[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, we find out what happened to the few surviving women.]
There had not been many more than 20 females on the Batavia when she had left the Netherlands,a nd most of those were already dead – drowned, killed by thirst after the ship was wrecked, or cut down in the massacre of the rafts on Seal’s Island. The mutineers had ruthlessly exterminated those too old or too pregnant to interest them. The handful of young women who remained were gathered on Batavia’s Graveyard, where Jeronimus and his men took their pick.
There were seven of them in all. Creesje Jans and Judick the preacher’s daughter were the only women from the stern. The others came from the lower deck: Anneken Bosschieters, the sisters Tryntgien and Zussie Fredricx, Anneken Hardens and Marretgie Louys, all of whom were probably married to soldiers or sailors among the crew. Tryntgien’s husband had found himself twith Pelsaert on the longboat [which had been sailed away to get help shortly after the wreckage of the Batavia], and Anneken Bosschieters’s had gone with Wiebbe Hayes [leader of a group of loyal VOC soldiers who were intentionally stranded on another island where they could not interfere with the mutineers’ plans], leaving them without protectors.
Harden’s husband, Hans, was a soldier and a minor mutineer, and it is a mystery why he did not act to stop her from being corralled with the others. But he did not, and the women from the lower deck were set aside “for common service,” which meant simply that they were available to any of the mutineers who wished to rape them.
[…]
It was normal for the women kept for “common service” to have had relations with two or three of the mutineers at least, and those who had been with only one man were envied.
Source:
Dash, Mike. “Who Wants to Be Stabbed to Death?” Batavia's Graveyard. Three Rivers Press, 2003. 218-19. Print.
Further Reading:
No comments, yet...