[The following takes place during the Batavia mutiny. A bit of context: In 1628, the Dutch Republic merchant vessel Batavia was shipwrecked on her maiden voyage, on a small group of barren and uninhabited Abrolhos Islands. Jeronimus Cornelisz, the ship’s under-merchant, had been planning a bloody mutiny during the voyage and, after the shipwreck and subsequent departure of much of the ship’s leadership to seek rescue, he set about following through with his mutiny. He planned to gather a large enough following amongst the nearly 200 survivors to overwhelm any rescue vessel, to commandeer said vessel, and to take the Batavia’s treasure, turning to a short life of piracy in the Indies before retiring to a life of luxury. Here, Cornelisz has already formed a large following and, assuming a leadership role soon after the crash, conspired to send large parties of loyalist refugees and soldiers to nearby barren islands in search of water and to establish camps, all the while making sure any weapons and supplies remained under his care. At this point, one of the parties on the other islands surprised the conspirators by actually finding water, and several refugees, seeing the smoke signals, excitedly jumped into boats and hurried to the respective island. Fearing that he should lose initiative if the soldiers he had sent off in search of water should reunite with his island, he made the snap decision to send his most loyal conspirators to cut off the boats and bring them back.]
[After the boats had been forced back to the island…]
Jansz must by now have become seriously concerned for the safety of his family, but there was little he could do to protect them. He and his men watched uneasily as Zevanck jumped into the shallows and ran up to the beach to where Jeronimus was standing by the entrance to his tent. The two men consulted for a moment, then Zevanck turned and hastened back toward the rafts. “Slaet doodt!” he was shouting. “Kill!”
Lucas Gellisz had got into the water and was holding the rafts steady. Hendricxsz, Pietersz, and Van Os were still on board. Quickly, the three men drew their swords and cut down the provost and his child. Two, perhaps three, of the remaining men were also killed, as was Claudine Patoys’s child, but for once the mutineers had found themselves outnumbered, and four of Jansz’s party threw themselves over the side into the water that came up to their waists. Two of them were sailors – friends named Pauwels Barentsz and Bessel Jansz, who both came from the little port of Harderwijk in Gelderland. The other pair were soldiers, Claes Harmanszoon and Nicolaas Winckelhaack. These men had apparently not realized that Cornelisz himself had ordered the attack, for they staggered out of the sea loudly imploring the under-merchant for protection. Jeronimus gazed down as the four men sprawled at his feet, soaked and breathless, panicked, and desperate.
”Give them no quarter,” he declared.
Jan Hendricxsz had come running up the beach behind the men, his sword still in his hand. Now he lunged at Pauwels Barentsz, carving a great wound in his side. Barentsz fell backward into the sand as Andries Jonas – another of Cornelisz’s followers and, at 40, the oldest of the mutineers – loomed over him and thrust a pike right through his throat, turning the sailor’s screams to blood-flecked gasps and pinning him down while he died.
Hendricxsz, meanwhile, slashed at Winckelhaack, killing him immediately, after which he wounded Bessel Jansz, Rutger Fredericx came to join him, “striking the mentioned Bessel with his sword until he was dead”; then the locksmith, alone, slew Harmanszoon as he fled back through the shallows. That left only the three women on the rafts. Zevanck, Van Huyssen, and Van Welderen bundled them into the yawl and sculled out into the channel, where the water was more than 100 feet deep. They then pushed Jansz’s wife, and Harmanszoon’s, and Claudine Patoys into the sea where – weighed down by their skirts – they drowned.
The massacre of the provost’s party, which took place in full view of the 130 survivors on Batavia’s Graveyard, brought the under-merchant’s plot into the open for the first time. For three weeks or more, the people of the island had accepted Cornelisz as their leader without question; now they saw him as he really was.
Source:
Dash, Mike. “The Tiger.” Batavia's Graveyard. Three Rivers Press, 2003. 167-68. Print.
Further Reading:
Batavia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batavia_(ship)
If you enjoy this type of content, please consider donating to my Patreon!
No comments, yet...