Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [142]
While all this was going on, the remnants of Pelsaert’s fragile reputation had finally been destroyed by the revelation that the commandeur had been deeply involved in illegal private trade. Soon after his death, a search of Pelsaert’s baggage had turned up a variety of jewels and other goods valued at almost 13,500 guilders. These, the Company suspected, were to be sold for private profit, which was strictly forbidden, and Pelsaert no doubt expected to receive a commission for his part in the transactions. Upon investigation it emerged that a number of the items—including a second agate cameo, this one brand-new and engraved with a likeness of the Great Mogul—belonged to Gaspar Boudaen, who was eventually compelled to appear before the Gentlemen XVII of Amsterdam to beg, unsuccessfully, for their return. Others were the property of a second merchant, Johannes Dobbelworst of Amsterdam. All these goods were confiscated by the VOC.
Pelsaert’s early death thus cost his family most of the fortune he had labored to amass. Barbara van Ganderheyden, the commandeur’s elderly mother and the chief beneficiary of his will, did eventually receive his outstanding salary, together with the sum of 771 guilders—the value of her son’s personal possessions. The Company, however, banked the 10,500 guilders it earned from the sale of the confiscated jewels, and although Van Ganderheyden was eventually promised compensation amounting to 3,800 guilders, the VOC made it clear that this amount would only be paid in full and final settlement of all the claims the Pelsaert family might have against it.
Even then, the payment took forever to come through. Van Ganderheyden applied for her money in 1635, but it was evidently not forthcoming, for she repeated the request in 1638. Pelsaert’s mother was dead by the end of the latter year, probably aged somewhere in her middle sixties. It seems probable that she never saw any of the money her son had worked so hard for.
Wiebbe Hayes, whom Pelsaert had promoted to the rank of sergeant at a salary of 18 guilders a month, received further recognition and reward upon his arrival in Batavia.
He was commissioned as an officer in the Company’s army and made a standard-bearer. It was an astonishing promotion for a man who had left Amsterdam as a common soldier, but certainly no less than he deserved. As a standard-bearer, Hayes’s salary was increased again, to 40 guilders a month—roughly equivalent to that previously enjoyed by Jeronimus Cornelisz—and he was promised the chance of further promotion “according to opportunity and merit.”
The Defenders were rewarded, too. All Hayes’s common soldiers became cadets, with a salary of 10 guilders a month—a gesture that was not quite as generous as it sounds, since they already earned 8 or 9 guilders a month as privates. His sailors had their pay increased to the same figure. In addition, the Council of the Indies awarded all those who had “shown themselves faithful and piously resisted evil” in the Abrolhos an additional gratuity of two months’ wage, a bonus worth somewhere between 10 and 20 guilders a man. The two dozen sailors of the Sardam, who had helped Pelsaert to put down the mutiny, were given 100 pieces of eight (worth about 240 guilders in total) to share among themselves.
Hayes himself was not heard from again after landing in Batavia. There is no trace of him in the records of his hometown, Winschoten, but the archives there are so incomplete it cannot be said with any certainty whether he lived to return there. Perhaps he moved elsewhere and married, or took up residence in a crowded town such as Amsterdam, which he could now certainly afford. It is equally possible, however, that Jeronimus’s captor died somewhere in the Indies, perhaps in battle, but more likely manning an outpost on some distant island, of some unknown tropical disease.
Toward the end of December 1629, Gijsbert Bastiaensz sat down to write a letter to his family at home. Remarkably, his narrative of the mutiny—rambling and almost incoherent in places, and hurriedly composed