Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [107]
“The goods of the Company which they fished up . . . were very shamefully misused by making them into clothes embroidered with as much passementerie*39 as possible, [and Cornelisz] set the example . . . by changing daily into different clothes, silk stockings, garters with gold lace, and by putting on suchlike adornments belonging to other persons. Moreover, to all his Followers whom he could best trust, and who were most willing to murder, he gave clothes made from red laken*40 sewn with two or more bands of passementeries. And created a new mode of Cassock, believing that such evil vain pleasure as this could last for ever.”
The other mutineers soon followed suit, each man outfitting himself according to his status. The old Company ranks still counted for something on the island—assistants and cadets seem to have been treated more respectfully than ordinary soldiers and sailors—but even among the rank and file, some mutineers were more equal than others. The men the captain-general depended on most, and summoned most frequently, were the tried and tested killers who could be relied on to tackle and subdue full-grown men. This murderous elite included Jan Hendricxsz, Gsbert van Welderen, Mattys Beer, and Lenert van Os. The likes of Andries Jonas, whose victims were mostly pregnant women and young boys, enjoyed a lesser status, and the dozen or so men who signed Jeronimus’s oaths, but never took part in the killing, were no doubt looked down on by their murderous cohorts.
The elite mutineers seem to have enjoyed their work. Men such as David Zevanck and Coenraat van Huyssen had been of minor consequence on board the Batavia; now they reveled in their status as men of consequence, possessed of the power of life and death. Others, including Jan Hendricxsz—who butchered between 17 and 20 people—and Lenert van Os—who slaughtered a dozen—were efficient killers, seemingly unburdened by conscience, who enjoyed moving among Cornelisz’s inner circle. Nevertheless, killing, in itself, was not the prime motive of the rank and file. These men murdered because the alternative was to become one of the victims, and because the favor of the captain-general meant improved rations and access to the island’s women.
There had not been many more than 20 females on the Batavia when she had left the Netherlands, and most of those were already dead—drowned, killed by thirst after the ship was wrecked, or cut down in the massacre on the rafts or on Seals’ 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 with Pelsaert on the longboat, and Anneken Bosschieters’s had gone with Wiebbe Hayes, leaving them without protectors. Hardens’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.
Jeronimus’s men were not entirely indiscriminate. Some of the officers behaved relatively well, and Coenraat