Batavia's Graveyard: The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History's Bloodiest Mutiny

After reading this book, I think that under favorable circumstances, height of human cruelty could far surpass the physical height of Olympus Mons. Twice.

Because if not for the hyperinflation and the Versailles treaty, Adolf Hitler would have been a shitty painter and Hermann Göring would have been an exceptionally shitty ballet dancer.

But I never felt more confident about my assumptions (although they were derived after many complicated calculations and permutations) until I read Mike Dash's [b:Batavia's Graveyard: The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History's Bloodiest Mutiny|128824|Batavia's Graveyard The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History's Bloodiest Mutiny|Mike show more Dash|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320528804s/128824.jpg|124075].

**Minor Spoilers Ahead**

Batavia was a ship of the Dutch East India Company built in 1628 to procure spices from the East and as was the kind-of norm in the era, it was shipwrecked on her maiden voyage.





But what made this incident different from others was the horror that followed owing to the mutiny and massacre that took place amongst the survivors stranded on the reefs of Abrolhos Islands off the coast of Western Australia.

Batavia sailed under commandeur and upper-merchant Francisco Pelsaert and was captained by Ariaen Jacobsz. But the main villain of this tragedy was one frustrated under-merchant (working under upper-merchant Francisco Pelsaert), Jeronimus Cornelisz, who was a bankrupt apothecary (pharmacist) from the Netherlands who had left his wife behind forever in the Netherlands in order to escape from his creditors and find himself a comfortable life somewhere in the East, by any means. But what made Cornelisz truly dangerous was his mad belief in antinomianism: the theological doctrine that by faith and God's grace a Christian is freed from all laws (including the moral standards of the culture). Even murder. Or rape.

Mike Dash has provided detailed and interesting background information on all the major characters which mainly includes Francisco Pelsaert, Ariaen Jacobsz and Jeronimus Cornelisz. The book could be considered to be divided in two major parts. The shipwrecking is described in the first chapter and then Mike Dash delineates the chain of events that eventually led to Batavia's doom. The second half deals with the massacre committed by Cornelisz and his fellow mutineers on the islands and its aftermath.

There was some previous history between Francisco Pelsaert and the captain of Batavia, Ariaen Jacobsz who had previously encountered each other in Surat, India. The encounter had left a bitter taste in the mouth for Ariaen Jacobsz as he was publicly reprimanded, and that too quite sternly by Francisco Pelsaert regarding disciplinary issues.

So during the voyage, Jacobsz and Cornelisz (driven by his greed and beliefs) conceived a plan to take the ship by mutiny, which would allow them to start a new life as the ship contained lots of silver and moreover they also decided to get more rich by becoming pirates.

Jacobsz deliberately steered the ship off course, away from the rest of the fleet (There were more than half a dozen ships with the “Batavia”). The ship struck Morning Reef, part of the Abrolhos islands off the Western Australian coast. Of the 322 passengers aboard, 40 people drowned in the initial disaster. They were luckier than those who were to die on the islands. The survivors were transferred to nearby islands which contained no fresh water and only very limited food in form of birds and some sea-lions.

No rescue was coming as they were way off course, so Captain Jacobsz alongwith Francisco Pelsaert, senior officers, a few crewmembers, and some passengers left the wreck site in a longboat, and headed north to the city of Batavia (Jakarta). This journey, which they completed successfully, was a feat in itself.

But on the other hand, in the absence of his two superiors, Jeronimus Cornelisz was left in charge of the survivors. He was afraid that Pelsaert might discover his mutinous plans. Therefore, he made plans to hijack any rescue ship that might return and use the vessel to seek another safe haven.

With a dedicated band of murderous young men, he began to systematically (at first) kill anyone he believed would be a problem to his reign of terror, or a burden on their limited resources. The mutineers became intoxicated with killing, and no one could stop them which led to a splurge of random killings.



But Cornelisz had also left some soldiers on another island who were led by one Wiebbe Hayes, and to their good fortune, they had found abundant sources of water and food on the other island. With his own supply dwindling, Cornelisz decided to take over Hayes’ island (by killing everyone there, of course).

The events that ensued were nothing sort of dramatic, so I am not going to ruin it for anyone. But the naked truth is that that of the original 341 people on board the Batavia, only 68 made it safely to the port of Batavia (Jakarta).

So know this, although this book is well written, I am not recommending it for everyone as the second half is extremely graphic and gruesome. You will have to decide for yourself on this one. show less

Fascinating true account of the mutiny, shipwreck on what is now known as Beacon Island near Australia and subsequent blood-filled killings. This involved a Dutch East India [VOC] ship Batavia on its way to Java in the 17th century. The mutiny was led by a half-crazed charismatic ship's officer with horrendous results. Conditions on shipboard as described were terrible. The epilogue described present-day archeological expeditions, that found the results. The author researched very well, with both primary and secondary material.

Highly recommended but the reader should have a strong stomach.

A no-holds-barred account of the chillingly brutal aftermath of a 1628 shipwreck on a reef fifty miles off the coast of what is now known as Australia. Dash explores the nastiness in great detail, and aside from a few speculative leaps at various points, this makes for riveting reading.

My one quibble is that the (very) extensive notes are not indicated in the text.

Ce livre aurait pu passer pour un roman d'aventures bien mené et bien documenté, un peu glauque, certes, mais entraînant et riche. Sauf que d'emblée l'auteur nous met au parfum: "Ce récit ne contient aucun élément purement imaginaire".
Voilà, c'est une histoire vraie, et une histoire vraiment horrible, et vraiment bien écrite aussi.
Bien plus que le récit d'un naufrage et de ses suites pour les survivants, c'est un témoignage sur la société hollandaise du XVIIème siècle, les atrocités commises, en partie par un groupe d'hommes dits hérétiques, mais en partie aussi des atrocités très comparables commises au nom du commerce, de la religion, même de la justice, et tutti quanti.
Alors bon malgré tout, et très show more franchement, je me serais assez bien passée des scènes de torture et de tuerie: je ne suis pas sûre d'avoir envie de connaître tout ce que sont capables de s'infliger mes congénères les uns aux autres.
Ce n'est donc pas une belle histoire, mais c'est une histoire prenante, qui s'attaque sans fausse manoeuvre aux différents aspects qui rentrent en ligne de compte: la société de l'époque, le contexte historique, la psychologie des personnages, et la documentation est solide! show less

Wow what an amazing story, I couldn't put it down. A true-crime classic from the Age of Sail - if you like mutiny, debauchery and lunacy - sort of like The Raft of the Medusa + Treasure Island. Appropriately for the time, Dash focuses on the grotesque, 1629 was a brutal time in European history, the same period as the Thirty Years War the worst war in European history (prior to the 20th century). The book is useful for imagining the types of ordinary people who lived through it - mercenary, wavering loyalties to God, king, state or company; torn by religion, desperate souls on the margins of life and death with no safety nets. We read about the period with a sense of horror, glad to not to have lived through it, but it was through these show more violent fractures and mistakes that the modern world was born. The story of the Batavia is fascinatingly dark, but also a gateway for understanding a vital time in history. show less

In 1628 the Dutch East India Company loaded the Batavia, the flagship of its fleet, with a king’s ransom in gold, silver, and gems for her maiden voyage to Java; the ship itself was a tangible symbol of the world’s richest and most powerful monopoly.

The company also sent along a new employee to guard its treasure. He was Jeronimus Corneliszoon, a disgraced and bankrupt man with great charisma and dangerously heretical ideas. With the help of a few disgruntled sailors, he hatched a plot to seize the ship and her riches. The mutiny might have succeeded, but in the dark morning hours of June 3, 1629, the Batavia smashed through a coral reef and ran aground on a small chain of islands near Australia. The captain and skipper escaped the show more wreck, and in a tiny lifeboat they set sail for Java—some 1,500 miles north—to summon help. More than 250 frightened survivors waded ashore, thankful to be alive. Unfortunately, Jeronimus and the mutineers had survived too, and the nightmare was only beginning. show less

If you are planning on reading this, let me give you a heads up. What's between the covers of this book is NOT for the squeamish...I thought the story of the wreck of the Essex was bad but this takes the cake.

Batavia's Graveyard was the name given to a small island off the western coast of Australia, now known as Beacon Island. I first became aware of this story, which is true, through a wonderful program on the History Channel about recent finds on that island by archaeologists hoping to solve some of the mysteries of what exactly happened there in 1629 and the years during which the islanders, survivors of the shipwreck of the Batavia, were literally being held captive by a group of mutineers under the command/control of one single show more psychopathic individual. This book most definitely measures up to my rigorous standards for reading history. It is excruciatingly well documented (this author has notes & sources for every little detail).

Synopsis:

In June, 1629, a ship filled with goods, money & jewels on its way to Java (the ship belongs to the Dutch EIC) is wrecked on a reef on an uninhabited island. To his credit, the captain managed to get all of the civilians traveling on the ship off of the ship and onto the island; there were in all about 250 survivors. He left them under the charge of one Jeronimus Cornelisz, certified nutcase who believed that anything a person did, including the taking of life, was sanctioned by God.

The group divided itself onto three small islands all closely linked. What happens under his "leadership" was an outright tragedy and massacre. I won't go into specifics, but suffice it to say the Cornelisz and the gang that followed him reminded me a lot of Kurtz in Heart of Darkness. I've even seen this book called the Lord of the Flies for Adults...it wasn't that bad, but it was close.

Throughout the story, the narrative of events on the islands is interspersed with details of history of the EIC; of the spice trade in general; of the process of shipbuilding in the Netherlands; of Java; pretty much anything at all connected with the story historically is brought up in here. Some parts I found to be a bit dull, but only because I'm not really interested in the history of shipbuilding. However, there's enough to keep you focused and indeed riveted when he gets around to the events on the islands and their aftermath.

I would definitely recommend this book to those who are interested in shipwrecks or maritime history. Read this book slowly (or skim through the stuff you don't really like but savor the rest), because there is a wealth of information here. The author is thorough and the writing is good. show less