Batavia's Graveyard
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The chilling true story of a seafaring psychopathREVIEW BY ROGER BISHOPThe wreck of the Dutch merchant vessel Batavia in 1629 and its horrible aftermath was one of the bloodiest chapters in the history of seafaring. The ship was owned by the Dutch East India Company, which was not only the most important organization and one of the largest employers in the Netherlands, but also the wealthiest and most powerful company on earth. The Batavia, loaded with gold and silver, went aground on an isolated chain of islands near present-day Australia, 1,500 miles south of Java, its destination. The ship could not be saved, and its captain, along with a small group of men, took a lifeboat and went in search of help. The 250 or so others left behind soon found themselves at the mercy of a charismatic and manipulative psychopath. This grim and terrifying story is recounted by Cambridge University-trained historian Mike Dash in Batavia's Graveyard: The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History's Bloodiest Mutiny. The mad heretic in question, Jeronimus Corneliszoon, was a disgraced and bankrupt apothecary who left his wife after the death of their child. Although he accepted a position as an under-merchant working as an administrator for the Batavia's owners, Corneliszoon hoped to make money illegally as a private trader. He was well-educated for his time but had developed some controversial and dangerous convictions. According to Dash, his "central belief, it seems, was that his every action was directly inspired by God." This meant that "the apothecary was incapable of sin. If each idea, each action was directly inspired by God, then no thought, no deed -- not even murder -- could truly be described as evil." This belief had been known in Europe since the 13th century but was considered heretical by the Dutch Reformed Church. Once on the ship, the volatile Corneliszoon apparently encouraged the skipper to let a grievance against an upper-merchant develop, turning "the skipper from a mere malcontent into a mutineer." Serious uprisings were rare at the time, and the one that developed on the Batavia was unusual in that it went beyond a small group of sailors and had support from soldiers, cadets and merchants. Before the mutiny was achieved, however, the ship ran aground, stranding the passengers on a stark coral island without food or water. Unfortunately for the survivors, Corneliszoon appointed himself supreme leader and ruthlessly decided who would live and who would die on the island. A band of soldiers, led by a man named Wiebbe Hayes, stood up to him in a small-scale war. But when the Batavia's captain returned a mere two months later to rescue the survivors, he found only 80 of the original 250 left alive. The rest had been brutally murdered -- beheaded, drowned or strangled -- and some had been raped by the mutineers. Pregnant women and children were no exception. (Corneliszoon even poisoned a baby that kept him awake.) In creating his own "kingdom" on the island, the psychopathic Corneliszoon had let his hallucinations rule. Dash describes some of the story's key figures so vividly that we have a distinct sense of them as individuals. He also creates a detailed social context for the incident, examining the politics and the religious beliefs of the time, along with the culture of seafaring. Author of the best-selling Tulipomania, he skillfully weaves a compelling narrative that both tells a terrifying story and transcends it. This is an unforgettable historical reconstruction that brings to mind the horrors of Heart of Darkness. Roger Bishop is a regular contributor to BookPage.
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