Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [6]
The sight of bales of trade goods floating in the flooded hold was sufficient to persuade most of the passengers and crew to abandon ship, and the main deck was soon crowded with men and women jostling for positions along the sides. As was common at the time, there was no real order to the evacuation. The strongest forced their way into the boats, leaving women, children, and senior VOC officials behind. A dozen others leapt into the sea and attempted to swim to land. They all drowned in the surf.
Ariaen Jacobsz and his sailors worked all day, but, fully loaded, the Batavia’s two boats could hold no more than 60 people and the conditions were atrocious. Transferring frightened people from the pitching deck into a rolling, yawing boat was dangerous work that could not be hurried; a moment’s inattention or the least miscalculation might hurl the fragile little craft against the ship, smashing them to pieces. And, once in the boat, the survivors had to be rowed the best part of a mile along the deep-water channel before they could be set ashore.
The boats’ crews took them to the closest of the islands the skipper had scouted earlier in the day. It was tiny, a mere mushroom of coral rubble that measured only 175 yards from end to end and offered no real protection from the biting wind. During the afternoon, four more boatloads of survivors arrived. They did what they could to make themselves comfortable, but the islet was hard and flat and sterile, lacking not only food and water but even sand on which to lie and rest. There was no shelter. All in all, it left a good deal to be desired.
By nightfall, with the rescue operation hardly half-completed, some 180 people had been set on land. But parents had been separated from their offspring, husbands from their wives—and it had been so imperative to pack as many people as possible into the boats that the luckless survivors on the island found themselves with virtually no supplies. Jacobsz and his men had managed to land about 150 pints of poor drinking water, a dozen barrels of bone-dry bread and—at the insistence of the upper-merchant—a small casket of the most valuable trade goods, packed with precious stones, worked gold and jewelery that would have fetched 60,000 guilders*3 in the Indies. Such huge wealth was worthless on the reef; a few guilders’ worth of sailcloth and blankets would have been of greater use.
At sunset, back on the Batavia again, Jacobsz motioned Pelsaert to one side and insisted that his place was on the island. “It won’t help at all that we save water and bread,” the skipper said, “for everyone on land drinks as much as he can. To forbid this has no result unless you order otherwise.”
Twelve chests of VOC silver were still waiting on the main deck, but the merchant knew there was little more food or water to be had. He and Jacobsz jumped down into the yawl, intending to call at the little islet and introduce some form of rationing before returning to Batavia for the money. But no sooner had they pulled away than a violent squall arose and the little boat had to run for safety inside the reef. Fierce winds whipped up the waves, and once again the stricken ship all but disappeared in a storm of surf and spray. It was evident there was no chance of boarding her again before dawn, and it was only with some difficulty the boat’s crew contrived to fall back to the little island. They reached the survivors as they were settling down to an uncomfortable night. The conditions on the islet were appalling and, exhausted as they were, they slept only with difficulty, hard coral fingers in their backs.
On the Batavia, the plight of the other passengers and crew was equally unpleasant. About 120 people remained for the time being on board the sinking