Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [185]
“. . . 30 guns . . .” Bert Westera, “Geschut voor de Batavia,” in Robert Parthesius (ed.), Batavia Cahier 2: De Herbouw van een Oostindiïvaarder (Lelystad: np, 1990), pp. 22–5.
“. . . the most complex machines yet built . . .” Pablo Pérez-Mallaína’s observation, made of sixteenth-century Spanish merchantmen, applies equally to the Dutch East Indiamen of the next century. “A multi-decked ship . . . formed a floating collection of the incredible successes achieved by human ingenuity to that time. [Such ships were] veritable showcases of the technological developments of western Europe. They were the most complex machines of the epoch.” Spain’s Men of the Sea: Daily Life on the Indies Fleets in the Sixteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), p. 63.
Fluyt and jacht Jaap Bruijn and Femme S. Gaastra, “The Dutch East India Company’s Shipping, 1602–1795, in a Comparative Perspective,” in Bruijn and Gaastra (eds.), Ships, Sailors and Spices: East India Companies and Their Shipping in the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries (Amsterdam: NEHA, 1993), p. 185; Davies, op. cit., p. 49.
“. . . in as little as six months . . .” Eight to 12 months was perhaps closer to the average, but still a remarkable achievement.
“. . . the VOC flogged its ships . . .” Bruijn et al., Dutch-Asiatic Shipping, I, 27–8, 95.
“virtually no demand for European goods . . .” The only significant exports at this time were lead and mercury.
The prefabricated gateway This gateway, salvaged and restored, can be viewed in the Western Australian Maritime Museum in Fremantle. See Marit van Huystee, The Lost Gateway of Jakarta (Fremantle: Western Australian Maritime Museum, 1994) and the epilogue for additional details.
Coinage on board Especially the fabled stukken van achten. These “pieces of eight,” which came from Spanish mines in South America, could be counted on to contain silver of a fixed purity and value, but with the renewal of the war against Spain in the early 1620s, supplies of this superior coinage dried up, and the VOC was forced to export less well regarded Dutch and German coinage instead. The enduring clamor for silver posed particular problems for the Gentlemen XVII in the 1620s. The occasional spectacular naval victory might secure substantial quantities of freshly minted reals for Jan Company; indeed, in 1628 Admiral Piet Hein captured the entire annual Spanish treasure fleet off the coast of Cuba. But the Batavia sailed before this fortune made its way into circulation, and carried a heterogeneous collection of coins from the principalities of northern Germany (a region that, thanks to the notorious economic madness known as the kipper- und wipperzeit [ca. 1600–1623], had acquired an unenviable reputation for producing clipped coins and debased coinage). Glamann, op. cit., pp. 41–51; Phillip Playford, Carpet of Silver: The Wreck of the Zuytdorp (Nedlands, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 1996), pp. 10, 43–5. For the kipper- und wipperzeit, see Charles Kindleberger, “The Economic Crisis of 1619 to 1623,” Journal of Economic History 51 (1991). Jan Company’s success in opening up the Indies trade eventually caused significant problems for the Dutch economy. So much silver was shipped out to the East that the States-General was forced to pass a law forbidding more than two-thirds of the bullion coming into the country to be reexported. Stan Wilson, Doits to Ducatoons: The Coins of the Dutch East India Company Ship Batavia, Lost on the Western Australian Coast 1629 (Perth: Western Australian Museum, 1989), pp. 3–11.
The need for diplomacy Kolff and van Santen, op. cit., p. 11.
Pelsaert’s return from India Ibid., pp. 29, 37–41; confession of Jeronimus Cornelisz, JFP 19 Sep 1629 [DB 163–4]; Henrietta Drake-Brockman, Voyage to Disaster (Nedlands, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 1995), pp. 32–3.
Wollebrand Gheleijnsen de Jongh De Jongh (1594–1674) was head of the VOC settlement at Burhanpur and much less experienced in India than Pelsaert.