Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [72]
Nevertheless, many more of the Batavia’s passengers and crew would have died of thirst within another day or so had it not been for a squall that mercifully struck the island on the fifth day, 9 June. In no more than an hour or two, the survivors collected so much fresh water in pieces of sailcloth spread out on the coral that they more than replenished their supplies. The rain continued through the night, and though it never fell more than intermittently thereafter, from then on there was always just enough to provide a modest ration for them all.
The position of the people on the wreck could not have been more different. The 70 men stranded on the Batavia had plenty to eat and drink; indeed the free access they now enjoyed to the private quarters in the stern, where the officers had kept their personal supplies, meant that most were better fed and watered than they had been for years. On the other hand, the ship herself was partly filled with water and, under the constant assault of the surf, she was rapidly disintegrating.
The Batavia held together for eight days, until, on 12 June, the breakers finally destroyed her. Long before that, however, it had become difficult to find a place on board that was still safe and dry, and the survivors’ discomfort was only increased by the certainty that when she did break up they would all be tipped into the booming surf. The majority of those left on board—Jeronimus Cornelisz among them—could not swim; these men must have taken Ariaen Jacobsz’s advice and built crude rafts or piled loose planks and empty barrels on the deck to be certain that they would have something to hang onto when the moment came.
Even the stronger swimmers could hardly have been confident of reaching shore. They had watched while the men who had jumped overboard on the night of the wreck were smashed against the coral and drowned, and knew that it took luck to get across the reef alive. So for a week they sat and waited for the ship to disappear beneath them, and while they waited, most of them drank. They were, one of their number later recalled, “left in such a desolate state.”
The destruction of the Batavia, when it finally occurred, happened so rapidly that the men on board were taken by surprise. Battered to the point of disintegration by the surf, the ship’s port side burst open and “the wrecking went on so quickly and easily that it was like a miracle.” As the waves rushed in, anyone caught down below must have drowned almost immediately. Even the men on deck hardly had time to reach their life preservers before they found themselves afloat. For most the end was quick; the breakers held them under or knocked them senseless on the coral so that they drowned. The lucky ones were swept right over the reef into the calmer waters beyond, but only 20 of the 70 men on board managed to float or swim ashore.
Jeronimus Cornelisz was not among them. When the Batavia’s upperworks disintegrated, his fear of drowning had prompted him to shimmy, apparently alone, along the retourschip’s bowsprit. The forward section of the ship had then broken away, with him still in it, and somehow drifted safely to the shallows. The under-merchant stayed there, clinging to his spar, for two more days, until the bowsprit fell apart beneath him. Then he floated to the island in a mass of driftwood, the last man to escape Batavia alive.
Jeronimus staggered ashore on Batavia’s Graveyard cold, wet, and utterly exhausted. He had been 10 days on the wreck, the last two of them alone, exposed to biting southeast winds and in terror for his life. Now he was jelly-limbed and spent, in desperate need of hot food and a place to rest.
The people of the island ran to meet him on the beach and half-helped, half-carried him into their camp, where he was gratified to find that he was treated with great deference and respect. Frans