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the proportion of salt to meat in naval stores was so high that when it was cooked in brine the salt content actually fell. The salting itself had to be done with rock salt; modern free-flowing table salts seal the meat too quickly, leaving it badly cured and with a bitter taste. Also on the menu on an East Indiaman were oatmeal, butter (which turned rancid very quickly), and Dutch cheese—the last made from the thinnest of skinned milk and so hard that sailors were known to carve spare buttons from it. C. R. Boxer, “The Dutch East-Indiamen: Their Sailors, Their Navigators and Life on Board, 1602–1795,” The Mariner’s Mirror 49 (1963): 94–5; Sue Shepherd, Pickled, Potted and Canned: The Story of Food Preserving (London: Headline, 2000), pp. 26–8, 34, 44–8, 54–6, 67, 85, 196–7, 198–9; N. A. M. Rodger, The Wooden World, pp. 82, 92. For contemporary views of potatoes, see Paul Zumthor, Daily Life in Rembrandt’s Holland (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1962), p. 71. On the occasional lethality of the hold, see The Wooden World, p. 106.

Wine, beer, and water Bruijn et al., Dutch-Asiatic Shipping, I, 160; Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empire, pp. 74–5; Willem Vos, “Een Rondleiding Door een Oostindiïvaarder,’ Batavia Cahier 4: Een Rondleiding door een Oostindiïvaarder (Lelystad: np, 1993), p. 4; see also Pérez-Mallaína, op. cit., pp. 141–3, 149.

“About as hot as if it were boiling” Comment by Governor-General Gerard Reynst, made on board ship off Sierra Leone in 1614 and quoted by Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empire, p. 74.

Pass-times Jeremy Green, The Loss of the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie Retourschip Batavia, Western Australia 1629: An Excavation Report and Catalogue of Artefacts (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1989), p. 177; Van Gelder, op. cit., pp. 165–6; M. Barend-van Haeften, Op Reis met de VOC, pp. 66, 72.

“Sir Francis Drake . . .” N. A. M. Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea, p. 325.

Scarcity of possessions For example, among the dead of the Belvliet (1712), Mattys Roeloffsz left an estate comprising “a little tobacco, a few short pipes, and some odds and ends, which altogether was sold by public auction . . . for 2 guilders and 10 stuivers” and gunner Steven Dircksz “a linen undershirt and underpants, a blue-striped undershirt and pants, a watchcoat, an old mattress, an old woollen shirt, two white shirts, a blue shirt, a pair of new shoes, an old English bonnet, a handkerchief, a pair of scissors and a knife,” together worth 16 guilders, 18 stuivers. It is unlikely many of the men on the Batavia took with them more than that. Playford, Carpet of Silver, pp. 51–2; see also Barend-van Haeften, Op Reis met de VOC, pp. 60, 63.

Cornelisz discusses his ideas LGB.

Ports of call Bruijn et al., Dutch-Asiatic Shipping, I, 60–1.

Sierra Leone Adam Jones (ed.), West Africa in the Mid-Seventeenth Century: An Anonymous Dutch Manuscript (London: African Studies Association, 1994); Joe Alie, A New History of Sierra Leone (London: Macmillan, 1990), pp. 13–37; V. D. Roeper (ed.), De Schipbreuk van de Batavia, 1629 (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 1994), p. 15.

Abraham Gerritsz Verdict on Abraham Gerritsz, JFP 12 Nov 1629 [DB 232]; list of people on board the Batavia, nd (1629–30), ARA VOC 1098, fol. 582r. [R 220].

The Wagenspoor, the equator, and the Horse Latitudes Bruijn et al., Dutch-Asiatic Shipping, I, p. 65 contains a description of the “cart-track.” Van Gelder, op. cit., pp. 60, 165–6, discusses fun and games; Green, op. cit., p. 163, describes the recovery of some of the Batavia’s pipes and tongs; the Batavia’s likely route is detailed by 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. 191 and Bruijn, “Between Batavia and the Cape,” p. 255. For trapped animals, dried feces, and melted candles, see M. Barend-van Haeften and A. J. Gelderblom, op. cit., pp. 70–1. On the fear of fire at sea—it was a