriginal fire, with discarded crab shells scattered all about, and close by found dozens of tiny pools among the rocks. It was rainwater, which had fallen during the storm a few days earlier; had they reached the spot a few days earlier or later it would not have been there. As it was, they gathered up enough to quench their thirst and still fill the nearly empty barrels with another 80 kannen of liquid (about 17 1/2 gallons), enough for at least another six days at sea.

  There was nothing further to be found, and on 16 June they made their way back to the open sea. Pelsaert had intended to run into “the river of Jacop Remmessens,”*34 in the most northerly part of Eendrachtsland, which a Dutch ship had chanced upon in 1622; it lay on the far side of the Cape, still another hundred miles away, but the wind was now blowing from the east and forcing them away from the coast. It soon became apparent that they could not stay close to land, and as they were now more than 360 miles from the Abrolhos, with only enough water for themselves, Pelsaert and Jacobsz at last made the decision to head for Batavia. It was a serious step; there was every chance it could be interpreted as a deliberate act o
f desertion, and to protect himself the commandeur required all those on board to sign an oath signifying their agreement with his resolution. When that was done, Jacobsz swung the tiller. The longboat came about, and the skipper pointed her bow north into the Timor Sea.

  There were few precedents for what the people from the Batavia were about to attempt: a voyage of about 900 miles across the open ocean in an overloaded boat, with few supplies and only the barest minimum of water. Jacobsz and Pelsaert had some advantages: good winds, fair weather, and a boat adapted to the open sea. But, even so, the Batavia’s longboat took on water continually, and none of those on board dared move too much for fear of overturning the boat. There was no shelter from the heat of the day. Before long, one of the sailors in the boat confessed, “we expected nothing else but death.”

  The men who sailed in the longboat recorded few details of the privations they endured. Even Pelsaert, who kept up his journal throughout the voyage, confined himself to brief daily notes about the weather, the boat’s estimated position, and the distance run. But 160 years later, Captain William Bligh undertook a similar—though considerably longer—voyage after being cast adrift by the Bounty mutineers. He sailed 4,600 miles west across the Pacific with 18 men and their supplies crammed into a 10-man launch, leaving a detailed account that gives some clues as to what Jacobsz, Pelsaert, and their men must have gone through to survive.

  Bligh was in command of an experienced crew of able seamen and did not have women or children to worry about. He also sailed across a part of the Pacific rich in islands, and only rarely for days on end across an empty sea. Nevertheless, his men suffered badly from overcrowding, as the people from the Batavia must also have done. They found it necessary to swap places in the boat every few hours and devised a system whereby men took turns on the tiller while others gingerly exchanged seats. Bligh also established a definite routine. The men in the Bounty’s boat were divided into three watches, as they would have been on board ship, to ensure there were always people alert to the danger of being swamped by an unexpected wave. Some of those who were off duty bailed; the others rested or slept. At noon they shot the sun and calculated their position. It seems likely Ariaen Jacobsz would have done the same.

  A good captain—and William Bligh, for all his faults, was a fine one in this respect at least—also understands that men facing the likelihood of death need hope as much as they need water. Studies of shipwreck survivors have shown that men who do have hope outlive those who may be physically as strong or stronger but give way to despair. A stubborn determination to make land, perhaps see a wife or family again, has helped many sailors to survive long periods in open boats. Religion is another comfort; even the most agnostic man tends to turn to prayer in the middle of the ocean. Nevertheless, it is leadership—provided by a man who displays competence, remains confident, and tries to keep up the spirits of his men—that most often means the difference between life and death for sailors cast adrift. There were two such potential leaders in the Batavia’s longboat, the skipper and the commandeur; but from what we know of the two men—Pelsaert no sailor and still ill, Jacobsz not only an excellent seaman but loud and assertive—it seems certain that it was the skipper who performed this vital function in the longboat.

  Thus Ariaen found some measure of redemption on the Timor Sea. Whether he still planned to mutiny is difficult to say. Jacobsz had no idea he was suspected of plotting against the Company, and without Jeronimus at his side the resolution he had displayed in the Southern Ocean may well have drained away. Cornelisz, as we have seen, retained some faith in him and hoped the skipper would murder Pelsaert during the voyage north, tip his body over the side, and then sail to Malacca for assistance. But though the Portuguese might indeed have supplied a rescue ship, when they heard about the VOC money chests waiting in the Abrolhos, it seems unlikely that Jacobsz could have disposed of the commandeur even if he had wanted to. There were, perhaps, half a dozen mutineers in the longboat; but they must have been heavily outnumbered by the loyalists. The three steersmen, for example, had never been part of Jacobsz’s conspiracy and were unlikely to stand by while Pelsaert was murdered and the boat diverted to the Malay coast. Besides, it would have been impossible, in the crowded longboat, to kill the merchant without being detected, and a struggle might have tipped the boat, and its passengers, into the sea. Frightened, thirsty sailors seldom make good material for mutiny, and as they neared the Indies the chances are that Jacobsz and Jan Evertsz spent more time husbanding their remaining stores than scheming against the commandeur.

  The voyage from the North-West Cape had taken them 11 days—long enough for the remaining stocks of food and water to run dangerously low. Most of the bread had been tipped overboard during the storm, and what was left must have been severely rationed; the people in the boat would have endured severe hunger pangs at first, and then the dull feeling of emptiness that marks the onset of starvation. Rain fell on three occasions while they were at sea, marginally reducing their dependence on the water casks, but they were forced to cut the water ration even so. Thirst tormented everyone on board, but the knowledge that the boat was making rapid progress—they were sailing up to 90 miles a day—must have helped to sustain morale during the voyage.

  The Javan coast was sighted on the afternoon of 27 June. They had completed the crossing only just in time; when the longboat made its landfall, only one kannen of water (less than two pints) remained of the 70 they had scooped up from the rock pools of the North-West Cape. Some caution was still required—the island’s southern littoral was not under Dutch control, and the local people might be hostile—but next morning they replenished their barrels from a waterfall and sailed and rowed on toward Sunda Strait, where the trade routes and the monsoon winds converged and Dutch ships congregated on their way to and from Batavia. Remarkably, all 48 of those who had left the Abrolhos in the longboat had survived the journey; even the babe in arms was still alive. Light winds delayed them, but they reached the southwest tip of Java on 3 July and found, to their intense delight, four VOC ships waiting in the Strait; one of them was the Sardam, the little jacht that had sailed with them all the way from Texel to the Cape. Four days later they were in Batavia.

  The VOC’s headquarters in the Indies had been a town of little moment until Cornelis de Houtman arrived there one day in November 1596. It was then a community of perhaps 2,000 or 3,000 people, situated at the mouth of the Tiliwung River and protected by nothing more than a bamboo wall. The Javanese inhabitants, who called their town Jacatra, were subjects of the Sultan of Bantam, 50 miles to the west. They made their living from fishing, agriculture, and trade, and their town also boasted a small Chinese community, which controlled the arak-brewing business and a good deal of the general commerce besides. De Houtman purchased some supplies, and thereafter Dutch ships began to call regularly at the port, which was marginally healthier and a good deal cheaper than Bantam itself.

  Gradually Dutch influence grew. In 1610 the local ruler, or pangeran, gave the VOC some land in the Chinese quarter and permission to construct a stone warehouse and a walled compound on it; within a few years, this building became one of Jan Company’s largest factories, or warehouses, in the Far East. Relations between the Gentlemen XVII and the pangeran were generally excellent, so, in 1618, the Company built a new hospital and a little ship repair yard just outside the town. It was also decided to move most of the business traditionally transacted at Bantam along the coast to Jacatra.

  At this point, to the great displeasure of the VOC, the English East India Company began to build its own warehouse outside the walls. If the Jacatran ruler’s intention was to play the rival Europeans off against one another, he succeeded all too well. The Dutch attacked the English factory and burned it to the ground; the English retaliated by assembling such a substantial fleet outside the town that the whole Dutch community was forced to flee east to the Moluccas. That was far from the end of the matter, however; a few months later the VOC count
erattacked in force, unleashing 2,000 troops against Jacatra, burning it down, and leveling the few buildings left standing in the ruins. The pangeran, who had sided with the English, was overthrown, and the old settlement was rebuilt as the fortress of Batavia.

  The new town, founded on 30 May 1619, was protected by a modern castle on the coast, nine times bigger than its predecessor and built of white coral slabs. The castle had four bastions, known as Diamond, Ruby, Sapphire, and Pearl, prompting the local Javanese to nickname the settlement kota-inten, “Diamond City.” The name stuck, not least because the trade that soon began to pour through the gates made it one of the wealthiest places in the Indies.

  Old Jacatra disappeared; new Batavia looked Dutch. The houses were built of brick, much of it imported all the way from the Netherlands in the bilges of retourschepen sailing out in ballast, and they were tall and thin and roofed with tiles, just as they were in Amsterdam. The streets were lined with trees and ran in dead-straight lines, and there were churches, schools, and even canals built in the European style. The whole town, indeed, made few concessions to the tropics; most of the Dutch who lived there smoked and drank to excess, as they did at home*35; there was a tremendous preoccupation with rank and social status; and despite the humidity and heat, soldiers and merchants alike still dressed in the heavy black wool clothes that were the fashion in the Netherlands. The native Javanese were not allowed within the gates.

  For all this, even newcomers such as Zwaantie Hendricx could never really think of Batavia as a European town. In many respects, indeed, it was thoroughly oriental. There was an extensive Chinese quarter and a whole street packed with gambling dens, which was closed to Europeans after dark. One in four of the citizens were Chinese, and, of the remainder, two-thirds were Asian slaves. The European population amounted to about 1,200 soldiers and a few hundred merchants, clerks, and artisans; there were very few Dutch women at all, and almost all the men took local mistresses or wives. The wildlife, too, was alien. Rainforest crept up almost to the gates; there were monkeys and rhinoceroses in the jungle, and tigers sometimes stalked and killed slaves in the sugar fields outside the walls. To make matters worse, Bantamese bandits often prowled in the vicinity, attacking and robbing those unwise enough to venture any distance from the town. Batavia thus existed in a sort of splendid isolation. Newcomers arrived by sea, stayed sometimes for years without seeing anything of the country they were in, and departed the same way they had come.