Death sentences pronounced by Commander Pelsaert on various members of the crew of the Batavia, 1629.

 

 

The Batavia (1629)

In 1628 the Directors of the VOC fitted out a fleet of no fewer than 11 ships, which was set to leave for the East in the autumn under the overall command of Jacques Specx, a member of the Council of the Indies. The first three ships to be ready set sail ahead of the others on 28 October 1628, with Francisco Pelsaert in command. He was on board the Batavia, with a crew of nearly 300 souls.

 

In the early morning of 4 June 1629, the Batavia ran onto ‘the perilous Abrolhos reefs’, also known to the Dutch as ‘Frederick Houtman’s rocks’. Since it was a clear, still, moonlit night, the master was blamed for the wreck. Pelsaert immediately took charge, ordering the cannon to be jettisoned and the ship’s boats to be launched. In the end, however, they could not free the ship even after chopping down the mainmast. As it seemed ever more likely that the Batavia would break up, Pelsaert had the crew conveyed to two small islands. 180 men landed on the larger island, and 40 on the smaller.

 

Pelsaert, the master and several sailors set off in a boat to fetch help. After sailing along the north-west coast of Australia, they reached Batavia safely on 5 July. Their story prompted governor-general Jan Pieterszoon Coen and the Council of the Indies to fit out the fast yacht Saerdam for a rescue operation, again with Pelsaert in command. He finally anchored off the Abrolhos in September.

 

But tragedy had meanwhile befallen the castaways. While the Batavia was still at sea, various mutineers, including the junior VOC representative Jeronimus Cornelisz., had plotted to kill all but 120 of those on board and throw them overboard. The mutineers then intended to head for Madagascar and take to piracy.

 

After a few weeks on the islands, Cornelisz. and his supporters hatched a new scheme. On the pretext that there was not enough food for so many people, they began to kill everyone not involved in their plot. Many were beaten to death, others stabbed with knives or pikes, and some were even tied hand and foot and thrown into the sea. In all, 125 people, including women and children, were killed. From then on, the larger island was known as ‘Batavia’s Graveyard’.

 

On the smaller island, Wiebbe Hayes, a tough Groningen man, and several soldiers succeeded in repulsing the mutineers’ first attack. When they tried again, Hayes even managed to capture Cornelisz. The mutineers’ leader had fallen prey to delusions of grandeur – he now wore a red coat trimmed with gold braid and insisted on being addressed as Governor.

 

When the Saerdam anchored on 17 September and Pelsaert heard the sad story from Hayes, he sentenced seven men to be hanged on Batavia’s Graveyard. The others were taken to Batavia where they were tried. Their punishments ranged from hanging and being broken on the wheel to flogging and branding.

 

The tragic story of the Batavia caused a sensation in the Netherlands. In 1648, it was published as a book with gruesome illustrations, which was widely read.

 

After the Second World War, lobster fishermen set up home for the season on the Abrolhos. In 1960, on tiny Beacon Island, one of them found a skeleton and a bronze object inscribed ‘Conrad Drosche 1628’. Assuming that this could only have come from the Batavia, journalist Hugh Edwards dived near Beacon Island but found nothing significant, although it later became clear that he had in fact dived just above the wreck. Back in Perth, a fisherman told Edwards of a big anchor near Morning Reef. Three years later Edwards dived again at that spot, and this time he found bronze cannon bearing the mark of the Amsterdam Chamber of the VOC. A professional expedition was then mounted and finally brought the wreck of the Batavia and its cargo to the surface.