Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [187]
Initial impressions of the ship R. van Gelder, Het Oost-Indisch Avontuur: Duitsers in Dienst van de VOC, 1600–1800 (Nijmegen: SUN, 1997), p. 149. In his account of the Georgian Royal Navy, N. A. M. Rodger recounts a British boy’s first impressions of being “registered in a wooden world” a little more than a century later, which were quite similar. Life on board was quite different to life ashore in almost every aspect; sailors had their own society, manners and dress, the boy observed. “Nor could I think what world I was in, whether among spirits of devils. All seemed strange, different language and strange expressions of tongue, that I thought myself always asleep or in a dream, and never properly awake.” The Wooden World (London: Fontana, 1988), p. 37.
The Great Cabin It measured approximately 20 feet by 15 and enjoyed good head room, though—like every cabin in the stern—its steeply sloping floor made it treacherous in any sea.
Creesje Jansdochter For her use of the diminutive, see GAA, baptismal registers 40, fol. 157 (30 January 1622), which records the birth of her first son.
The life and times of Gijsbert Bastiaensz For his marriage, see GAD, marital registers 17 (1604–1618) for 10 February 1604. On the burial of his child, see GAD, burial registers 1692 for September 1613. Neither the name nor the sex of the child are specified in the register, but the only candidates for the burial are Pieter Gijsbertsz (baptized March 1610) and Hester (baptized July 1612), for whom see GAD baptismal registers 3 (1605–1619). Since a passing reference in JFP (sentence on Jeronimus Cornelisz, 28 Sep 1629) mentions another child, Willemijntgie, as the “middle daughter” of the family, it would appear that only three girls were alive at that time, and that Hester must therefore have been the child buried in 1613. For the horse-mill, see GAD, TR 747 fol. 95. The mill was acquired from Neeltgen Willemsdr, widow of the miller Cornelis Gillisz, on 7 May 1604. For the land Gijsbert acquired for grazing horses, see ONAD 23, fols. 252–252v, which records that the predikant had rented five morgen (a morgen is two and a quarter acres) from Walvaren van Arckel in the nearby village of Dubbeldam. Bastiaensz also owned some additional property through his wife in the Steechoversloot, the Dordrecht street where he and his family lived; see GAD TR 766, fol. 99v. For the predikant’s service as one of the 10 elders on the church council in Dordrecht, see GAD NKD 3, fol. 38v; NKD 3, fol. 115; ibid., fol. 158v; ibid., fol. 248; NKD 4, fol. 48. Records suggestive of Gijsbert Bastiaensz’s status in the community are relatively abundant. His name appears 15 times in the indexes to the solicitors’ records of Dordrecht; for his services in witnessing notarial acts, see, e.g., ONAD 3, fol. 21v; for his work as a member of a 1616 arbitration committee, see ONAD 53, fol. 63; and for his duties as an executor of the will of Willem Jansz Slenaer, in September 1618, see ONAD 54, fol. 23v.
“His scant surviving writings . . .” The predikant’s only known written legacy is the letter he penned in December 1629 describing his experiences on the Batavia, published in the second (1649) edition of the pamphlet Ongeluckige Voyagie, Van ’t Schip Batavia. This document is hereafter referred to as LGB.
“Gijsbert Bastiaensz was later to confess . . .” LGB.
Dordrecht noted for its orthodoxy Israel, The Dutch Republic, p. 382.
Maria Schepens For the history of the Schepens family, see GAD, Familie-archief 85, a notebook relating to the ancestors of Matthijs Balen. This book, which lacks pagination, contains a section on the genealogy of the Schepenses. From this it appears that Maria was the last of 12 children born as a result of her father’s two marriages, the first betrothal being to Elisabeth van Relegem of Brussels, in 1555, and the second to one Judith Willemsdr in about 1570–2. Pieter Schepens came from Beringe in the province of Liège and was thus probably a member of the diaspora that resulted from the persecution of the non-Catholic