Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [235]
Skeletons Hunneybun, pp. 1.4a, 3.14, 4.2–4.13, 5.2–5.7; Myra Stanbury (ed.), Abrolhos Islands Archaeological Sites: Interim Report (Fremantle: Australian National Centre of Excellence for Maritime Archaeology, 2000), pp. 5–10; The ANCODS Colloquium, pp. 159–61; Juliïtte Pasveer, Alanah Buck, and Marit van Huystee, “Victims of the Batavia Mutiny: Physical Anthropological and Forensic Studies of the Beacon Island skeletons,” Bulletin of the Australian Institute for Maritime Archaeology 22 (1998): 45–50; Edwards, op. cit., pp. 3–7, 165–6; author’s interviews with Juliïtte Pasveer, Alanah Buck, and Stephen Knott, 12–13 June 2000. The seven bodies in the grave pit consist of five partial skeletons and two separate sets of teeth. In the case of “Jan Dircx,” who was exhumed by Max Cramer in 1963, the musket ball has been separated from the body and now lies mounted as part of a display in the dining room of the Batavia Motor Inn motel in Geraldton. “Dircx,” if that is who he was, suffered from rickets and was so physically immature he must have made a poor sort of soldier. His body (catalogued as BAT A15508) has no skull, but a similarly weathered skull, BAT A15831, may belong to it. The two relics have been attributed ages of 16–18 and 18–23, respectively, which is how I have arrived at an estimated age of 18 for this body.
Death of Jacop Hendricxen Drayer Sentence on Jan Hendricxsz, JFP 28 Sep 1629 [DB 183]. Buck’s reexamination of this body has revealed no trace of the broken shoulder that some early writers on the subject say the skeleton displays.
The death toll in the islands Pelsaert to the Gentlemen XVII of Amsterdam, 12 Dec 1629 ARA VOC 1630II [DB 259]; “Note regarding the fate of the people embarked on board the Batavia,” ARA VOC 1098, fol. 582r [R 220]. It is hard to know what Pelsaert meant by “children.” Certainly the Batavia’s cabin boys must have been included among the 96 “employees of the VOC,” but when the offspring of Pieter Jansz, Claudine Patoys, Hans and Anneken Hardens, and Mayken Cardoes are added to the six children of the predikant, the number of children definitely known to have been killed in the archipelago rises to at least 10. Conversely, if we take “children” to mean those under the age of, say, 10, and count Bastiaensz’s three daughters as “women,” thus correcting the number of children who died to the number given by the commandeur, the number of female deaths cannot be less than 14. Bernandine Hunneybun, in Skullduggery on Beacon Island (BSc Hons dissertation, University of Western Australia, 1995), section 5-5, suggests a total death toll of 137 in the archipelago, including the 11 mutineers who died on Seals’ and Wiebbe Hayes’s Islands.
“. . . more than 120” “Declaration in Short,” JFP nd [DB 248].
“. . . all but two of the children . . .” The exceptions were one child who was among those who fled to Wiebbe Hayes, and the babe in arms who reached Batavia in the longboat.
“. . . almost two-thirds of the women . . .” There were seven survivors among the 20 women on the ship: Creesje Jans, Zwaantie Hendricx, Judick Bastiaens, Zussie and Tryntgien Fredricx, either Anneken Bosschieter, or Marretgie Louys, and the unnamed mother who sailed on the longboat.
Pelsaert on Jacobsz’s responsibility “Declaration in Short,” op. cit.; see also Drake-Brockman, op. cit., p. 61.
“Torrentian” JFP 30 Sep 1629 [DB 212] (where the word is spelled phonetically, “torrentiœnschen,” an indication of its rarity).
“Epicurean” Ibid.; verdict on Andries Jonas, JFP 28 Sep 1629 [DB 203].
“Following the beliefs of Torrentius” Van Diemen to Pieter de Carpentier, 10 Dec 1629, ARA VOC 1009 [DB 50].
Anonymous sailor Letter of 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), pp. 19–20 [R 235]. It has been suggested that the author was the upper-steersman, Claes