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*56Bottles with a narrow neck and substantial circumference.

*57“Knighthood of Holland.”

*58“Fortune.”

*59She was named after a village in Zeeland.

*60Edwards’s team had thought him less than 20 and speculated that the body might have been that of Andries de Vries.

*61Pelsaert’s journals cannot solve the mystery; a total of 108 deaths are mentioned in its pages, but the commandeur does not include Abraham Hendricx or the dead Defender, Dircxsz, among the casualties and is never precise about the number of sick people killed by Andries de Vries on 13 July.

Notes

Abbreviations Used in the Notes

ALE Authorisatieboecken (Authorisation Books), in GAL

ARA Algemeen RijksArchief (General State Archive), The Hague

CLE Certificaatboeken (Certificate Books), in GAL

DB Henrietta Drake-Brockman, Voyage to Disaster

G Philippe Godard, The First and Last Voyage of the Batavia

GAA Gemeente Archief (Municipal Archive), Amsterdam

GAD Gemeente Archief, Dordrecht

GAH Gemeente Archief, Haarlem

GAL Gemeente Archief, Leeuwarden

HTI Hypotheekboecken Tietjerksteradeel (Tietjerksteradeel mortage books), inRAF

JFP Journal of Francisco Pelsaert, 4 June–5 December 1629, in ARA; printededitions in DB and R

LGB “Copy of an original letter, by Gijsbert Bastiaensz . . . .” in OV,printed editions in DB and R

NKD Notulen van de Kerkeraad van Dordrecht (Records of the Church Council ofDordrecht)

ONAD Oud-Notarieel Archief (Old Solicitors’ Archive), Dordrecht

ONAH Oud-Notarieel Archief, Haarlem

OV Ongeluckige Voyagie, Van ’t Schip Batavia . . . (1647); printededition in G

R V. D. Roeper (ed.), De Schipbreuk van de Batavia, 1629

r Recto

RAF RijksArchief in Friesland (Provincial Archive of Frisia)

TR Transportregisters (Registers of transfers of interest), in GAD

v Verso

General

THE WRECK OF THE Batavia was one of the more sensational events of the seventeenth century, and it attracted considerable contemporary interest. A number of pamphlets on the subject were published, some when news of the disaster first reached the United Provinces, and others two decades later when there was a surge of interest in travel literature in the Netherlands. The most popular of these pamphlets were published in several editions and must have achieved a relatively wide circulation. Consequently, the events of the mutiny remained fairly well known, in the United Provinces at least, for 30 or 40 years afterward.

During the second half of the seventeenth century, the Batavia’s story was gradually forgotten, and references to the mutiny become progressively scarcer. Interest did not revive until the late nineteenth century, when the Abrolhos became a center of the guano trade and excavations on the islands began to turn up artifacts that were thought to have come from the ship (but which, it eventually emerged, in fact came from later, less well known wrecks); and after that, publications on the subject began to appear in Australia as well as the Netherlands. The rediscovery of the wreck of the Batavia in 1963, which coincided with the publication of one of the key historical works on the subject, significantly increased interest in the subject, though even in the last 40 years the Batavia story has remained little known outside the two countries most closely connected with it. In the last quarter of a century the wreck site has been thoroughly excavated, adding substantially to our knowledge of the ship. Several accounts of the Batavia’s story have been published in Dutch and German over the last 10 years, but none in English, and this is the first book to make use of freshly discovered information from provincial archives across the Netherlands.

Eyewitness Accounts

The accounts of the Batavia disaster that have come down to us are unusually detailed for such a relatively early period. Moreover, the evidence that does survive covers the ship’s story from several different perspectives. We have accounts, however fragmentary, written by people who sailed to the Indies in the ship’s longboat,