The Batavia Mutiny or the Batavia Graveyard Massacre
Replica of the VOC Batavia
On 29 October, Batavia set off for Batavia (Jakarta) for the new flagship of the VOC Vereenigde Oost-indische Compagnie, the Dutch East India Company. It was to supply coins (260,000 gulden) and silverware worth about 30 million euros today, 30 cannons, two antiques by the artist Rubens and sandstone blocks already worked for a portico. According to official figures there were 316 (some sources said 341) people on board, including officers, traders, soldiers and passengers. The command was given by the experienced merchant Francisco Plesaert, the captain was Ariaen Jacobsz who led the Batavia in a convoy of seven ships.
But already in the North Sea the convoy was torn apart and so only three ships came together again, the Batavia the Assendelft and the Buren. On the way to the Cape of Good Hope there were more incidents on board. Pelsaert and Jacobsz clashed, which was due to Jacobsz drinking. This led to the Captain teaming up with a certain Jeronimus Cornelisz. Cornelisz was the third most important man on board and was a bankrupt pharmacist from Haarlem. At some point both forged a plan to get the Batavia into their hands and tried to instigate a mutiny. They did so by attacking the highest ranking passenger, 27-year-old Lucretia van den Mijlen / or Jans, who was on her way to her husband. She was chosen because she had her own cabin and only travelled with her mags, but also because she had rejected Jacobsz’s advances. She was attacked in the middle of the night by masked men “hanging the Lady van den Mijlen overboard on her feet and indecently abusing her body”. Later she claimed to have recognized the voice of Jan Evertsz, a man dedicated to the captain. Jakobsz and Cornelisz hoped to win several supporters for the mutiny by a disproportionate representation of these measures. But because the lady recognized her attackers, the mutineers had to wait until Pelsaert would arrest the culprits, which didn’t happen because he had been ill for a long time.
On 4 June 1629, during a clear full moon night, the Batavia ran from the lookout to the Morning Reef at the Houtman Abrolhos (Lat. 28º 29.422S, Long. 113º 47.603E), off the coast of Western Australia, despite warnings.
FOURTH JUNE, Monday morning, on the 2nd Whitsunday, with a clear full moon (2) about 2 hours before daybreak, during the watch of the skipper (Ariaen Jacobsz), I lay in my bunk and suddenly, with a rough, terrible movement, felt the ship’s rudder kicking, and immediately afterwards I felt the ship being held in course against the rocks, so that I fell out of my bunk. Then I ran up and discovered that all the sails were in top, the wind southwest, that the course at night had been northeast and north, and that was right in the middle of a thick spray. There was only a small surf around the ship, but shortly after that you could hear the sea breaking hard around you. I said, “Skipper, what have you done by your ruthless negligence to put this noose around our necks?” (from Pelsaerts journal)
The Batavia runs onto the reef
A desperate attempt was made to save the Batavia by pushing the cannons off the board but nothing helped and so Pelsaert decided to evacuate the ship. During the evacuation, 70 men remained on board including Cornelisz who planned to repair the ship and then kidnap it to India to sell it and its cargo. The survivors landed on Beacon Island. Commander Pelsaert, Captain Jakobsz and about 40 men set up camp on Traitor Island. They had saved some ship’s supplies, barrels of biscuits and some water. But there was no fresh water springing on these coral islands. That’s why Pelsaert decided to look for help and sail to Batavia with all those who were with him. It took them a total of 33 days to get there. But this help was misunderstood by the survivors on Beacon Island and so the island where the commander was became the island of traitors.
On arrival at Batavia, the Batavia boatswain was executed on charges brought by Commander Pelsaert for outrageous conduct before the loss of the ship. Skipper Jacobsz was arrested for negligence, again on Pelsaert’s word. Seven days later Pelsaert was sent back to save the survivors, but it took him 63 days to get back.
The so-called mutiny or massacre of Cornelisz is based on the reports of the survivors and the report of the commander himself. Therefore, please do not take the whole thing for granted immediately, and consider it with caution.
During this time the survivors renamed the island the Batavia’s Graveyard, because they recognized that they would die without water and food on this stretch of land. The Batavia sank and with it Cornelisz and all the men left behind. But he and the other survivors used the bowsprit for rescue and came to the cemetery. There he immediately scraped all able men around him, turning the sails of the Batavia into a tent for himself and confiscating all firearms, knives and swords. He orders his subjects to build driftwood rafts. During this time he makes the plan that if a ship should come to the rescue he would use it as a pirate ship.
Cornelisz rescue and the beginning of the massacre
But everyone who could become dangerous to him had to be killed, so he sent the soldiers under the command of Wiebbe Hijes to the High Island to let them search for water and food there. Of course he doesn’t keep his promise to pick them up again and believes that the men there are dying. He also sends large groups of castaways to Verraderseiland and Robbeneiland. There is no drop of water on any of the islands. At the Batavia cemetery only the faithful of Cornelisz remain, the sick and weak are added and the women he and the others hold as sex slaves. The most attractive, Lucretia van den Mijlen , was reserved for him. Probably from principle since she had indirectly prevented the first attempt at mutiny.
The killing begins at night, first the strongest are removed, then the sick, women and children.
Parts of the Mass graves on Batavia Graveyard
Cornelisz men lurk near the tents, and as soon as someone comes out to pee, they cut his throat and bury his body. They also ask people to fish with them and then drown them in the sea. And some are tied up and then forced to go into the water themselves. From the 9th of July this also happens during the day, smaller groups who are put to die on the other islands unfortunately survive and are then slaughtered. At the Graveyard similar things happen, and the dead are thrown into mass graves. While Cornelisz plays with life and death, something else happened on the High Island. Because the soldiers under the command of Wiebbe Haijes had survived. They had searched on this island after they found no water and found on the neighbouring island Cats Island (now known as West Wallibi Island) which. But after some people who had escaped the massacres on the other islands had reached their island and told of Cornelisz’s reign of terror, Haijes began preparations to ward off a possible assault by the murderers. Everyone on Cornelisz’s side tried to pull the soldiers to his side, who were warned by a smoke signal that he had agreed with Haijes to find this water, that these men were still alive, failed. He himself went to them, travelled to Cats Island to use his powers of persuasion to lure the men into a deadly trap.
The rescue and the end of the mutiny
Here he met the end of his cruel reign. He and 5 of his men were overwhelmed and bound. Cornelisz was kept alive, but his companions were duly executed. On 17 September Pelsaert reached the stranded with the Sardam.
On the 17th. do. in the morning, at dawn, our anchor lifted again, the wind north; were then about 2 miles from the high island, ran towards it for. (45) - Before noon, as we approached the island, we saw smoke on a long island 2 miles west of the wreck, also on another small island near the wreck, which we were all very happy to find alive in the hope of finding a large number, or rather all people. - So I sailed by boat to the highest island that was closest and took a barrel of water, ditto bread and a barrel of wine; when I arrived there, I saw no one to wonder about. I jumped ashore and at the same time we saw a very small yoke with four men rowing around the northern point; one of them, called Wiebbe Hayes, jumped ashore and ran towards me and shouted from afar: “Welcome, but go back on board immediately, because there is a group of villains on the islands in front of the wreck, with two sloops intending to confiscate the yacht”. (from Pelsaerts journal)
After a brief confrontation with the remaining mutineers who gave up immediately after facing a supremacy, the interrogations took place and after everything was cleared up, the verdict was pronounced on September 28. The condemned were to have their right hand cut off and, in the case of Cornelisz, both hands, before being killed on the gallows.
Cornelisz is hanged on the island; the other followers in Java are condemned and partly tortured to death
JERONIMUS CORNELISZ, from Haarlem, pharmacy, and late under the merchant of the ship Batavia, on Monday the first of October, when he asked for the baptism, to Seals Island, to a place prepared for them to exercise justice, and there first, to cut off both his hands, and then he will be punished on the gallows with the cable until death follows, with the confiscation of all his money, gold, silver, monthly wages and all the claims he may have here in India against the General’s profits. East India Company, our Lord Masters. ( from Pelsaert’s Journal)
In the end, after all was over and all mutineers had been executed, out of 316 (341) people on board the Batavia only 116 survived. The actual number is complicated because of the number on board the ship when it left Holland, some people left on the voyage or died, in addition one person was picked up in Sierra Leone and an unknown number of children was born on the voyage or died on the island. On 5 December 1629 the Sardam returned to Batavia with the other survivors and recovered a load of coins and jewels. The smaller perpetrators, who had been whipped, keel-pulled and dropped from the court arm as punishment on their way home, were executed. Wiebbe Hijes and some of his men were rewarded with a promotion for their resistance to the mutineers. Hijes became sergeant and the other non-commissioned officers, of course, received a higher salary.
Parts of the wreck, some cannons and the stone portikus
Ongeluckige voyagie, van’t schip Batavia, nae de Oost-Indien … Amsterdam 1647 (Pelsaert Journal)
To what extent these narrated events actually coincide with the talking is questionable. The whole thing is based on witness statements and the report of Pelsaert, who in turn could only give witness statements and the statements from the interrogations, since he himself was not present. It is known that there were mass graves, also that many of them had been killed by force, but there were also graves with deceased that did not show any violence. That there was violence, but whether everything went as described, well that cannot be proven.