Batavia (57 page)

So dictated Pelsaert in summation of the
raad’s
deliberations, and so did Deschamps himself dutifully sign it, acknowledging it to be fair and true. And so do Deschamps, Decker and several other Mutineers indeed suffer their prescribed fates the following day, with all the ship’s company turning out to witness what happens to those who do not do their utmost to defend the Company’s interests.

In the case of Deschamps, curiously, once his punishment has been meted out he instantly retakes his spot – even if not sitting down – at Pelsaert’s right shoulder, a respected if now rather battered and bleeding member of the
raad
, as the
Sardam
makes ready to leave these infernal isles.

15 November 1629, Batavia’s Graveyard

As they sail away in the morning, first to the east and then to the north, Pelsaert takes a long look back at the scene they are leaving behind.

Right on the far horizon to the south, he can see the stark silhouette of the gallows rising from the white streak of Seals’ Island, where seven of the monsters who wrought this catastrophe are still twisting in the wind. God knows, they deserved this fate, but still – this morning as every morning – Pelsaert is sickened. He turns away, determined not to look again at these wretched islands where his career has likely ended, and comes face to face with Lucretia.

She, too, has been gazing at the islands that are just starting to blessedly recede and slowly sink back into the waves whence they came. It is all such a dreadful contrast with that terrible night, only five months before, when those same islands reared up so suddenly out of the sea to change their lives forever. She stares back at the infernal strip of coral, barely blinking, with not a murmur, entirely lost in her thoughts.

Pelsaert’s tentative greeting, thus, dies on his lips, and after a courteous bow he moves quietly past her and makes his way back to his cabin.

The job now at last done, and the yacht in the hands of the very capable Claas Gerritsz, following the tragic disappearance of Skipper Jacob Jacobsz, Pelsaert feels an almost overwhelming wave of fatigue roll over him. He does not fight it, letting it take him down, down, down to the depths of his own dark night. The loss of Jacob Jacobsz and the others weighs ever more heavily upon his soul. Would that the dark night be dreamless, but alas, it is far from that.

16 November 1629, aboard the
Sardam
, off the coast of
het Zuidland

Just two days after they have left the Abrolhos, the yacht pulls in close to the coast of the continent and drops off a fully provisioned flat-bottomed yawl – with Wouter Loos and Jan Pelgrom in it.

This, then, is to be their fate. The two Mutineers are not to be put to death, per se, but given at least some sort of a chance to live among the natives on this strange continent. As well as their provisions of water and basic food, they are given trinkets of knives, beads, bells and small mirrors with which they might, hopefully, win over the natives and gain their confidence. Ideally, they will meet their chiefs, learn their ways and live among them, perhaps even prosper.

Pelsaert’s instruction to them is firstly to have courage.
‘Man’s luck,’ he sermonises, ‘is found in strange places
. If God guides you, you will not suffer damage from the natives. On the contrary, because they have never seen any white man, they will offer you friendship. You must look out for whatever gold or silver there is among the natives, and observe closely what it is that the natives themselves deem valuable.’

And if God should choose to shine his bountiful munificence upon them, it is even possible that one day they will be able to indicate their presence to a passing ship of the VOC, whereupon they will hopefully be picked up and be in a position to let the Company know, as Pelsaert puts it, ‘
for certain what happens in these lands
’.

With all of that in mind, Pelsaert carefully notes in his journal that their
exact
latitude – he insists the new skipper, Claas Gerritsz, check it three times over – is 27 degrees 51 minutes south. It is his intention, and he will follow through on it, to have these coordinates spread widely among captains of the VOC fleet so that in future years the Company’s ships can keep an eye out for the marooned Mutineers.

As a last thing, Pelsaert ensures that both men are given loaded muskets, with extra supplies of musket balls and gunpowder. Though it goes against the grain for Pelsaert to put weaponry into the hands of criminals, there seems no way around it. In good conscience, he cannot place them upon these wild shores entirely defenceless.

The last face Wouter Loos focuses on as he pulls on the oars – each stroke taking him further and further away from the last vestige of civilisation he will likely ever see – belongs to Wiebbe Hayes, looking sadly down at him from the poop deck and ruefully shaking his head. How has it come to this?

It is a question that Hayes would contemplate
for the rest of his days.

Once on the shore, Loos and Pelgrom scramble out and pull the boat up the beach, before they turn to see the
Sardam
’s anchor is being pulled back on board, as her crew haul on the mainsail. The yacht begins to slowly, oh so very . . . slowly . . . pull away, as her crew stare back at the two men who have just landed.

Jan Pelgrom, he who cried when he was denied the opportunity of severing a man’s head, begins to snivel and weep. With one mighty paw, Wouter Loos reaches out and slaps him. ‘
Genoeg!
Enough!’ Loos growls. ‘
Genoeg
of your damn whimpering!’

The ship’s company’s final vision is of the two Mutineers scaling the small bluff next to the inlet and disappearing over the top, as if this strange continent has simply swallowed them whole.

As to the other Mutineers on board, there are many Survivors and Defenders who are appalled that they have not been dropped off as well. They want justice to be served immediately. The
Sardam
now carries a mere 80 of the
Batavia
’s original complement of 331. Nine of these have so disgraced themselves before God that they are certainly criminals, and a further 19 await interrogation once returned to Batavia.

The punishment of Loos and Pelgrom now accomplished, the focus falls on the guilty nine. The
raad
is reconvened and it is decided that the guilty may immediately be dealt with aboard the
Sardam
. These include Daniel Cornelisz, who boasted that his sword had gone through the first man executed, Warner Dircxsz, as if he was butter; Cornelis Jansz, who threw Pelsaert’s medallion into the ocean as if it was ‘rubbish, even though it be worth so many thousand guilders!’
Jean Thiriou, who cracked the money chests open
and uproariously threw the coins at his comrades; and others besides.

While their charges range in severity, their sentences are surprisingly lenient. The
Commandeur
and council prefer ‘unanimously on account of several considerations to give grace
in place of rigour of the Justice
’. All are sentenced to one-to two-hundred strokes before the mast, sometimes together with some good old-fashioned mast droppage. This punishment involves tying the victim’s wrists behind his back, attaching them to a line itself attached to a yardarm, and then swinging him from the said yardarm so his shoulders dislocate. To top it all off is the confiscation of six months’ wages to the profit of the VOC and their Lord Masters.

Last weeks aboard the
Sardam

The days pass and the weather becomes warmer as they move further to the north and then lose sight of
het Zuidland’s
coast. They steer nor’ by nor’-west across the still unnamed ocean – though the ‘Sea of the East Indies’ is starting to gain in popularity – towards the Sunda Strait and thereafter Batavia.

For most of the rest of the voyage, Pelsaert remains in his cabin, dividing his time between sleeping, writing in his journal and completing the precious inventory of retrieved treasures he intends to submit as soon as they arrive. And, though in comparison with the last time he made this trip – in a hideously crammed and exposed open-topped boat – the journey is physically easy for him, still the worries he has are so many that they almost blur into one amorphous mass. One fear stands out: that it will happen again.

Whenever there is a strange sound in the night, anything remotely reminiscent of the dreadful screeching that immediately preceded the wrecking of the
Batavia
. . . it is all he can do to prevent himself crying out.

The weeks pass, and soon Pelsaert sees a familiar coast. Java is on their starboard quarter, meaning the Sunda Strait is dead ahead.

5 December 1629, Batavia

When they finally berth before the citadel of Batavia on this shining late afternoon, most of the ship’s crew are eager to head ashore. Pelsaert takes his time, his steps unsure.

The news on the shore, however, is very interesting. In their absence, Governor-General Coen has died. His end came just months before, and the grand funeral proceedings have only just been completed. Despite his gentle nature, Pelsaert – however much he feigns enormous sorrow – can’t help but feel a certain trill of happiness to be told of it. Though he knows little of the man who will replace Coen, there is no doubt that he will be a man less severe.

Pelsaert and Lucretia part on the docks. Pelsaert bows deeply, kisses her hand and tells her of both his sorrow at the ordeal she has been put through and his joy that – despite it all – she has finally arrived here. For her part,
she warmly thanks Pelsaert
for all he has done, assuring him that in no way does she blame him for what has occurred.

It is with a rather dazed aspect that the
Commandeur
now farewells Wiebbe Hayes, who has respectfully waited for Pelsaert to finish his fond farewell. And yet, despite the phenomenal difference in their ranks, it is likely Pelsaert who respects Hayes even more. At the beginning of their journey, as they left Texel over a year earlier, Pelsaert had been far and away the most powerful man on the entire fleet, let alone just their ship, while Hayes had been only a little less anonymous than one of the myriad rats scurrying around in the hold.

And yet so capricious have been the winds of fate, so unexpected the turn of events, so differently have the two men reacted to the challenges facing them, that it is now the all-conquering Hayes who steps ashore as the hero, while the shrunken Pelsaert is all too aware that his own future is uncertain and he will have to fight for his very survival in the VOC.

The two key surviving protagonists in this long saga stand there as testament to the fact that in times of extreme crisis, the measure of a man is unlikely to be governed by his position within a said hierarchy and more likely to be determined by his
actual
ability to lead, his character, his resilience, his moral compass when all others have lost their way, his capacity to react to the changing circumstances and find the best way forward for the common good.

Hayes has demonstrated all of these things far above his lowly rank; Pelsaert not nearly enough to justify his own exalted status.

And yet there is no resentment from Pelsaert towards the younger man. As his subsequent writings will demonstrate, the older man is acutely aware that if not for Hayes, things would have been inestimably worse.

On these docks, thus, where our story ends, he proffers his hand and manages to bestow his thanks one more time, before the two men take their leave of each other and walk off into history. It has been a long trip.

Epilogue

This then, in large outline
is the whole story, which would have taken too much time narrated with all circumstances, for one could have written a very Voluminous book on it. So that when this is not written in good order and clarity there are two good reasons; firstly, I had not the time, for the Ships are ready to sail for the Fatherland; secondly, we have just come out of such sorrow that the mind is still a little confused, for I had not in mind to write so much . . .

The
Predikant
, in a letter he wrote home to his family from Batavia, detailing much of what had happened in the Abrolhos

If there is an irony in the whole saga of the
Batavia
, it is that of all the myriad people involved, the one who came out of it smiling was Torrentius, whose ideas had infected Jeronimus in the first place and caused such devastating results.

Though initially sentenced to 22 years of prison, he had the colossal good fortune that one of his greatest admirers, the English King Charles I, heard of his plight and intervened with the Dutch authorities on the painter’s behalf. In a move that seemed to confirm there could not possibly be a just God, in the space of less than a fortnight Torrentius went from the lowest of all low dungeons in Amsterdam to living in luxury in nothing less than Windsor Castle, just outside of London, where he was installed as one of the official court painters to the English throne. Torrentius stayed there for 12 years, eventually returning to Amsterdam in 1642. He lived the rest of his days sleek, prosperous and happy, before dying on 17 February 1644, aged 55.

What of the rest of them?

On this, history is a lot less certain, except that most died shortly afterwards. This is because Dutch historians and storytellers focused again and again on what had happened on the islands but their focus was somewhere between blurred and blind when it came to the exact fate of the key surviving players after the event.

For his part, Pelsaert lived for less than a year after landing in Batavia, dying in September 1630, aged 35. He does not seem to have taken his seat on the East Indies Council at Batavia, for which he had been selected as extraordinary member in 1629, and it seems that even without Governor-General Coen, the Dutch authorities never forgave him for having ‘
lost the ship and left the people
’.