Batavia's Graveyard (53 page)

Batavia
The name is taken from that of the ancient, and semimythical,
tribe of Batavians, who had occupied the Netherlands 1500 years earlier and—in legend
at least—were supposed to have fought exceptionally bravely against the
Romans.

“. . . 30 guns . . .”
Bert Westera, “Geschut voor de
Batavia,” in Robert Parthesius (ed.), Batavia
Cahier 2: De Herbouw van een
Oostindiïvaarder
(Lelystad: np, 1990), pp. 22–5.

“. . . the most complex machines yet built . . .”
Pablo
Pérez-Mallaína’s observation, made of sixteenth-century Spanish merchantmen,
applies equally to the Dutch East Indiamen of the next century. “A multi-decked ship
. . . formed a floating collection of the incredible successes achieved by human ingenuity
to that time. [Such ships were] veritable showcases of the technological developments of
western Europe. They were the most complex machines of the epoch.”
Spain’s
Men of the Sea: Daily Life on the Indies Fleets in the Sixteenth Century
(Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), p. 63.

Fluyt and jacht
Jaap Bruijn and Femme S. Gaastra, “The Dutch East
India Company’s Shipping, 1602–1795, in a Comparative Perspective,” in
Bruijn and Gaastra (eds.),
Ships, Sailors and Spices: East India Companies and Their
Shipping in the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries
(Amsterdam: NEHA, 1993), p. 185; Davies,
op. cit., p. 49.

“. . . in as little as six months . . .”
Eight to 12 months was
perhaps closer to the average, but still a remarkable achievement.

“. . . the VOC flogged its ships . . .”
Bruijn et al.,
Dutch-Asiatic
Shipping,
I, 27–8, 95.

“virtually no demand for European goods . . .”
The only
significant exports at this time were lead and mercury.

The prefabricated gateway
This gateway, salvaged and restored, can be
viewed in the Western Australian Maritime Museum in Fremantle. See Marit van Huystee,
The
Lost Gateway of Jakarta
(Fremantle: Western Australian Maritime Museum, 1994) and the
epilogue for additional details.

Coinage on board
Especially the fabled
stukken van achten.
These
“pieces of eight,” which came from Spanish mines in South America, could be
counted on to contain silver of a fixed purity and value, but with the renewal of the war
against Spain in the early 1620s, supplies of this superior coinage dried up, and the VOC
was forced to export less well regarded Dutch and German coinage instead. The enduring
clamor for silver posed particular problems for the Gentlemen XVII in the 1620s. The
occasional spectacular naval victory might secure substantial quantities of freshly minted
reals for Jan Company; indeed, in 1628 Admiral Piet Hein captured the entire annual
Spanish treasure fleet off the coast of Cuba. But the
Batavia
sailed before this
fortune made its way into circulation, and carried a heterogeneous collection of coins
from the principalities of northern Germany (a region that, thanks to the notorious
economic madness known as the
kipper- und wipperzeit
[ca. 1600–1623], had
acquired an unenviable reputation for producing clipped coins and debased coinage).
Glamann, op. cit., pp. 41–51; Phillip Playford,
Carpet of Silver: The Wreck of the
Zuytdorp
(Nedlands, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 1996), pp. 10,
43–5. For the
kipper- und wipperzeit,
see Charles Kindleberger, “The
Economic Crisis of 1619 to 1623,”
Journal of Economic History
51 (1991). Jan
Company’s success in opening up the Indies trade eventually caused significant
problems for the Dutch economy. So much silver was shipped out to the East that the
States-General was forced to pass a law forbidding more than two-thirds of the bullion
coming into the country to be reexported. Stan Wilson,
Doits to Ducatoons: The Coins of
the Dutch East India Company Ship
Batavia,
Lost on the Western Australian Coast
1629
(Perth: Western Australian Museum, 1989), pp. 3–11.

The need for diplomacy
Kolff and van Santen, op. cit., p. 11.

Pelsaert’s return from India
Ibid., pp. 29, 37–41; confession of
Jeronimus Cornelisz, JFP 19 Sep 1629 [DB 163–4]; Henrietta Drake-Brockman,
Voyage
to Disaster
(Nedlands, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 1995), pp.
32–3.

Wollebrand Gheleijnsen de Jongh
De Jongh (1594–1674) was head of the
VOC settlement at Burhanpur and much less experienced in India than Pelsaert. He came
originally from Alkmaar and served the VOC from 1613 to 1648. In the nineteenth century he
became famous in the Netherlands as a character in a popular historical novel, but he has
since been forgotten. Kolff and van Santen, op. cit., pp. 28–9.

Jacobsz and the Dordrecht
Drake-Brockman, op. cit., p. 61.

Chronicle and remonstrantie
Ibid., pp. 21–32; Kolff and van Santen,
op. cit., pp. 1–2, 44.

Pelsaert in the United Provinces
The plate showed scenes that would be
familiar to the Muslim emperors—one example, recovered from the wreck site and now on
display in the Western Australian Maritime Museum, is a one-foot silver jar portraying an
Islamic purification ceremony. Cf. V. D. Roeper (ed.),
De Schipbreuk van de
Batavia,
1629
(Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 1994), pp. 10, 13.

“. . . designed to the upper-merchant’s own specifications . .
.”
Drake-Brockman, op. cit., p. 36.

“. . . traveling via the East Indies . . .”
The prevailing winds
in the Indian Ocean meant that, in normal circumstances, it was actually faster to sail to
India via Java than it was to go directly there, battling adverse winds and currents on
the voyage from the Cape of Good Hope to Surat.

Jacques Specx
He was born in Dordrecht in 1589, the son of an immigrant
from the Southern Netherlands, and sailed for the Indies as an under-merchant in December
1607. Specx traveled to Japan and opened up a new trade there, becoming the first head of
the Dutch factory on the island of Hirado (1610–13 and 1614–21). Recalled to the
Netherlands in 1627 to brief the Gentlemen XVII in person on Japan, he was appointed to
command the main autumn fleet sailing to the Indies in the autumn of 1628. W. P. Coolhaas,
“Aanvullingen en Verbeteringen op Van Rhede van der Kloot’s
De
Gouveneurs-Generalen Commissarissen-Generaal van Nederlandsch-Indiï (1610–1888),
”
De Nederlandsche Leeuw
73 (1956): 341; F. W. Stapel,
De Gouveneurs-Generaal van
Nederlandsch-Indiï in Beeld en Woord
(The Hague: Van Stockum, 1941), p. 19.

Chapter 3: The Tavern of the Ocean

No detailed accounts survive of the first leg of the
Batavia
’s
journey east. The ship’s journal and letters home, left under a “post office
stone” at the Cape of Good Hope, seem to have been lost and certainly never reached
the Netherlands; and Pelsaert’s own papers were thrown overboard by rioting sailors
in the Abrolhos. Because of this, some of the details in my account have been drawn from
general Dutch experience, and a description of a typical passage in the late 1620s
constructed from sources such as Jaap Bruijn et al.,
Dutch-Asiatic Shipping in the 17th
and 18th Centuries
(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 3 vols., 1979–1987) and
Bruijn’s “Between Batavia and the Cape: Shipping Patterns of the Dutch East
India Company,”
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies
11 (1980).

Dordrecht
The proper name of the ship was the
Maeght van Dort
(which means
Virgin of Dordrecht
), but she seems usually to have been known simply
by the diminutive.

“Autumn was the busiest time of year . . .”
Three main fleets
sailed to Java every year—one in April, another in September, and the last at
Christmas. The Christmas fleet had always been the largest. Its crews were expected to
endure the miseries of the Dutch winter, but by the time they neared the equator there
were generally fresh winds to carry them across the doldrums, and the fleet arrived in the
East in good time to be unloaded and repaired before the return voyage began in November.
Ships that left at Easter enjoyed better weather in European waters, but less favorable
conditions once they reached the Atlantic. The third, September, sailing occurred while
the Dutch were enjoying their great autumn festivals, and the ships that departed at this
time of year were known as the
kermis,
or fair, fleet. The
kermis
fleet was
a recent innovation, and in 1628 only two ships a year were sent east this early in the
autumn. From this it will be seen that the fleet commanded by Jacques Specx and Francisco
Pelsaert fell outside the normal run of VOC operations. Bruijn et al.,
Dutch-Asiatic
Shipping,
I, 62–3; Bruijn, “Between Batavia and the Cape” p.
252.

Initial impressions of the ship
R. van Gelder,
Het Oost-Indisch
Avontuur: Duitsers in Dienst van de VOC, 1600–1800
(Nijmegen: SUN, 1997), p. 149.
In his account of the Georgian Royal Navy, N. A. M. Rodger recounts a British boy’s
first impressions of being “registered in a wooden world” a little more than a
century later, which were quite similar. Life on board was quite different to life ashore
in almost every aspect; sailors had their own society, manners and dress, the boy
observed. “Nor could I think what world I was in, whether among spirits of devils.
All seemed strange, different language and strange expressions of tongue, that I thought
myself always asleep or in a dream, and never properly awake.”
The Wooden World
(London: Fontana, 1988), p. 37.

The Great Cabin
It measured approximately 20 feet by 15 and enjoyed good
head room, though—like every cabin in the stern—its steeply sloping floor made
it treacherous in any sea.

Creesje Jansdochter
For her use of the diminutive, see GAA, baptismal
registers 40, fol. 157 (30 January 1622), which records the birth of her first
son.

The life and times of Gijsbert Bastiaensz
For his marriage, see GAD,
marital registers 17 (1604–1618) for 10 February 1604. On the burial of his child,
see GAD, burial registers 1692 for September 1613. Neither the name nor the sex of the
child are specified in the register, but the only candidates for the burial are Pieter
Gijsbertsz (baptized March 1610) and Hester (baptized July 1612), for whom see GAD
baptismal registers 3 (1605–1619). Since a passing reference in JFP (sentence on
Jeronimus Cornelisz, 28 Sep 1629) mentions another child, Willemijntgie, as the
“middle daughter” of the family, it would appear that only three girls were
alive at that time, and that Hester must therefore have been the child buried in 1613. For
the horse-mill, see GAD, TR 747 fol. 95. The mill was acquired from Neeltgen Willemsdr,
widow of the miller Cornelis Gillisz, on 7 May 1604. For the land Gijsbert acquired for
grazing horses, see ONAD 23, fols. 252–252v, which records that the
predikant
had rented five
morgen
(a
morgen
is two and a quarter acres) from Walvaren
van Arckel in the nearby village of Dubbeldam. Bastiaensz also owned some additional
property through his wife in the Steechoversloot, the Dordrecht street where he and his
family lived; see GAD TR 766, fol. 99v. For the
predikant
’s service as one of
the 10 elders on the church council in Dordrecht, see GAD NKD 3, fol. 38v; NKD 3, fol.
115; ibid., fol. 158v; ibid., fol. 248; NKD 4, fol. 48. Records suggestive of Gijsbert
Bastiaensz’s status in the community are relatively abundant. His name appears 15
times in the indexes to the solicitors’ records of Dordrecht; for his services in
witnessing notarial acts, see, e.g., ONAD 3, fol. 21v; for his work as a member of a 1616
arbitration committee, see ONAD 53, fol. 63; and for his duties as an executor of the will
of Willem Jansz Slenaer, in September 1618, see ONAD 54, fol. 23v.

“His scant surviving writings . . .”
The
predikant
’s
only known written legacy is the letter he penned in December 1629 describing his
experiences on the
Batavia,
published in the second (1649) edition of the pamphlet
Ongeluckige
Voyagie, Van ’t Schip Batavia.
This document is hereafter referred to as
LGB.

“Gijsbert Bastiaensz was later to confess . . .”
LGB.

Dordrecht noted for its orthodoxy
Israel,
The Dutch Republic,
p.
382.

Maria Schepens
For the history of the Schepens family, see GAD,
Familie-archief 85, a notebook relating to the ancestors of Matthijs Balen. This book,
which lacks pagination, contains a section on the genealogy of the Schepenses. From this
it appears that Maria was the last of 12 children born as a result of her father’s
two marriages, the first betrothal being to Elisabeth van Relegem of Brussels, in 1555,
and the second to one Judith Willemsdr in about 1570–2. Pieter Schepens came from
Beringe in the province of Liège and was thus probably a member of the diaspora that
resulted from the persecution of the non-Catholic population of the Southern Netherlands
by the Spaniards. His daughter Maria’s birth date is not known, but it was probably
around 1580–1. Her eldest half-brother, Gerard Schepens (1556–1609), was also a
Calvinist minister, though he did not join the Reformed Church until he was 16 years old.
Gijsbert Bastiaensz stood as godfather to Gerard’s daughter Catharina in November
1609. Gerard’s son Samuel followed his father into the Reformed Church. It is also
interesting to note that one of Maria’s many cousins was Emanuel Sweerts, a leading
exporter of tulip bulbs who lived in Amsterdam.

The difficulties of recruitment
In fact, no more than 900
predikanten
served in the East in the whole 200-year history of the VOC. C. R. Boxer,
The Dutch
Seaborne Empire 1600–1800
(London: Hutchinson, 1965), pp. 114–7.