Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [196]
“. . . readily accepted the caresses of the skipper . . .” Ibid.
“. . . who has done his will with her . . .” Confession of Allert Janssen, 19 Sep 1629 [DB 196].
“He took from her the name and yoke of servant . . .” “Declaration in Short,” JFP nd (Dec 1629?) [DB 250].
“I am still for the Devil . . .” Confession of Jeronimus Cornelisz, JFP 19 Sep 1629 [DB 164].
Pelsaert’s illness No details of the symptoms survive, and there are only the vaguest hints that it was the recurrence of a fever Pelsaert had experienced before. Drake-Brockman, Voyage to Disaster, p. 32, speculates that it was malaria. This is not unlikely, but it is no more than a guess.
Frans Jansz Research in the archives of Hoorn has failed to reveal any definite trace of this man, whose name, unfortunately, was one of the most common in the Dutch Republic at this time. The solicitors’ archives of the city, though indexed, are extremely incomplete for the period up to 1660.
Barber-surgeons The duality of their role was perhaps best expressed in their equipment. Frans Jansz took with him a set of matching brass bowls, which fitted together as a pair. One, which had a semicircle matching the diameter of a man’s neck cut from one side, was for shaving his patients. The other, which had a circle matching the diameter of an arm, was for bleeding them. The bowls were recovered from the seabed in the Abrolhos in the 1970s. 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), pp. 95–6.
“. . . they would not cut veins instead of nerves . . .” G. A. Lindeboom, “Medical Education in the Netherlands 1575–1750,” in C. D. O’Malley (ed.), The History of Medical Education (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1970), p. 201.
Health care on board Sick parades were held on the main deck twice daily, immediately before or after morning and evening prayers. The provost summoned the sick by striking his baton against the mainmast and chanting
Kreupelen en blinden Cripples and blind men
Komt laat U verbinden Come and be bandaged
Boven bij den grooten mast Gather by the mainmast
Zult gij den Meester vinden Where you will find the master
Surgeons were naturally vulnerable to all manner of infectious diseases, and part of their standard equipment was a brush with which to remove any lice that might leap from their patients’ sick beds onto their own clothes. M. Boucher, “The Cape Passage: Some Observations on Health Hazards Aboard Dutch East Indiamen Outward-bound,” Historia 26 (1981); 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. 202; Iris Bruijn, “The Health Care Organization of the Dutch East India Company at Home,” Social History of Medicine 7 (1994): 371–2. By the second half of the seventeenth century, the typical staff of a retourschip was three surgeons, so the Batavia was in effect understaffed.
Sea exams Iris Bruijn, op. cit., p. 371. These examinations were easier to pass than the equivalent exam for surgeons intending to work on land, and were deliberately made so in order to attract candidates to the service of the VOC. Not every chamber insisted on them in any case, though at least one—the Zeeland chamber—introduced them as early as 1610.
Jan Loxe Cited by Boxer, “The Dutch East-Indiamen,” p. 97. For a while, late in the century, VOC surgeons were required to keep journals and submit them to the Gentlemen XVII on their return. This archive