Batavia (ship)
- For other meanings of "Batavia" see Batavia
 A replica of the Batavia; Note all measurements are of the replica.February 28 1942. | |
| Career | |
|---|---|
| Nationality: | Dutch |
| Owners: | Dutch East India Company |
| Builders: | |
| Captain: | François Pelsaert[1] |
| Port of registry: | Amsterdam, Netherlands? |
| Laid down: | 4 June 1629 |
| Launched: | 29 October 1628 |
| Christened: | Not christened |
| Maiden voyage: | 1628 |
| Fate: | Ran aground |
| General Characteristics | |
| Gross Tonnage: | 650 GRT |
| Displacement: | c. 1200 tons tons |
| Length: | 56.60 m |
| Beam: | 10.50 m |
| Draught: | 5.10 m |
| Power: | |
| Propulsion: | Sails (1180 m²) |
| Speed: | Dictated by wind |
The Batavia was a ship of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), built in 1628 in Amsterdam, which was struck by mutiny and shipwreck during her maiden voyage. It had 24 cast-iron cannons. Batavia is also the name of a replica of the same ship.
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Mutiny on the Batavia
On 29 October 1628, the newly built Batavia, commissioned by the Dutch East India Company, sailed for the Dutch East Indies. It was headed to its destination for spices under Commandeur and "opperkoopman" François Pelsaert and skipper Ariaen Jacobsz. These two had previously encountered each other in Surat, India. Some animosity had developed between them there. (It is not known whether Pelsaert even remembered Jacobsz when he boarded Batavia). Also on board was the "onderkoopman" Jeronimus Cornelisz. From Haarlem, he was a bankrupt pharmacist with heretic ideas, for which he had to flee the Netherlands.
During the voyage, Jacobsz and Cornelisz conceived the plan to hijack the ship and start a new life somewhere, using a supply of trade gold and silver then onboard. After leaving South Africa, where they had stopped for supplies, Jacobsz deliberately steered the ship off course away from the rest of the fleet. Jacobsz and Cornelisz had already gathered a group of men around them and arranged an incident from which the mutiny was to ensue. This involved attacking a young woman passenger on board in order to provoke Pelsaert into disciplining the crew. They hoped to paint his discipline as unfair and recruit more members out of sympathy. However, Pelsaert made no arrests and the mutineers were forced to wait.
But on June 4th, 1629, the ship struck a reef on Beacon Island off the Western Australian coast (28° 30' South, 113° 47' East), part of the Houtman Abrolhos. Today they are known as the Wallabi reefs. Of the 341 on board including 38 passengers, women and children, most were transferred in the ship's longboat and yawl to nearby islands, but 40 drowned. For the VOC, a shipwreck was not unusual, but this time things went very badly. Because there was no fresh water and limited food (sea lions and birds) found on initial survey of the islands, the captain and his senior officers, and Francisco Pelsaert, a few crewmembers, and some passengers left the disaster site in search of drinking water, leaving 268 people behind. The commanders' group soon aborted the search for water on the mainland and made their way to the city of Batavia, now Jakarta in a thirty-foot longboat (of which a replica has also been made). This journey, which ranks as one of the greatest navigation feats of the day, took thirty-three days and all aboard survived. After their arrival in Batavia, Pelsaert was sent back to rescue the survivors who were still on the wreck. He arrived at the site two months after leaving Batavia on the vessel Saardam, only to discover that a mutiny had taken place.
Jeronimus Cornelisz was well aware that Pelsaert would report the impending mutiny and that Jakobsz would put the blame on him. Therefore, he made plans to hijack the rescue ship when it arrived and seek a safe haven with that. He even made plans to start a new kingdom. For this, he needed to eliminate any possible opponents. His followers murdered a total of 125 men, women, and children, after having moved a group of soldiers under Wiebbe Hayes to a nearby island (West Wallabi) under false pretences.
  Location of the wreck of the Batavia |
Just as he was about to eliminate this remaining group as well, Pelsaert arrived, and this combined force captured the mutineers after a short battle. The worst offenders, after a brief trial, were executed on the island. Two young sailors were marooned on mainland Australia, never to be heard of again. Reports of unusually light-skinned Aborigines in the area by later British settlers suggested the two men might have actually been adopted into a local Aboriginal clan. (In fact, any pre-1788 European survivors in the area are much more likely to have been from the thirty or so who escaped the wreck of the Zuytdorp in the same region in 1712.) The lesser offenders were taken back to Batavia to be tried.
In Batavia, most of them were executed, after already having been punished by flogging, keelhauling and being dropped from the yard arm. As an example, Cornelisz's second in command was broken on the wheel because Cornelisz himself had already been executed. In total, almost all mutineers were killed, except Jakobsz, who did not confess despite torture, so not enough evidence could be amassed against him. What finally happened to him is not known, but he is suspected to have died in the prison at Batavia. Pelsaert was held partly responsible for what happened because of lack of authority. Wiebe Hayes was promoted. Cornelisz never committed any murders himself; using his powers of persuasion instead to let others do the dirty work for him. Of the original 341 on board the ship Batavia, only 68 made it to Jakarta, the final destination.
The wreckage
In 1970, the wreck and many artifacts were salvaged, including the stern of the ship. In 1972 the Netherlands transferred all rights to Dutch shipwrecks on the Australian coasts to Australia. Some of the items, including human remains, which were excavated, are now on display in the Western Australian Maritime Museum in Fremantle, Australia. Others are held by the Geraldton Region Museum. These two museums are presently engaged in a dispute over the rights to the remains - including a stone arch, currently in Geraldton which was intended to serve as a stone welcome arch for Batavia.[citation needed]
The replica
A replica (or rather "reconstruction") of the Batavia was built at the Bataviawerf in Lelystad, the Netherlands. The project lasted from 1985 to 7 April 1995, and conducted as an employment project for young people under master-shipbuilder Willem Vos. The replica is now on display at that same shipyard/museum. The shipyard is currently reconstructing another 17th century ship. In contrast to the merchant ship Batavia, the new replica is a man-of-war, the Zeven Provinciën; Michiel de Ruyters' flagship.
This authentic replica was built with traditional materials (such as oak and hemp) and the tools and methods of the time of the original ship. For this, good use was made of the above-mentioned remains of the original ship in Fremantle (and of the Vasa in Stockholm), but also historical sources, like 17th century building descriptions (actual building plans were not made at the time) and prints and paintings by artists (who at the time generally painted fairly true to nature) of similar ships.
On 25 September 1999, the new Batavia was transported to Australia by barge and moored at the National Maritime Museum in Sydney. In 2000, the Batavia was the flagship for the Dutch Olympic Team during the 2000 Olympic Games. On 12 June 2001, the ship returned to the wharf in Lelystad, where she has remained to this day and can be visited daily.
Publications and other media
The following list is selective - the fascination with the wreck of the Batavia has created an industry - with many other books and articles written apart from the items shown below.
- 1647 - Commander Pelsaert died the year after the event, leaving behind his journal of the events. This journal, together with the pamphlet Ongeluckige voyagie van 't schip Batavia (The Unlucky Voyage of the Vessel Batavia), published in 1647, made it possible to rediscover the wreck.
- 1963 - Renowned Australian author Henrietta Drake-Brockman's comprehensive, non-fiction account Voyage to Disaster took her ten years to write. She also wrote a fictional story based on the Batavia, The Wicked and the Fair. It was Drake-Brockman's own research (including calculating the differences between Dutch nautical miles from the early 17th century and English nautical miles) that led divers to the location of the wreck.
- 1966 - Journalist Hugh Edwards published an account of the shipwreck and its rediscovery by Dave Johnson, Max Cramer and Gerard Cramer and Greg Allen, under the name Island of Angry Ghosts: Murder, Mayhem and Mutiny (1966).
- 1990 - Deborah Lisson's book The Devil's Own, which is aimed at young adults, is also based on the events of the Batavia mutiny and massacre. This book won the Western Australian Premier's Award in 1991.
- 1991 - A sub-plot in Gary Crew's novel Strange Objects included two men who sailed the Batavia, Wouter Loos, and Jan Pelgrom.
- 1993 - Philippe Godard's book The First and Last Voyage of the Batavia provides a wealth of illustrations, along with details of the Batavia's construction, objectives and, of course, the traumatic events in the islands off the West Australian coast. At the end of the book is an English translation of Pelsaert's pamphlet regarding the events on the Batavia. The construction of Batavia's second incarnation is also covered with a number of detailed photographs of the new ship.
- 2000 - Arabella Edge's novel The Company is also based on the events of 1629, as is Kathryn Heyman's novel The Accomplice (2003). Whereas Edge tells the story from the perspective of Cornelisz, the chief mutineer, Heyman's The Accomplice is based on the predicament of Judith Bastiaansz, the Predikant's daughter.
- 2000 - The story was also told in a one-hour radio drama, Southland, written by D.J.Britton and broadcast in September 2000 on BBC Radio 4.
- 2001 - The story was retold in the form of an acclaimed opera, simply titled Batavia, composed by Richard Mills and first performed by Opera Australia.
- 2002 - Historian Mike Dash's book, Batavia's Graveyard: The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History's Bloodiest Mutiny told the whole story in more detail than ever before, making extensive use of Dutch archival sources to explore the early life of Cornelisz and a number of the Batavia's other passengers and crew.
- 2006 - Writer Simon Leys published The Wreck of the Batavia: A True Story, relating the fate of the Batavia and her crew. The French version of this book Les Naufragés du Batavia (2003) won the Guizot Prize.
See also
- Ship replica (including a list of ship replicas)
Notes
- ^ Major, Richard Henry (1859). Early Voyages to Terra Australis, Now Called Australia. Printed for the Hakluyt Society.
References
- Crew, Gary. Strange objects Port Melbourne, Vic. : Mammoth Australia, 1991. ISBN 1863301135
- Dash, Mike.Batavia's graveyard London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002. ISBN 0575070242
- Drake-Brockman, Henrietta. Voyage to Disaster (new edition with new introduction) Western Australia : University of Western Australia Press, 1995. ISBN 1875560327
- Edge, Arabella. The company : the story of a murderer Sydney : Picador, 2000 ISBN 033048978X
- Edwards, Hugh, Islands of angry ghosts London : Hodder & Stoughton, 1966
- Godard, Philippe. The first and last voyage of the Batavia ( with the contribution of Phillida Stephens.) Perth, W.A : Abrolhos Publishing 1993. ISBN 0646105191
- Lisson, Deborah.The devil's own Port Melbourne, Vic. : Lothian, 2000.(First ed.: Glebe, N.S.W. : Walter McVitty, 1990) ISBN 0734401280
- Leys, Simon The wreck of the Batavia; &, Prosper Melbourne : Black Inc., 2005. ISBN 1863951504
External links
- Batavia yard, where the replica was built and is now moored
Categories
Articles lacking sources from December 2006 | All articles lacking sources | Articles with unsourced statements | Age of Sail merchant ships of the United Provinces | Exploration ships of the Netherlands | History of Western Australia | History of the Netherlands | Museum ships | Mutinies | Sailboat names | Sailing ships | Sailing | Shipwrecks of Western Australia | Replicas