Batavia

About

Batavia (Dutch pronunciation: [baːˈtaːvijaː] ) was a ship of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). She was built in Amsterdam in 1628 as the flagship of one of the three annual fleets of company ships and sailed that year on her maiden voyage for Batavia, capital of the Dutch East Indies. On 4 June 1629, Batavia was wrecked on the Houtman Abrolhos, a chain of small islands off Western Australia. As the ship broke apart, approximately 300 of the Batavia's 341 passengers and crew made their way ashore, the rest drowning in their attempts. Her commander, Francisco Pelsaert, sailed nearly 3,000 kilometres (1,900 mi) over 33 days in an open longboat to Batavia, present day Jakarta, to get help, leaving in charge senior VOC official Jeronimus Cornelisz, unaware he had been plotting a mutiny prior to the wreck. Cornelisz tricked about twenty men under soldier Wiebbe Hayes into searching for fresh water on nearby islands, leaving them to die. With the help of other mutineers, he then orchestrated a massacre that, over the course of several weeks, resulted in the murder of approximately 125 of the remaining survivors, including women, children and infants; a small number of women were kept as...

In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Dutch were the major shipbuilders of northern Europe, innovating both designs (e.g. the Fluyt ) and technology (the windmill driven sawmill). They did, though, use the "bottom-based" construction sequence, which uses a shell-first system for the lower part of the hull. The planks are shaped and then laid edge to edge, having the appearance of carvel construction, but are put in position before the frame s are installed. The shape of the bottom of the hull is therefore derived from the shaping of the hull planks. The "bottom-based" construction sequence is the same as used on Medieval cogs and some argue that this is an older Romano-Celtic building tradition.

Ships belonging to the Dutch East India Company (VOC) were generally built in the company's own shipyards. The VOC issued charters which gave detailed specifications for these ships; these were updated from time to time. The charters gave a range of key hull dimensions and scheduled the sizes of the scantlings. However, the designs did not exist as plans or drawings that determined the shape of the hull. Unlike ships built for European trade, the VOC East Indiamen were planked with a double skin of oak structural planking. This was sheathed with a double layer of pine which incorporated tar and animal hair, together with closely spaced iron nails. The pine layer was intended to resist teredo worm.

The length to beam ratio of Batavia was 4.4:1. This made her narrower than preceding VOC ships. A 1619 VOC shipbuilding charter gives a length to beam ratio of 3.9:1. It is suggested that there was a trend for VOC to have increasingly narrower designs in the early part of the 17th century. All VOC ships had a relatively high length to beam ratio, covering a range of 3.7:1 to 4.5:1. This was at a time when a 3:1 ratio would not have been unusual.

Batavia, in common with other Dutch ships of the time, was built from oak imported from the forests bordering the Vistula. The Dutch trade in timber from the Baltic, particularly oak, dates back to the early 13th century. (By the early 17th century, Dutch merchants dominated the European timber trade.) Oak from the Vistula region ceased to be used after 1643. It is possible that Dutch shipbuilding had, by then, been a cause of deforestation of the area.

Batavia may have been one of two ships specified in the VOC shipbuilding charter of 29 March 1626 – normally it took 18 months to build one of these vessels, so a small delay would fit the dates. The name Batavia was chosen on 29 June 1628. The leaders of the VOC pushed for the ship to be ready for the next fleet (consisting of five other ships), which was due to leave in September or October 1628. Batavia would be the flagship of this fleet.

On 29 October 1628, the newly built Batavia, commissioned by the VOC, sailed from Texel in the Netherlands for the Dutch East Indies, to obtain spices. Their orders were to use the Brouwer Route, like all ships of the Dutch East India Company. This involved sailing to the south of a direct course to Jakarta, but without any way of measuring longitude, it was difficult to judge when to make the turn north. A late turn gave the risk of running aground on the coast of Australia.

She sailed under commander and senior merchant Francisco Pelsaert, with Ariaen Jacobsz serving as skipper. Pelsaert and Jacobsz had previously encountered each other in Dutch Suratte, when Pelsaert publicly dressed-down Jacobsz after he became drunk and insulted Pelsaert in front of other merchants. Animosity existed between the two men after this incident. Also on board was the junior merchant Jeronimus Cornelisz, a bankrupt apothecary from Haarlem who was fleeing the Netherlands, in fear of arrest because of his heretical beliefs associated with the painter Johannes van der Beeck.

According to Pelsaert's account, Jacobsz and Cornelisz conceived a plan to take the ship during the voyage, which would allow them to start a new life elsewhere, using the huge supply of trade gold and silver on board. After leaving the Cape of Good Hope, where they had stopped for supplies, Jacobsz is alleged by Pelsaert to have deliberately steered the ship off course, and away from the rest of the fleet. Jacobsz and Cornelisz had already gathered a small group of men around them and arranged an incident from which the mutiny was to ensue. This involved sexually assaulting a prominent young female passenger, Lucretia Jans, in order to provoke Pelsaert into disciplining the crew. They hoped to paint his discipline as unfair and recruit more members out of sympathy. However, Jans was unable to identify her attackers.

On 4 June 1629, Batavia struck Morning Reef near Beacon Island, part of the Houtman Abrolhos off the western coast of Australia. Of the 322 aboard, most of the passengers and crew managed to get ashore, although 40 people drowned. The survivors, including all the women and children, were then transferred to nearby islands in the ship's longboat and yawl.

An initial survey of the islands found no fresh water and only limited food ( sea lions and birds). Pelsaert realised the dire situation and decided to search for water on the mainland. A group consisting of Jacobsz, Pelsaert, senior officers, a few crew members, and some passengers left the wreck site in the longboat in search of drinking water. After an unsuccessful search for water on the mainland, they left the other survivors and headed north in a danger-fraught voyage to the city of Batavia, Dutch East Indies, the ship's namesake, to seek rescue. (Batavia was in the area of what is now Jakarta.) The longboat was slightly over nine-metre (30 ft) in length. The sides were raised for the journey with extra planks, but there was still a limited freeboard of about 0.61 metres (2 ft). The boat was equipped with 10 oars and one mast. It was dangerously overloaded, with a total of 48 people on board; all who were with Pelsaert, aware of the absence of water near the wreck, had insisted on staying with the boat. En route the crew made further forays onto the mainland in search of fresh water.

In his journal, Pelsaert stated that on 15 June 1629, they sailed through a channel between a reef and the coast, finding an opening around midday at a latitude guessed to be about 23 degrees south where they were able to land, and water was found. The group spent the night on land. Pelsaert commented on the vast number of termite mounds in the vicinity and the plague of flies that afflicted them. Pelsaert stated that they continued north with the intention of finding the "river of Jacob Remmessens", [ quote needs citation ] identified first in 1622, but owing to the wind were unable to land. Drake-Brockman has suggested that this location is to be identified with Yardie Creek.

It was not until the longboat reached the island of Nusa Kambangan in the Dutch East Indies that Pelsaert and the others found more water. The journey took 33 days, with everyone surviving. After their arrival in Batavia, the boatswain, Jan Evertsz, was arrested and executed for negligence and "outrageous behaviour" [ quote needs citation ] before the loss of the ship (he was suspected to have been involved). Jacobsz was also arrested for negligence, although his culpability in the potential mutiny was not guessed by Pelsaert.

Governor-General Jan Pieterszoon Coen immediately gave Pelsaert command of Sardam to rescue the other survivors, as well as to attempt to salvage riches from Batavia ' s wreck. Within a month, Pelsaert reached the general area where the shipwreck had occurred, but it took another month of searching to locate the islands again. He finally arrived at the site only to discover that a bloody massacre had taken place among the survivors, reducing their numbers by at least a hundred.

Cornelisz was one of the few men who stayed on Batavia to pillage and steal. He was one of the few who survived the final break-up of the ship and made it to Beacon Island after floating for two days. Though neither sailor nor soldier, Cornelisz was elected to be in charge of the survivors due to his senior rank in the Dutch East India Company. He made plans to hijack any rescue ship that might return and use the vessel to seek another safe haven. Cornelisz made far-fetched plans to start a new kingdom, using the gold and silver from the wreck. However, to carry out this plan, he first needed to eliminate possible opponents.

Cornelisz's first deliberate act was to have all weapons and food supplies commandeered and placed under his control. He then moved a group of soldiers, led by Wiebbe Hayes, to nearby West Wallabi Island (located roughly 8.7 kilometres or 5.4 miles to the northwest), under the pretense of having them search for water. They were told to send smoke signals when they found water and they would then be rescued. Convinced that they would be unsuccessful, he then left them there to die, taking complete control of the remaining survivors.

Cornelisz never committed any of the murders himself, although he tried and failed to poison a baby (who was eventually strangled ). Instead, he coerced others into doing it for him, usually under the pretense that the victim had committed a crime such as theft. Cornelisz and his henchmen had originally murdered to save themselves, but eventually they began to kill for pleasure or out of habit. Cornelisz planned to reduce the island's population to around 45 so that their supplies would last as long as possible. He also feared that many of the survivors remained loyal to the Dutch East India Company. In total, Cornelisz's followers murdered at least 110 men, women, and children. A small number of women were kept as sex slaves ; among them was Jans, who Cornelisz reserved for himself.

In 2025, Dutch academic and cultural psychologist Jaco Koehler argued that the "unlikely story about a mad heretic" which has been repeated for 400 years may be wrong. He proposed an alternative theory that rather than a dastardly plot, ordinary men were driven to terrible acts by starvation.

Although Cornelisz had left the soldiers, led by Hayes, to die, they had in fact found good sources of water and food on West Wallabi Island. Initially, they were unaware of the massacres taking place and sent pre-arranged smoke signals announcing their finds. However, they soon learned of the killings from survivors fleeing Beacon Island. In response, the soldiers devised makeshift weapons from materials washed up from the wreck. They also set a watch so that they were ready for Cornelisz's men, and built a small fort out of limestone and coral blocks.

Cornelisz seized on the news of water on the other island, as his own supply was dwindling and the continued survival of the soldiers threatened his own success. He was fearful that any rescue vessel would sight the soldiers first, therefore dispatched his men to eliminate this threat. But the trained soldiers were by now much better fed than Cornelisz' group and easily defeated them in several battles. Seeking to bring Hayes under his command he traveled to the island himself, whereby Hayes and his soldiers took Cornelisz hostage. The men who escaped regrouped under soldier Wouter Loos and tried again, this time employing muskets to besiege Hayes' fort and almost defeating the soldiers. However, Hayes' men prevailed again just as Sardam arrived. A race to the rescue ship ensued between Cornelisz' men and the soldiers. Hayes reached the ship first and was able to present his side of the story to Pelsaert. After a short battle, the combined force captured all of Cornelisz's group.