Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [197]
Amputations The contemporary English surgeon William Clowes set out the approved method of amputating a limb as follows:
• The surgeon should secure a good strong operating table.
• One assistant should sit astride the patient, holding both arms.
• Another should sit on the leg concerned athwart the thigh, holding it in place and applying a tourniquet to deaden sensation and staunch blood flow.
• Specially sharpened saws, double-edged amputation knives, and scalpels were to be used to cut through bone and tissue, muscle, and sinew.
• Severed blood vessels were to be stoppered with plugs or powder, the vessels stitched, and the wound packed.
As little as 4 oz. of blood, Clowes added, might be lost by this method. J. J. Keevil, C. S. Lloyd, and J. L. S. Coulter, Medicine and the Navy, 1200–1900 (4 vols., Edinburgh, 1957–1963), I, p. 133.
The sea surgeon’s apothecary’s chest Ibid., pp. 32, 200; Iris Bruijn, op. cit., p. 367.
Treatment of malaria Laurence Brockliss and Colin Jones, The Medical World of Early Modern France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 160n.
Sick bays and sick visitors Bruijn et al., Dutch-Asiatic Shipping, I, p. 161. The recovery of those in the sick bay must usually have owed more to the better food they received there than to the quality of the medical treatment. Boxer, “The Dutch East-Indiamen,” p. 97; Pérez-Mallaína, op. cit., p. 183.
“Uncircumcised idiots” Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empire, p. 136.
13 May “Declaration in Short,” JFP nd (Dec 1629?).
Zwaantie’s pregnancy Interrogation of Allert Janssen, JFP 19 Sep 1629 [DB 194–7].
“The skipper and Jeronimus” Ibid.
The assault on Creesje Jans Ibid.; verdict on Cornelis Janssen, alias Bean, [DB 241–3] JFP 3 Dec 1629 [DB 241–3]; letter of an anonymous survivor, December 1629, published in Leyds Veer-Schuyts Praetjen, Tuschen een Koopman ende Borger van Leyden, Varende van Haarlem nae Leyden (np [Amsterdam: Willem Jansz], 1630).
“We have an assault upon our hands” Interrogation of Allert Janssen, JFP 19 Sep 1629 [DB 194–7]. The men were assured by Evertsz that the attack was no more than a “trick,” which may have lessened any concerns they had about participating. See also Antonio van Diemen to Pieter Carpentier, 15 Dec 1629, ARA VOC 1009, cited by Drake-Brockman, Voyage to Disaster, pp. 62–3. This letter refers to statements and enclosures concerning the assault on Creesje, which have, very unfortunately, been lost. There is thus no direct statement in the few surviving letters that mention the case or in the Batavia journals to suggest an actual assault, though the whole attack had obvious sexual overtones. Committed as it was in an exposed position, close to the Great Cabin and almost next to the steersman’s position, the blackening of Lucretia Jans can hardly have lasted for more than a few seconds, however. There would have been no time for a serious sexual assault or rape.
“Innate and incankered corruptness” That at least was Pelsaert’s view, though the boy actually killed no one during the mutiny and eventually received a relatively light punishment. Verdict on Cornelis Janssen of Haarlem, JFP 3 Dec 1629 [DB 241–3].
Cornelis Dircxsz Interrogation of Allert Janssen, 19 Sep 1629 [DB 195]. “I will not have anything to do with it, for surely something else will follow on that,” the gunner is reported to have said. “Not at all,” Evertsz is recorded as answering. “I shall take the consequences, whatever comes from it.” Unhappily for the high boatswain, this was all too true; see chapter 6.
“. . . very violently and in the highest degree . . .” “Declaration in Short,” JFP nd ?Dec 1629 [DB 250].
“This has been the true aim . . .” Ibid.
“. . . the commandeur was merely biding his time . . .” “So that when the Commandeur should put the culprits of this act into chains,” Pelsaert’s journal continues, “they would jump into the Cabin and throw the Commandeur overboard, and in such a way they would seize the ship.” “Declaration in Short,” JFP