The Zeewijk - a story of ingenuity 02/22/2010
The Abrolhos Archipelago must be a treacherous place at night. Henrietta Drake-Brockman said “Having seen the islands, it is not difficult to imagine an unforeseen wreck on Noon Reef or Morning Reef, at night, in moonlight.” The Batavia was wrecked on 4th June 1629. The man on watch mistook white water for the glimmer of moonlight on the white caps. Ninety-eight years later, on the moonlit night of 9th June 1727, the Zeewijk met a similar fate. Understandably, the survivors thought this was the same place the Batavia was wrecked and the group of islands was accordingly named the Pelsart Group. In fact, it is well south of the Batavia’s resting place in the Wallabi Group. There are certain similarities with the Batavia disaster. Most of the people on board made it to land – this time, tiny Gun Island – but unlike the Batavia, they were able to find some fresh water. As with the other Dutch wrecks, the longboat was sent off to Batavia to fetch help but never arrived. When October had come and gone, the survivors decided no rescue ship was coming. As ever, they were a resourceful lot. Using material from the wreck of the Zeewijk and wood from local mangroves, they build a twenty meter long boat which they called Sloepie. They even loaded a pair of guns on her, in case of pirates. The endeavour took four months; In March 1728, eighty-eight men set sail for Batavia. Eighty-two arrived. When you consider the Zeewijk’s original complement was two hundred and eight, this was a considerable achievement. Two other things are worthy of mention; two lads found guilty of sodomy were marooned, each on his own lump of coral. Homosexuality was not condoned in Dutch society at that time. The captain of the Zeewijk who made the journey to Batavia in Sloepie, was found guilty of the loss of his ship and falsifying the records. He lost his position and his material assets. The mystery of the Zuytdorp 02/10/2010
 The Zuytdorp’s story started in August 1711. After a horrendous journey down to Cape Town, it set off on the last leg of its journey from Table Bay on 22nd April 1712. It never arrived. And no survivors reached Batavia to tell the story. It was speculated, of course, that she’d met her fate but her resting place wasn’t finally found until centuries later. A young stockman found some artefacts in 1927 along the high cliffs overlooking the Indian Ocean south of Shark Bay; those very cliffs that Pelsaert and Jacobsz saw as they sailed for help after the Batavia was wrecked nearly a hundred years before. Those cliffs now bear the name of the ship that lies at their base – the Zuytdorp cliffs. It was not until 1954 that the identity of the wreck was established. The sea is relentless there, bashing into the cliffs over a ledge of rock that juts along the shoreline. The cliffs extend for hundreds of miles and only two small ‘beaches’ offer a relatively easy way of getting to the top, anywhere from thirty meters to two hundred metres above the waves. Was it coincidence that the Zuytdorp came to grief just adjacent to one of those two small beaches? We know a lot of people made it to shore. In a cave just below the top of the cliff there are signs of a huge fire – hot enough to melt metal. Like many people involved in a shipwreck, the first thought seems to have been to get drunk – and maybe, also, attract another ship sailing up the coast to Batavia. But the Dutch mariners had learned to fear those cliffs and would not approach by choice, and no record exists of any such bonfire being sighted. It would not have been easy to get frightened people off the ship and to safety in a pounding sea. Archaeologists say the ship would soon have heeled over when she hit the reef. It is rare indeed for the sea to be calm enough for divers to go down.When they did, they found a carpet of silver strewn over the seabed where the treasure cases had spilled their contents. It’s possible that like all the other wrecks, a longboat was dispatched to get help from Batavia. But if it occurred, in this case the boat never arrived. Nobody knows what happened to these unfortunate people who survived the wreck. Traces of them were found inland, where they had attempted to search for water. But as several Dutch landing parties had discovered, this part of the coast is barren and waterless. Some speculate that they merged with local aboriginal tribes but what little circumstantial evidence has been produced is hotly disputed. Another fascinating mystery. The Story of the Gilt Dragon 02/01/2010
 The Batavia wasn’t the only Dutch VOC ship to be wrecked on the West Australian coast. In all, four wreck sites have been found and a fifth ship is assumed to have met its fate on the Abrolhos. Not bad, that; of the five wrecks, three ships hit the Abrolhos. Every one of those wrecks has an intriguing story attached. Maybe not so blood-thirsty as the Batavia but fascinating, nonetheless. The Batavia sank in 1629. The next VOC ship to be lost was the Vergulde Draeck (Gilt Dragon) which sank in 1656 just north of Perth, capital of Western Australia. Seventy five survivors reached the shores of Australia in a boat. The ship’s captain sent the under steersman Abraham Leeman and six other men, in the ship’s boat to Batavia to seek help, while the rest remained on the continent. Once again showing the remarkable endurance and courage of these early sailors, the boat reached Batavia six weeks later. The governor (by then van Diemen) sent out two ships to search for the wreck and rescue the survivors. The expedition only compounded the disaster. Three of the men landed on the Southland to search became lost in the scrub and were never seen again; a longboat carrying eight men was smashed in the surf with no survivors. No sign was found of the sixty eight folk from the Vergulde Draeck. Van Diemen hadn’t given up. In 1658 other boats sailed along the coast both searching for survivors and mapping this unknown continent. Traces were found of the folk from the Vergulde Draeck on the beach in the vicinity of the wreck and some ships claimed to have seen signs of cultivated crops. During one such foray along the South Land, that same Abraham Leeman and a crew of thirteen men became stranded in a violent storm on one of the islands scattered not far off shore along the WA coast. The ship they’d been on, the Waeckende Boei, sailed off without them. They had been marooned. So Leeman did the trip again. Yes, that’s right. He sailed up along the coast and across the sea to Java in a small boat. This time, the trip took three weeks. Truly a most remarkable man. What happened to the survivors of the Vergulde Draeck remains a mystery. Where in the world... 01/19/2010
 …did all this happen? The Houtman Abrolhos archipelago is a straggling chain of islands for the most part barely above the water line, 30 miles or so off the Western Australian coast. Even now, it’s little known. Cray fishermen base themselves there in the summer catching season, including on Batavia’s Graveyard, now known as Beacon Island. There’s even an airstrip on the High Island (East Wallabi). The satellite images on Google Earth show it all; the relative sizes of the islands, the shallows, the channel. Search for the Houtman Abrolhos and the Wallabi group. Henrietta Drake-Brockman, in her book "Voyage to Disaster" describes the Abrolhos Islands. "The whole atmosphere of the Wallabis is one of elusive form, the spray cast up on the great reefs acts like gauze in a theatre, everything is remote and mysterious, sometimes enlarged, sometimes diminished, never altogether clearly defined. Having seen the islands, it is not difficult to imagine an unforeseen wreck on Noon Reef or Morning Reef, at night, in moonlight." (p272)  Back off a little. Where is Australia? There. A desolate, windswept coast, lined with cliffs that plunge into the sea anything from thirty to two hundred and fifty metres (about one hundred to eight hundred feet). The desert reaches the sea along most of that stretch. Endless ridges of ancient dune, covered with tough, sparse vegetation. Even the Aboriginal people didn’t go there much. If you're following on Google Maps, don't get the wrong idea from any bits of blue on the mainland. It's salt water. Back off a little further. That’s Batavia up there (now known as Djakarta), through the Sunda Strait which separates Sumatra and Java. The longboat left the Australian mainland from North West cape (that last cape jutting north before the coastline turns irrevocably east. And then Pelsaert in the Sardam had to find these tiny specs in the ocean, all unknowing that murder and mayhem had been let loose and that two camps of Batavia’s survivors eyed each other across a few miles of ocean. The Name of the Book 01/10/2010
 Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground, long heath, brown furze, any thing. The wills above be done! but I would fain die a dry death. The Tempest William Shakespeare Somebody who left a comment on Die a Dry Death on Authonomy (you can read seven chapters there) said after reading three chapters, he could see why I used those words as the title. And sure enough the danger seemed to be the forces of nature, the implacable fury of the sea. The first chapter is a prologue and then the next two chapters are all about the shipwreck and the attempt to get the people to dry land. Think about that. The Batavia carried 341 people when she left Holland. When she hit the reef, the ship would have been carrying less people – deaths due to scurvy, desertions at Table Bay. But still, the number was probably around 330. The ship had two small boats; workboats used to ferry passengers and supplies. The longboat could carry forty people; the yawl, ten. That’s it. No lifeboats, no vests, no blow-up dinghies. But the boat wasn’t sinking; it was stuck on a reef. So between them, these two boats and some very brave crew did an amazing job getting people to two tiny islands. By the time Pelsaert and Jacobsz set off for Batavia in the longboat, about two hundred people were crowded onto Batavia’s Graveyard, forty people had drowned trying to get to shore unaided (many people couldn’t swim) and forty-eight made the journey in the longboat. The rest were still on the wreck. Some of these numbers are conjecture but even so, the point, I think, is made. Cornelisz and his cronies killed around ninety-six men, women and children. Sure, some were drowned. But at the hands of men, not nature. So the title of the book is ironic, if you will. Many of those who would ‘fain die a dry death’ – did. 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. 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. 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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