Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [224]
Died from illness, especially scurvy, during the voyage 10
Drowned during shipwreck, trying to swim ashore 40
Died on the island where the Batavia was wrecked, either fromillness or from drinking seawater 20
Reached the East Indies with the Batavia longboat 45
Murdered by Jeronimus Cornelisz by drowning, strangling, decapitation, orbutchery by axe 96
Executed by Wiebbe Hayes after being captured in their attack against hispositions on the Cats’ Island 4
Condemned to death and hanged on Seals’ Island 7
Condemned to death, then reprieved and abandoned on the continent 2
Died accidentally on board the Sardam during the return to Batavia 2
Arrived safely at Batavia on board the Sardam 68
Total 303
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PASSENGERS OF BOTH SEXES
Died of illness or thirst on Batavia’s Graveyard 9 children, 1woman
Killed by the mutineers 7 children, 12 women
Reached Batavia safe and sound on board the Sardam 2 children, 7women
Total 38
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Giving a total complement of 341, of whom 329 were apparently on board when the ship sailed. At least two babies are known to have been born on the ship, and a boy, Abraham Gerritsz, was picked up in Sierra Leone, while 10 other people died of illness during the voyage itself. This gave the Batavia a total complement of 332, which had been reduced to 322 by the time she was wrecked. Of these, a minimum of 110 were killed by Cornelisz’s men (in his journals Pelsaert puts this figure as “more than 120,” and on one occasion “124”), 82 died of accident and illness, 13 were executed or marooned, and the remainder survived to reach Batavia in either the retourschip’s longboat or the Sardam. In addition, however, Jan Evertsz at least, and probably Ariaen Jacobsz and Zwaantie Hendricx, died as a direct result of the events on board the ship, and five more mutineers were executed after their arrival at Batavia, taking the number of deaths associated with the mutiny and the shipwreck to as many as 218. There is still some possibility of error here, since accounts written in the Indies suggest that the longboat carried 48 people and not the 45 mentioned by the commandeur. Taking Pelsaert’s own estimates, however, 36.7 percent of the Batavia’s actual complement survived, and if Evertsz and the five minor mutineers executed in the Indies are excluded from those figures, and Jacobsz and his paramour included, on the grounds that their true fate remains unknown, the proportion falls to the figure cited: 116 survivors from the total complement of 332, or 34.9 percent.
Perhaps remarkably, no definitive list of the passengers and crew of the Titanic actually exists, but best estimates suggest that the total number of people on board was 1,284 passengers and 884 crew, a total of 2,168. Lists compiled of the survivors give from 703 (Board of Trade enquiry) to 803 people (consolidated list). My calculation assumes that the consolidated list favored by most researchers is correct, and that 37 percent of the liner’s complement therefore survived.
Travails of the year 1629 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), p. 1; Malcolm Uren, Sailormen’s Ghosts: The Abrolhos Islands in Three Hundred Years of Romance, History and Adventure (Melbourne: Robertson & Mullens, 1944), pp. 218–9. The apparent discrepancy between Van Diemen’s total of 74 survivors and Pelsaert’s figure of 77 is explained by the fact that these men—Pelsaert, Gerritsz, and Holloch—had originally escaped in the longboat and then returned in the Sardam.
Van Diemen’s letter Van Diemen to Pieter de Carpentier, 10 December 16298, ARA VOC 1009, cited by Henrietta Drake-Brockman, Voyage to Disaster (Nedlands, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 1995), pp. 49–50.
Goods salvaged from the wreck “Notice of the retrieved cash and goods taken with the Sardam to Batavia,” ARA VOC 1098, fol. 529r–529v, [R 218]. In an enclosure, Van Diemen listed all goods retrieved from the wreck