Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [34]
It is unlikely, then, that anyone noticed or talked to Jeronimus Cornelisz as he threaded his way through the crowded center of the town and passed through the medieval city wall where it was pierced by the Waag, the old customs weigh-house. New fortifications, ordered when it was obvious the city was outgrowing its old boundaries, had been thrown up half a mile or so farther to the east, and the area between the walls had already become one of the commercial centers of Amsterdam. It was close to the harbor and had plenty of room for the construction of warehouses and wharves.
The town became much less cramped and crowded on the far side of the Waag; Cornelisz would easily have found what he was looking for. His destination was the East India House, which stood on the Kloveniersburgwal, a tree-lined canal that had once been the city moat, and close to one end of the Oude Hoogstraat, the old high street of Amsterdam. The House itself was an elegant, if not especially imposing, three-story brick rectangle completed in 1606 and built around a central courtyard. It was the main headquarters of the local chamber of the VOC.
Recruitment to Jan Company was a haphazard business. There were no tests and no exams; no references were required. Since only the desperate and the destitute applied, the VOC could not afford to be overly selective, and there were particular shortages of candidates from among the upper and the middle classes. So many merchants were required—most large ships required a staff of up to a dozen, generally an upper-merchant, an under-merchant, and 8 or 10 assistants, bookkeepers, and clerks—that the only explicit criteria were that a man should sign a five-year contract and that he should not be bankrupt, nor Catholic, nor “infamous.” Even these rules were rarely enforced.
It is not clear whom Jeronimus visited in the East India House or how exactly he first established contact with the VOC. The web of friends and colleagues that Torrentius had built up throughout Holland included a certain Adriaan Block of Lisse, who had made his fortune in the East and possessed a good deal of influence within the Company. It is possible that he provided Cornelisz with an introduction to the directors of the Amsterdam chamber. It is equally possible that Jeronimus had made the acquaintance of someone with the necessary connections through his own family, or his wife’s, or among the clientele of his failed business in Haarlem. Whatever the truth, it seems that the apothecary’s age, his social status, and his knowledge of pharmacy—which at this time required detailed understanding of the properties of spice—were enough to convince the directors of the local chamber to overlook his recent and unfortunate disgrace. Cornelisz emerged onto the Kloveniersburgwal as a full-fledged employee of the VOC. He carried with him his commission as an under-merchant, and orders to sail for the Indies within a month.
Had Jeronimus continued to head east on leaving the East India House, he would have reached the Amsterdam waterfront at just the point where a narrow wooden bridge arched over to a little island known as Rapenburg. There, in two adjoining shipyards right under the city walls, the Amsterdam chamber of the Company was completing the East Indiaman that would transport him to the East. The yards, which were together called the Peperwerf, were still very new,