Getting inside a psychopath's brain... 11/29/2009
... is interesting. And challenging. Quite a number of psychopaths have made a name for themselves. Hitler, Napoleon, Stalin. And on a much smaller stage, Jeronimus Cornelisz, erstwhile under merchant on the merchantship Batavia. For a few short months in 1629 he strode his tiny island like a colossus, or a God, dealing out death and destruction on a whim. As an author, I had to try to get into his head and understand - or at least explain - his behaviour. So - to try to understand. To quote from a handout produce by Oregon Counseling; The psychopath is one of the most fascinating and distressing problems of human experience. For the most part, a psychopath never remains attached to anyone or anything. They live a "predatory" lifestyle. They feel little or no regret, and little or no remorse - except when they are caught. They need relationships, but see people as obstacles to overcome and be eliminated. If not, they see people in terms of how they can be used. They use people for stimulation, to build their self-esteem and they invariably value people in terms of their material value (money, property, etc..). A psychopath can have high verbal intelligence, but they typically lack "emotional intelligence". They can be expert in manipulating others by playing to their emotions. There is a shallow quality to the emotional aspect of their stories (i.e., how they felt, why they felt that way, or how others may have felt and why). The lack of emotional intelligence is the first good sign you may be dealing with a psychopath. A history of criminal behavior in which they do not seem to learn from their experience, but merely think about ways to not get caught is the second best sign. The following is a list of items based on the research of Robert Hare, Ph.D. which is derived from the "The Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, .1991, Toronto: Multi-Health Systems." These are the most highly researched and recognized characteristics of psychopathic personality and behavior.
Michael G. Conner, Psy.D Has this to say. A psychopath is usually a subtle manipulator. They do this by playing to the emotions of others. They typically have high verbal intelligence, but they lack what is commonly referred to as "emotional intelligence". There is always a shallow quality to the emotional aspect of their stories. In particular they have difficulty describing how they felt, why they felt that way, or how others may feel and why. In many cases you almost have to explain it to them. Close friends and parents will often end up explaining to the psychopath how they feel and how others feel who have been hurt by him or her. They can do this over and over with no significant change in the person's choices and behavior. They don't understand or appreciate the impact that their behavior has on others. They do appreciate what it means when they are caught breaking rules or the law even though they seem to end up in trouble again. They desperately avoid incarceration and loss of freedom but continue to act as if they can get away with breaking the rules. They don't learn from these consequences. They seem to react with feelings and regret when they are caught. But their regret is not so much for other people as it is for the consequences that their behavior has had on them, their freedom, their resources and their so called "friends." They can be very sad for their self. A psychopath is always in it for their self even when it seems like they are caring for and helping others. The definition of their "friends" are people who support the psychopath and protect them from the consequence of their own antisocial behavior. Shallow friendships, low emotional intelligence, using people, antisocial attitudes and failure to learn from the repeated consequences of their choices and actions help identify the psychopath. Armed with a description like this, it wasn't so hard to get into Cornelisz's head. In some ways it was more difficult to sort out Lucretia, who had to deal with this man at a very intimate level, always conscious that the slightest mistake may have cost her her life. It still stops me in my tracks to think that this one man was effectively responsible for the deaths of ninety-six people. Put that into perspective. There were about one hundred and eighty people on Batavia's Graveyard when Pelsaert and Jacobsz headed for Java. Cornelisz's crew killed a little over half of them. Yet Cornelisz never accepted responsibility, never showed any remorse, always kept coming back to the fact that he himself never killed anybody. But you know what? The most frightening thing of all was how easy it was for him to recruit people more than willing to carry out his orders. Ah, the frailty of the human psyche. Moving right along... 11/23/2009
I really have to get moving and write some more. It's hard to get motivated after the euphoria of imminent publication. But writers must write and so I'll get back to the second book of A Legacy of War. I've just noticed this announcement on MM Bennetts' Authonomy listing: "May 1812 is now available through www.diiarts.com or can be ordered from any good bookshop if they don't have it on the shelf." Just think. Soon you'll be able to do that for Die a Dry Death, too. Wow. I'm going to be published 11/15/2009
At last I can stop chewing my fingernails and tell the world my first book is to be printed on paper, with hard covers at front and back and sold to the General Public. It's awfully like having a baby, I suspect. It's a great relief to get it out there - but there's a lot of hard work still to come. Die a Dry Death will be published in London and it will be available on Amazon but we still need to organise sales outlets in Australia. That's the next challenge, I guess. Making it Real 11/12/2009
You'd think, writing from a journal as I am, that getting the facts straight is easy. That's what I thought, too. But it's harder than I would have believed. Why? Because the journal doesn't have everything, especially not motives. For example, we know Jeronimus Cornelisz sent one of his men to the Cats Island, where the soldiers were, to win over the French soldiers and cause dissension between them and some of the newly arrived sailors. The journal says the deception didn't work; that it was discovered. Mike Dash in his excellent book, "Batavia's Graveyard" notes the event took place. He even suggests Daniel Cornelissen was rowed to the island. But really, when you think about it, that doesn't make sense. He'd have to get there in secret, surely, contact the Frenchmen, give them Jeronimus's letter etc etc. So I, as an author of historical fiction, must come up with a plausible sequence of events. There are other examples of the same conundrum. For instance, why did Jeronimus wait for nearly a month after the failed attack of 5 August, to try again to win over or defeat the soldiers? Then again, Henrietta Drake-Brockman thought Jeronimus went along for the ride on most of these excursions to the soldiers - but Mike Dash is clearly not so sure. Certainly, the evidence can be interepreted in more than one way. Since I'm writing fiction, I have a certain level of licence. So I will write what I think would be the correct behaviour for a psychopath who was afraid of drowning. Is it true - or is it not? 11/10/2009
 I've already mentioned my take on Francisco Pelsaert's journal. A tale told by the victor. Most of it's true - the archaeology confirms it. And apart from his journal, we have the predikant's letter after the event to his family. That letter caused me some delay. Bastiaensz describes the encounters between Jeronimus and Wiebbe Hayes and then the final battle between Wouter Loos and the soldiers. Bastiaensz clearly states that Jeronimus took all his people (including the women) to the soldier's island and parked everyone on an islet nearby while he went with his senior people to talk to Wiebbe. That is not mentioned in Pelsaert's journal - but then, he was writing a record of a criminal trial. It's at times like that when a writer of fiction must go beyond historical fact. Why would Jeronimus have done that? One curses the Dutch legal system which did not find it necessary for Pelsaert to include testimony from people like the predikant, Lucretia or Wiebbe Hayes himself. I have a choice: do I accept the predikant's story and find a reason, or do I brush it under the carpet? In this case, I chose to accept that Jeronimus did take his people with him. Why, I thought, would Bastianesz have made this up? So then, why did Jeronimus do it? And here, I think, we get back to the mentality of the psychopath. Especially one who is afraid of drowning. By this stage, Jeronimus thought himself invincible. He would win, of course he would, so why go backwards and forwards? He'd just move in. We also know that four people were injured (one died) from musket wounds in that final battle when the soldier, Wouter Loos, was leader. There is an island about 400m offshore on a beach near where Wiebbe built his fort. I took that as the place where Jeronimus landed all his people. But I couldn't accept that the musket fire that seriously injured four men came from there. The muskets weren't that good over a distance and since the barrels were not rifled, they quickly lost accuracy. So I postulate that the men came in closer at low tide, standing on a mudbank. You're right; I can't prove it. But then, it makes more sense than trying use muskets at 400m. What about the research? 11/10/2009
People who comment on "Die a Dry Death" often remark on the authenticity of the settings I've described; the ship, the islands, the sea and, of course, the people. And then there's the events themselves. So where does all that detail come from? What are my sources? Well, the primary source for anything written about the Batavia is Pelsaert's Journal, written, we can surmise, on the way back to Batavia after the trials and executions. I have used the translation printed in "Voyage to Disaster". Henrietta Drake-Brockman, (UWA Press, 2006). It was first published in 1963, the same year the Batavia wreck site was finally found. That book also contains a translation of Predikant Bastiaensz's letter, and Coen's orders to Pelsaert. Drake-Brockman includes considerable research about the backgrounds of the people on the ship, to better understand the characters of the individuals. Mike Dash, in his book "Batavia's Graveyard" (Phoenix, 2002) used Drake-Brockman's work extensively, as well as delving into the archaeological discoveries that had been made since 1963. Analysis of wound marks on skeletons, for instance, corroborated some of the descriptions of murders. He also was able to uncover more detail in the Dutch archives. He found some written accounts, produced much later presumably by survivors and he has added some of that narrative into his book. In particular, though, his work was invaluable to me because he described in some detail things like living conditions on the ship. He also made some educated assumptions about how life might have been organised on the islands, based on records from other Dutch wrecks like the Zeewyck. Philippe Godard's coffee table book, "The first and last voyage of the Batavia" (Abrolhos Publishing, 1993) provided me with photographs and illustrations of the Abrolhos islands, the Australian coast the longboat sailed along and other information about the VOC, Batavia the city and Batavia the ship. I fossicked in the Dutch National Museum's website for pictures of old Batavia and the fort. I studied paintings from the Dutch Golden Age (Rembrandt, Vermeer, Cuyp, Hals, Ter Borch etc) for clothing and accoutrements for both the ordinary folk and the high and mighty. The web was a useful source for sailor's clothing, how a musket was fired, what sorts of swords would have been used, what a VOC fort looked like. I discovered that Coen's fort in old Batavia was long gone but enough similar places still exist - along with artwork - to visualise its forbidding bulk. I watched movies about sailing boats to get the feel and the sounds of life on board and, of course, I talked to people. And I've been there. I've been on the Batavia in Holland. I've stood in front of the exhibits in the WA Maritime Museum in Fremantle - ordinary items used by folk in their day-to-day lives, not just cannon and ship's timbers. I've been to Port Gregory and Wittecarra Gully, the two places postulated as the locations where Loos and Pelgrom were marooned. I've looked out to sea from the massive cliffs the passengers in the longboat saw and I know how desolate and barren is that desert plain beyond those cliffs. When people say they feel that my words 'take them there' I know it was all worthwhile. Why did I write 'Die a Dry Death'? 11/06/2009
 This book is twenty five years in the making. Really. It's kind of an immigrant's tale. You see, I was born in Amsterdam and migrated with my family to Perth in Western Australia when I was just four years old. So I grew up as an Aussie kid, in the sun and the surf, and being Dutch only mattered at Sinter Claas or Christmas when mum made yummy Dutch stuff with marzipan. Yes, we learnt a little about the Dutch 'explorers' at school. (The ones that accidentally bumped into the horrible unknown south land) like Dirk Hartog and Vlamingh. And we went to the museum and were shown this case with a skeleton in it which (we were told) came from a murder victim who'd been on a ship called the Batavia. I must have been ten or twelve. In 1963 the newspapers were full of the discovery of the Batavia wreck site and the wreck of the Vergulde Draeck (Gilt Dragon). At last. After hundreds of years of mystery. But for me, it was just ancient history. And then years later I visited the WA Maritime Museum with overseas friends (as you do). So many people miss what's in their own backyards. I looked at Batavia's keel, rebuilt in the museum and the portico, intended for the fort at Batavia, whose stones had been her ballast. Then we went upstairs to the gallery where they displayed recovered artefacts from all four of the known Dutch wrecks – Batavia, Vergulde Draeck, Zuytdorp and Zeewijk. Jugs, plates, scrimshaw, pipes, buttons – all sorts of things ordinary people would have used. And I had an epiphany. I remember the feeling clearly. It was as though I was looking down a four-hundred-year time tunnel. I could have had a relative on one of those ships. Very easily. I developed something of an obsession, looking up and reading what I could. Every single one of those wrecks has a mystery about it, or a story of enterprise and courage. I visited the Zuytdorp wreck site on the cliffs that bear her name - cliffs known and avoided by the Dutch mariners after 1629. The men in Batavia's longboat would have eyed those cliffs with dismay as they sailed for Java. I stood at both sites regarded as possible candidates for the place where Pelsaert marooned two of the Batavia's miscreants. I've been on the Batavia replica twice - once in Holland, once in Sydney. And I promised myself that one day, I’d write a book about one of those wrecks. It’s about the Batavia. The facts are well known. I've written them down in a blog entitled 'the facts, ma'am, just the facts' - so I won't repeat them here. Let's just hurry on to the bit where Pelsaert is conducting his trial of Cornelisz and his henchmen. He had a journal written to record events, realising that this tale of murder and mayhem would have reverberations throughout the Company and Dutch society. That document and a letter written by a preacher who was on the island are the only eye-witness records of what happened, although Mike Dash has uncovered some later testimony. Cornelisz and his main lieutenants were executed for their crimes. During his interrogation, Cornelisz claimed that before the ship was wrecked, he and the captain, with many senior officers as willing participants, were going to seize the ship and turn to piracy. Several of the accused men confirmed this assertion. On that basis, the captain has been accused of being, if you will, the instigator of the crimes that took place. In contrast, Pelsaert comes across as a genuine - if flawed - individual who tried to do his best. That seemed strange to me and I'm not the only one to have thought it odd. So I re-read the journals, accepting the facts but trying to see how those facts could have occurred without the captain having been a conspirator to seize his own ship. Several things stand out; · Pelsaert and the captain hated each other · The accused were tortured to extract the 'truth' (confessions?) · Cornelisz tried everything he could to avoid admission of his guilt And, of course, the main surviving document was written by Pelsaert, who would have been well aware of the impact of events on his reputation. I felt that the captain's astonishing feat of seamanship and leadership, in getting the overcrowded longboat to Batavia has been shoved into a corner and forgotten. In a time where longitude was at best imprecise, forty-eight people reached Batavia in a boat with a capacity of forty. So in my book, the first story arc is about the wreck and the journey in the longboat. Sure, Cornelisz the murdering psychopath tends to steal the show (well, he would, wouldn't he?), and his is the second story arc, which talks about the murders and his relationship with Lucretia Jansz. Where there is murder and greed, there is also heroism and altruism - and the influence of chance. And that is the third story arc, Wiebbe Hayes and his band of soldiers left without weapons on another island to die of thirst. Only they didn't. This is certainly not the first book about these events. I know of at least 3 other novels, an opera and a TV dramatisation. But I believe my translation of the events is a little bit different, perhaps a little bit controversial. I've written this with Adriaen Jacobsz the captain sitting at my elbow, trying to set the record straight. I'm hoping I can get this published - if for no other reason than I think he deserves it. |
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