Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [216]
Murder of Cornelis Aldersz Confession of Jeronimus Cornelisz, 23 Sep 1629; interrogation of Jan Pelgrom, 23 Sep 1629; interrogation of Mattys Beer, 26 Sep 1629; verdict on Mattys Beer, JFP 28 Sep 1629, [DB 169, 190–1, 195, 208–11]. In writing up his interrogation of Pelgrom, Pelsaert tells this story twice in almost exactly the same words. My quotations have been pieced together from these two accounts. Further variants appear in the commandeur’s notes on Mattys Beer. Pelsaert says on four occasions that Aldersz was decapitated by Beer’s single stroke, but another reference in the journals says merely that the soldier “with one blow near enough struck off his head.”
The murder of Andries de Vries Verdict on Jeronimus Cornelisz, JFP 28 Sep 1629 [DB 174]; summary of the crimes of Rutger Fredricx, JFP 28 Sep 1629 [DB 156]; verdict on Rutger Fredricx, JFP 28 Sep 1629 [DB 207]; interrogation of Lenert van Os, JFP 23 Sep 1629 [DB 186–7]. The notion that Creesje and Andries shared a bond of friendship, and that De Vries was seen as an especial threat to the captain-general, arises from the fact that De Vries alone, rather than the mutineers in general, had sworn to forfeit his life if he ever talked to her.
The Selyns incident Confession of Wouter Loos, JFP 27 Oct 1629; verdict on Hans Jacob Heijlweck, 30 Nov 1629 [DB 226, 241].
Murder of Frans Jansz This incident took place on the High Island (Jansz was the only man to die there in the course of the mutiny), while Jeronimus and his principal lieutenants were negotiating with Wiebbe Hayes. A reserve body of mutineers stayed behind to act as reinforcements if required, and they had orders to dispose of Jansz while they were waiting for the others to return. Evidently Jeronimus had Hayes and his men firmly in mind at the time, and this must have help to crystallize his thought concerning the surgeon’s possible defection. Verdict on Hans Jacob Heijlweck, 30 Nov 1629 [DB 241].
“. . . creatures of miraculous form . . .” This was Pelsaert’s description of the tammar. The commandeur was the first Westerner ever to observe and describe marsupials, and his journal thus has considerable scientific as well as historical value. JFP 15 Nov 1629 [DB 235–6].
Wells According to one Defender, the wells were “50, 60 or even 100 vademen deep, being very sweet water.” Letter of 11 Dec 1629 in Leyds Veer-Schuyts Praetjen, Tuschen een Koopman ende Borger van Leyden, Varende van Haarlem nae Leyden (np [Amsterdam: Willem Jansz], 1630), pp. 15–8 [R 231]. The fact that two wells were discovered is mentioned by Pelsaert, JFP 20 Sep 1629 [DB 149]. Otherwise, see The ANCODS Colloquium, p. 99; Jeremy Green and Myra Stanbury, “Even More Light on a Confusing Geographical Puzzle, Part 1: Wells, Cairns and Stone Structures on West Wallabi Island,” Underwater Explorers’ Club News (January 1982): p. 2; Hugh Edwards, Islands of Angry Ghosts (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1966), pp. 174–5. Edwards comments that he finds it hard to believe it can have taken Hayes’s men almost three weeks to find the larger cisterns; an unresolved mystery. In any case, we are told that the quality of the water was excellent; it tasted “very sweet, like milk.” LGB.
Food Letter of 11 Dec 1629 in Leyds Veer-Schuyts Praetjen, Tuschen een Koopman ende Borger van Leyden, Varende van Haarlem nae Leyden, pp. 15–8 [R 231]. Shellfish were also available in abundance on the islands, but Dutchmen of the seventeenth century despised them as the poorest sort of food, and would have eaten oysters and mussels only in extremis. Gijsbert Bastiaensz, who spent some weeks on the island, commented on the fecundity of the island in very similar terms: “Miraculously God has blessed the good ones . . . with Water, with fowls, with fish, with other Beasts, with eggs in basketfull; there were also some Beasts which they called Cats with as nice