Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [205]
“Acting very subtly . . .” “Declaration in Short” [DB 251].
The mutineers’ tents Ibid. [DB 252].
“Discouraged the ship’s carpenters . . .” This is interpretation, but it is difficult to imagine what else Pelsaert might have meant by his passing reference to the under-merchant “practising devilish shifts in such a manner as to prevent them going to Batavia.” “Declaration in Short” [DB 251]. In 1727, the survivors of the Zeewijk built quite a large one-masted sloop, the Slopje, from the wreckage of their retourschip and successfully sailed her to Java.
“He said that the number . . .” LGB.
“Nothing but some biscuit barrels” There was also a note written by Pelsaert, which was found tucked beneath a barrel. From this, the survivors learned what they had already guessed; that their commandeur had sailed on to the South-Land in search of water. JFP 6 June 1629 [DB 127].
The naming of Traitors’ Island The derivation of the name is not actually explained in Pelsaert’s journals. For the naming and the location of this island, see Green. et al, The ANCODS Colloquium, pp. 99–100.
The Seals’ Island party The actual figure is nowhere given in the journals but seems to have been 45; 18 men and boys died on the island on 15 July, and 16 women, boys, and children on 21 July, and we are told three boys were captured and about eight escaped. Another estimate does suggest the party was larger—perhaps 60 strong—but this has to be wrong; there must have been about 130 people left on Batavia’s Graveyard when the killings began, if the account of the killings given in JFP is correct. For the larger estimate, see anonymous letter of 11 Dec 1629 [R 232].
Jeronimus’s promise to the people of Traitors’ Island Interrogation of Jan Hendricxsz, JFP 19 Sep 1629 [DB 179].
“Toward the end of the third week of June” Hayes and his men were on the islands about 20 days before finding water (JFP 20 Sep 1629 [DB 149]), landing first on what was later known as High Island and then, when they were unable to find wells, wading across the mudflats to what became Wiebbe Hayes’s Island (LGB). Their signals appear to have been noticed on 9 July, when Pieter Jansz and his party abruptly left Traitors’ Island for the high islands and had to be intercepted by Cornelisz’s men (Verdict on Jan Hendricxsz, JFP 28 Sep 1629 [DB 183]). This would give an approximate date of 20 June for Hayes’s arrival on the High Land itself.
“High Land” The phrase comes from LGB.
“Some of the boldest soldiers . . .” Ibid.
Wiebbe Hayes The baptismal and marriage records of Winschoten, in the Provincial Archive of Groningen, date only to 1646, and the burial registers only begin in 1723; no traces of Hayes’s early life have yet emerged. The files of Winschoten marriage contracts date to 1608, but Hayes’s name does not appear among them. A check on signatures in the surviving solicitors’ records for the period 1624–28 also produced nothing, but Hayes may simply have been too poor and insignificant to have had any need of solicitors. Alternatively, he may not have come from Groningen. “Wiebbe”—pronounced “Webb-uh”—is a Frisian name, which was unusual even for the time and is now obsolescent, so perhaps Hayes and Cornelisz had that origin in common. If he survived to return to the Netherlands, Hayes might have been rich enough to leave more trace of his activities, but no sign of him has yet emerged. There is, for example, no record in the local burial registers of a Wiebbe Hayes ever being buried in Amsterdam.
Hayes known to Cornelisz The under-merchant later wrote to the French mercenaries in Hayes’s party that he had “a particular liking for and trust in Wiebbe Hayes.” His letter was intended to split Hayes’s Defenders, and Cornelisz would have found it important to have retained at least the veneer of truthfulness in setting out his case. It seems unlikely that he would simply have lied outright about