Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [203]
One key feature of the Zeewijk’s camp was the way in which the officers retained control of the supplies salvaged from the wreck of their ship and kept their distance from the men. They pitched their tent on their island’s highest point and kept all the salvaged victuals there. The soldiers occupied a separate site about 100 yards along the beach, but both the common sailors and the petty officers were kept farther away, on the far side of the soldiers’ camp, apparently because they posed a significant threat to the officers’ authority and even their lives.
The example of the Zeewijk survivors also provides some clues as to what happened next. Despite the presence of both the skipper and the upper-merchant, the shortage of supplies meant that discipline was a constant problem on the islands. The petty officers and the seamen sometimes refused to accept their officers’ authority to ration the supplies, and on at least three occasions near-mutinies forced the distribution of stores that should really have been rationed.
The Zeewijk’s officers and the VOC officials, who were outnumbered eight to one by the rest of the survivors, seemed to have solved this problem by forming a loose alliance with the soldiers. Analysis of the animal bones found at the various sites suggests that the retourschip’s troops enjoyed significantly better rations than the petty officers, whose main diet was sea lion. In exchange for these privileges, the soldiers provided an armed guard for the supply tent. Even so, the officers’ authority over the sailors remained extremely fragile. The petty officers retained control of the ship’s boat, and used it to roam freely around the islands. There is no sign that they stockpiled food at their main camp site, and it seems likely that they used their superior experience and skills to catch and eat a good deal of fresh food for themselves.
It seems unlikely that the Batavia survivors’ camp was even this well ordered. The Zeewijk carried no women and no passengers, and the officers stayed on the islands with the men. The Batavia survivors, on the other hand, were a more disparate group and had no natural leaders. If the example of the Zeewijk is any guide, discipline would quickly have broken down and the petty officers would have become almost impossible to control.
The first of the near-mutinies referred to above occurred when the petty officers and common hands forced the distribution of 1.5 aums of wine among the men; on another, “all the rabble as well as the petty officers” ordered an aum of wine to be distributed equally among them, as well as five Edam cheeses, six kegs of salted fish and some tobacco. On the third occasion, the high boatswain, the gunner and the boatswain’s mate took bread and pork barrels from the store and gave each of the petty officers 12 loaves. The officers themselves were not immune to such temptation; one day the longboat was seized by an officer and several petty officers and rowed to a distant point, where the men on board consumed a large quantity of food, drink, and tobacco rather than share it with their colleagues. Finally, when the Zeewijk’s longboat set out for Java, the composition of her crew was decided by the drawing of lots, a procedure insisted on by the men. Boranga, op. cit., pp. 6–9, 31–3, 93–104; Edwards, op. cit., pp. 107–8, 110–2, 118–9.
208 people on the island Anonymous letter of 11 Dec 1629 [R 232].
Water and wine from the wreck JFP 17 Sep 1629 [DB 145].
Store tent There is no mention of such a tent in the available sources, but as such a tent was a feature of practically every shipwreck survivors’ camp, including that of the Zeewijk, it seems safe to assume that there would have been one on Batavia’s Graveyard, too.
Water ration This estimate is calculated from the standard daily ration, which was 3 pints (1.5 liters) of water. R. van Gelder, Het Oost-Indisch Avontuur: Duitsers in Dienst van de VOC, 1600–1800 (Nijmegen: SUN,