Greta van der Rol

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.