• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 480 0

The case in favor of Jacobsz’s guilt, which I tend to accept, lies in the allegations made by known mutineers during their later interrogations. Jacobsz was accused of plotting mutiny by Jan Hendricxsz and Allert Janssen as well as Jeronimus Cornelisz, and whispers of his complicity reached both the predikant and the commandeur. None of these men, with the exception of Pelsaert and Cornelisz, had much to gain by implicating the skipper, and their accounts are strikingly consistent. In the absence of records of Jacobsz’s interrogation at Batavia, which seem to have been lost, the matter will remain for ever unresolved. Interrogation of Jan Hendricxsz, JFP 19 Sep 1629 [DB 178]; verdict on Allert Janssen, JFP 28 Sep 1629 [DB 198]; Specx to Gentlemen XVII, 15 Dec 1629, ARA VOC 1009, cited by Drake-Brockman, Voyage to Disaster, pp. 62–3.

“Though it was common for the masters of East Indiamen to chafe . . .” As Jan Coen, the greatest of all governors of the Indies, observed of the VOC’s skippers, “ ‘The months go by,’ they say,” ‘[and] at sea we are lords and masters, whereas we are only servants in India . . . let us see if we cannot pick up a rich prize.’ ” Cited by C. R. Boxer, “The Dutch East-Indiamen: Their Sailors, Their Navigators and Life on Board, 1602–1795,” The Mariner’s Mirror 49 (1963): 90.

Jeronimus Cornelisz’s reasons for not returning to the United Provinces We do not know what sort of relationship Cornelisz enjoyed with Belijtgen Jacobsdr, or whether he loved her. The period following the death of a young child is naturally a traumatic one for any parents, and in addition to the normal feelings of guilt and despair, there may well have been recriminations between the parents concerning the choice of a wet nurse for their son and the reasons for the poor state of their business. In Cornelisz’s absence, Belijtgen was evidently impoverished and she was forced to move to an alleyway in a much less desirable part of Haarlem (see chapter 9). It is not unreasonable to suppose that husband and wife may have parted on bad terms.

Conditions for mutiny Jaap Bruijn and E. S. van Eyck van Heslinga (eds.), Muiterij, Oproer en Berechting op de Schepen van de VOC (Haarlem: De Boer Maritiem, 1980), pp. 7–8, 21–2, 26. For an equivalent study of Spain’s Indiamen, see Pablo Pérez-Mallaína, Spain’s Men of the Sea: Daily Life on the Indies Fleets in the Sixteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), pp. 211–2. The VOC experienced at least 44 mutinies during its two centuries in business, beginning with one on board the Middelburg in 1611. The Batavia mutiny was by far the bloodiest of them all. The rebellion that bore the closest resemblance to it occurred on board the ship Westfriesland in 1652. This mutiny was led by the upper steersman, Jacob Arentsen, who, thanks to his deficient navigation, had been passed over for promotion when the skipper died. Arentsen gathered 60 men around him and plotted to kill the other officers and sail the ship to Italy. Details of the plot leaked to the loyal officers on board; the upper-steersman was shot and four of his confederates thrown overboard. In this case, as in that of the Batavia, the presence of women on the ship was held to be a partial cause of the trouble. On the Windhond, in the eighteenth century, another group planned to seize the ship and turn pirate, and in this case they actually succeeded. Muiterij, pp. 22, 31–4.

The Meeuwtje mutiny Ibid., pp. 28–31.

Discipline on board Boxer, “The Dutch East-Indiamen,” pp. 98–9; C. R. Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empire 1600–1800 (London: Hutchinson, 1965), p. 71. Nevertheless, knife fights certainly did occur, and not just in the service of the VOC. One authority on the Spanish treasure fleet has estimated that half of all Iberian sailors bore the scars of such an encounter. Pérez-Mallaína, op. cit., pp. 220–1.

Keelhauling and dropping from the yard Bruijn and van Eyck van Heslinga, op. cit., pp. 23–4; Pérez-Mallaína, op. cit., p. 206.

“A man in whom Jacobsz had full confidence . . .” Another of the skipper’s relatives,