Batavia: A story of treachery and survival

A replica of the Dutch East India Company’s Batavia; Peter Van Broek’s 17th century drawing of the Dutch compound that was to become today’s Jakarta, including space for the renaissance portico that went down with the ship; the assembled portico in the Shipwreck gallery, the Maritime Museum, Fremantle, Western Australia Photo: Christina Pas

By John Loizou

Perth: March 6: The portico that stands in the Batavia gallery of the West Australian Maritime Museum, Fremantle, is an elegant symbol of the renaissance as well as the wealth and commercial ruthlessness of that pioneer of European colonialism, the Dutch East India Company, or Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, abridged to the VOC.

Is also a reminder of inexplicable barbarity.

Made from stone quarried in Bad Bentheim, Lower Saxony, it was intended as a gateway in the walls of Batavia, the Dutch trading compound that became modern Jakarta; it was raised from the Indian Ocean where it had lain for 343 years between 1972-1976.

A diver had found the wreck in 1963.

Together with thousands of bricks, it had helped pin the stern of the double-oaken hull of VOC vessel Batavia on the sea floor after it struck a reef of the Houtman Abrolhos archipelago – 122 just visible islands - about 80 kilometres west of Geraldton, Western Australia – on June 3, 1629.

The three-masted vessel, which was on her maiden voyage after having been built in about just six months to meet the demand for spices from the East Indies, struck the reef in the dark after her skipper, Ariaen Jacobsz, miss-judged the turn north to the Sunda Straits.

The about 15,000 sea-mile voyage to Java had taken about seven months.

VOC navigators wanting to establish longitude had to rely on experience and intuition because the marine chronometer was not available to seafarers until the British invented it in the 18th century.

By then, numerous VOC and other vessels had ended their pursuit of Indonesian riches on the inhospitable shore of Western Australia.

Most of the crew, soldiers and passengers aboard the vessel that set sail for the Indies soon after the vessel was launched from an Amsterdam the previous year survived when she struck near what became known as Batavia’s Graveyard now called Beacon Island.

But within two months most of the marooned survivors, at least 110 men, women, and children had been brutally slaughtered as murderous young men first eliminated those who might challenge the authority of their leader, Jeronimus Cornelisz, before killing to safeguard scarce food and water and finally for the thrill of it.

Writers such as Briton Mike Dash have shown that the failed apothecary, who was about 30, and has been described as “a remarkable” speaker began plotting seizure of the ship and its twelve chests of silver, silver ingots, coins pearls and other jewels during the voyage.

Instead of Java, he and his accomplices would sail the ship to a British or Portuguese settlement where they could be expected to be welcomed.

Or they could become pirates.

The wreck of the Batavia, which took nine days to break up, did not deter him from his plan.
In his book, The Wreck of the Batavia, Simon Leys argues that Jeronimus Cornelisz claimed to be a disciple of the 17th century Dutch painter Torrentius who “boasted that he painted with the personal help of The Devil."

The young man was also a devotee of Anabaptism which denied the existence of good and evil and was often violent.

No doubt the squalor aboard the Batavia where more than 300 people shared just four latrines; sailors had to sometime wash their clothes in urine to save fresh water and committee-approved cruel punishments were delivered miscreant sailors and a riff raff of mercenary soldiers also helped promote an indifference to savagery.

Jeronimus Cornelisz was hanged with six of his accomplices in the archipelago on October 2 1629 but not before his hands were first amputated.

The team that delivered justice from Batavia, about 3,000 kilometres away, also salvaged much of the treasure from the wreck.

It was not an auspicious introduction of European civilization to Terra Australis or the great southland.

Today, the archipelago hosts Western Australia’s strictly governed, seasonal and lucrative lobster industry.

It is also a nature reserve with tourists confined to limited visits.
The Southeast Asian Times