Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [39]
In the midst of all this bustle and confusion, the chief comfort to the novice tradesmen would undoubtedly have been the thought that they would not be expected to share quarters with the rabble milling around them. The most luxurious berths in the Batavia’s stern were always given over to the merchants of the VOC, and the area abaft the mainmast would become the exclusive preserve of the ship’s officers, the merchants, and their servants. This arrangement at least ensured them some privacy and reduced the prospect of discomfort, since the ship pitched and yawed less violently by the stern. In the course of a nine-month voyage, such incidental mercies came to mean a lot.
The best quarters of all went to the most senior men aboard. Francisco Pelsaert and Ariaen Jacobsz shared the privilege of using what was known as the Great Cabin on the level of the upper deck. It was by far the largest room on the ship and easily the best lit, as it alone was fitted with lattice windows rather than portholes. Its centerpiece was a long table capable of seating 15 or 20 people, and it was here that Pelsaert and his clerks transacted their daily business while at sea and the senior officers and merchants ate their meals. The rest of the officers’ quarters were located elsewhere in the stern. Jeronimus and half a dozen other distinguished passengers were shown to a warren of little cabins on the deck above, where the quarters were smaller and more spartan; the more junior officers and the Company clerks shared a large communal cabin just below the steersman’s station. When it came to accommodation, the VOC had spared considerable expense. The private quarters were quite unheated, only marginally better ventilated than the rest of the ship, and less than the span of a woman’s arms in breadth—but at least they offered the luxury of bunks instead of sleeping mats, sufficient room to put a writing desk and chair, and cabin boys to fetch and carry meals and empty chamber pots.
The allocation of these cabins was determined by rank and precedence. The best would have gone to Jeronimus, the under-merchant, who was after Pelsaert the most senior representative of Jan Company on board. Ariaen Jacobsz’s second-in-command, the upper-steersman Claes Gerritsz, would have had another, and in normal circumstances the Batavia’s two under-steersmen (whose rank was roughly equivalent to a modern-day lieutenant’s), the provost (who was responsible for discipline on board), and the most senior of the VOC assistants might also have expected cabins of their own.
On this voyage, however, the Batavia was carrying two high-ranking passengers whose presence upset the normal rules of precedence. One was a Calvinist predikant, or minister, named Gijsbert Bastiaensz, a citizen of the ancient town of Dordrecht who was sailing to the Indies with his wife, a maid, and seven children. The other was Lucretia Jansdochter, an unusually beautiful and highborn woman who came from Amsterdam and was traveling to join her husband in the East. Both would have been allocated cabins near Jeronimus’s. In the close confines of the stern, the three of them could hardly help but become acquainted.
It is not difficult to guess whose company Cornelisz would have most enjoyed. Creesje (she was generally known by her diminutive) was not only youthful and attractive; she came from a family of merchants and thus commanded a social status equal to Jeronimus’s own. Gijsbert Bastiaensz, on the other hand, was in many ways Cornelisz’s opposite. He came from the most southern part of the province of Holland; he was 52 years old; and he was a strict, straightforward Calvinist with very little formal education. His scant surviving writings betray no hint of wit or intellectual curiosity; there was no room in his theology for the exotic speculations that the under-merchant