Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [150]
Nevertheless, Pelsaert had given Loos and Pelgrom some hope of eventual salvation by clearly stating in their instructions that they should “look out keenly” between the months of April and July, “the time that the ships make the South-Land there” in the hope of rescue, and later Dutch ships were occasionally instructed to watch out for signs of the mutineers and to take them on board them if the men themselves desired it. In 1636 a certain Gerrit Thomasz Pool was given command of two jachten, the Cleen Amsterdam and the Wesel, and a commission to explore the whole known coast of Australia; his sailing instructions reminded him that “Francisco Pelsaert having AD 1629 put ashore two Dutch delinquents, who had in due form of justice been sentenced to forfeit their lives, you will grant passage to the said persons, if they should be alive to show themselves.” Pool was killed in New Guinea, however, long before he could reach the Western Australian coast, and although Abel Tasman—sent to circumnavigate the continent*53 in 1644—was also furnished with specific instructions regarding the wreck of the Batavia, the two mutineers, and the VOC’s missing chests of money, he too turned back before reaching the Abrolhos.
Tasman’s orders made it clear that the Company’s main interest in the Batavia mutineers was the hope that they would have acquired valuable information about the interior resources of the red continent; the old tales of Beach and its limitless reserves of gold had not yet been relegated to the realms of legend. It is interesting to speculate on what the great navigator might actually have found had he ever reached the spot where the two men had been put ashore. Pelgrom and Loos would have been no more than 33 and 39 years old in 1644—assuming they had survived at all—and in 1697 the Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh found a well-made clay hut, with sloping roofs, by Wittecarra spring. It had been built in quite a different style to those usually found in the area, and it has since been suggested (on no sure evidence) that it must have been built by Dutchmen. If that is the case, it was almost certainly constructed by the two Batavia mutineers, and a landing party seeking water might conceivably have encountered Cornelisz’s men.
In the event, no real attempt was ever made—by Jan Company or anyone else—to discover what had become of the two mutineers, but Loos and Pelgrom did not remain alone in Australia for long. During its 200-year history, the VOC lost 1 in 50 of its ships outward bound, and nearly 1 in 20 on the return voyage, a total of 246 vessels. At least 3 of these ships, and possibly as many as 8 or 10, were wrecked along the western coast. A minimum of 75 more Dutchmen, and perhaps as many as 200, are known to have been cast up on the South-Land as a result.
The first of these disasters occurred in 1656, when the Vergulde Draeck,*54 a retourschip from Amsterdam, ran aground on a reef three miles off the coast and about 50 miles north of the present-day city of Perth. Sixty-eight members of the crew reached land, and three men from a rescue ship were subsequently abandoned in the same area when they ventured into the bush in search of them and became lost. At least a few of these men probably survived for some time, for a variety of apparently Dutch artifacts—from ship’s planking to an incense urn with a Chinese dragon entwined around its stem—have turned up inland from the wreck site since the ship ran aground.
The Vergulde Draeck was followed by the Zuytdorp,*55 which vanished in 1712 with all 200 of her crew. Her fate only became