The Wreck of the Batavia (Part 2)

In my last article we had left the hapless survivors of the wreck of the Batavia, marooned on the desolate Abrolhos islands off the Western Australian Coast. The commander, Pelsaart had set sail in the ship's longboats to raise the alarm and bring help. The survivors have been left under the control of the undermerchant Jeromiums Cornelisz, a man with an agenda of his own...

The killings begin

Cornelisz's first act was to take control of all weapons and what food and water had been salvaged from the wreck. He then sent a large group of soldiers under Wiebbe Hayes to look for water on West Wallaby Island. If Hayes found water he was to light a fire. However Cornelisz did not believe there would be water found - he had sent the soldiers to their death.

Mass grave of Batavia victims

As he hatched his plan to secure any rescue ship, retrieve the gold and silver from the Batavia and begin a life of piracy, he divided the survivors among the surrounding islands and with the assistance of a willing group of junior officers and even cabin boys, he began a reign of systematic butcher.


The killing was ruthless and carefully planned.  He targeted the weakest members of the survivors or those he believed would prevent some sort of opposition to his plans. The strongest survivors were killed at night and their bodies buried. Some were lured onto rafts, told they were being taken to other islands where the water supply was good, and then shoved overboard in the channels between the islands and left to drown. Others were executed, usually by having their throats cut. In one case the entire Predikant family were killed in their tent by mutineers wielding adzes. In another incident a boy, Cornelisz Aldersz, was beheaded just to demonstrate how sharp a sword blade was. A small group of women were kept alive and enslaved for the "common service" of the mutineers. Lucretia Jans was coerced into becoming Cornelisz's concubine.


Over on West Wallaby Island, Hayes had found food and water and wondered why his smoke signals went unanswered until a trickle of survivors began to find their way across to him with tales of the butchery being carried out by Cornelisz. Realising he and his men were now in grave danger of an attack from the mutineers, Hayes set about building a fort.

Hayes Fort on West Wallaby Island

As he had predicted Cornelisz attacked but using makeshift weapons from flotsam retrieved from the wreck, Hayes and his men beat the attackers off. Cornelisz was taken hostage. The mutineers retreated and under the command of Wouter Loos, tried again and very nearly succeeded. During the battle on September 17 the rescue ship was sighted.


It was now a race to get to the rescue party and tell the tale. Hayes prevailed and after a short battle, the mutineers were rounded up. Pelsaart did not wait to return to Batavia to dispense justice. Cornelisz and the worst of the mutineers had their hands chopped off and were hanged on Seal Island. Loos and several others were offloaded on to mainland Australia and never heard of again - making them possibly the first European settlers on the Australian mainland (there were tales of sightings of unusually light skinned natives in the years to come). The others were dealt with in Batavia.


Of the 282 survivors of the wreck of the Batavia only 68 landed in Batavia.


The Batavia was not the only Dutch ship wrecked off the Western Australian coast. At least 3 other ships were lost in a hundred year period off that unforgiving coastline but none, fortunately, suffered the fate of the Batavia and its survivors. I can recall the excitement in the 1970s when the wreck of the Batavia was found and it can now be seen, in a remarkable state of preservation in the museum in Fremantle in Perth.

The Batavia in the museum in Fremantle

There have been many books written on the subject. "Islands of the Angry Ghosts" by Hugh Edwards  is an account not only of the shipwreck but of the subsequent discovery of the Batavia. The standard work is Henrietta Drake-Brockman's 1963 book Voyage to Disaster.  A more recent account (released in March this year) is the book Batavia by Peter Fitzsimmons

The Wreck of the Batavia (Part 1)

You may think the "land downunder" may not have much to offer in the way of seventeenth century history but contrary to popular belief, Australia was not "discovered" by Captain Cook in 1770 but was well known to cartographers, explorers and merchants long before then, as well, of course, by its own indigneous inhabitants!

Over the next few blogs, I thought I would turn away from Europe and my beloved English Civil War and bring you a few posts on the comparitively unknown 17th century history of the "far east" and the "antipodes".   So to wet your appetite I will start with the bloodcurdling tale of the Wreck of the Batavia.

By the early seventeenth century the Dutch has realised the fabulous potential of the "Spice Islands" could only be properly realised through a monopoly on the growing spice trade between Europe and the islands of what is now Indonesia. In 1602 a council of seventeen men formed the VOC (the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or Dutch East India Company). They wasted no time in sending out their first settlement fleet and within a short time had secured a virtual monopoly on the world's supply of nutmeg, cloves, mace and cinnamon. The Dutch control over the Indonesian Archipelago continued unbroken until the middle of the twentieth century.

The tug of war between the Portugese (who had established a foothold in the region during the sixteenth century), the English and the Dutch for control of  the spice trade is a fabulous tale and it is well told in Nathaniel's Nutmeg by Giles Milton. I hope to make it the subject of a more detailed blog later on this year.

By the 1620s the Dutch were well established in Java with its centre of power being Batavia (now Jakarta) and in 1628 the newly commissioned ship Batavia, set sail from Holland in a convoy of 7 ships under the command of Francisco Pelsaart. The skipper of the Batavia was a man called Ariaen Jacobsz, a man with whom Pelsaart had a history.  On board was a troop of soldiers and an assortment of potential settlers for the new colony including the "undermerchant" for the voyage, Jeronimus Cornelisz (a bankrupt pharmacist from Harlem) and a beautiful, high ranking young woman Lucretia Jans, on her way to Batavia to join her husband. A total of 322 people.

Reconstruction of the Batavia

The voyage was plagued by bad weather and the ill feeling between Pelsaart and Cornelisz was worsened by a rivalry over the lovely Lucretia. By the time the convoy reached Cape Town Jacobsz and Cornelisz were hatching a plan to mutiny, seize the Batavia and establish a new life somewhere other than under Dutch rule.

Jacobsz first act was to deliberately steer the Batavia off course, away from the rest of the fleet, but before the mutiny could take place, on 4 June 1629 the ship struck a reef near Beacon Island in the Abrolhos archipelago off the Western Australian coast (then known as "the unknown land"), a string of desolate unihabited islands with no water and only seals and sea birds for food.  Forty of the crew and passengers drowned in the wreck. Given the fate of the survivors, they were probably the fortunate ones!

The Abrolhos Islands, Western Australia

Realising the  parlous situation they had found themselves in, Pelsaart, Jacobsz, the senior officers and some of the passengers set sail in the ship's longboats to reach Batavia (one of the most singular feats of navigation in history). They left the survivors under the control of the next most senior officer, Jeronimus Cornelisz.

Cornelisz had little reason to welcome the return of a rescue party as Pelsaart was aware of his role in the planned mutiny and he feared punishment on return to Batavia. He also had plans to start a new kingdom with himself as ruler, using the gold and silver on the Batavia. However to achieve his ends he first had to eliminate any potential opposition ....

Little were the survivors to know they had been left in the charge of a  psychotic killer with an extraordinary ability to bend people to his will (a seventeenth century Charles Manson).

(to be continued....)