Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [79]
The killing began in the first week of July.
Jeronimus had waited several days for the opportunity to spring his mutiny. He wanted, first of all, to snuff out dissent, and since the members of the raad, were the most likely source of opposition, that meant finding a pretext to dissolve the existing council. The chance to do this arose when the under-merchant was informed that a soldier named Abraham Hendricx had been caught tapping one of the barrels in the stores. Under interrogation, Hendricx confessed to having crept into the store tent several times before, and to sharing his bounty with one of the retourschip’s gunners. In the survivors’ straitened circumstances, the theft was punishable by death. The gunner’s culpability was, however, harder to establish, and there seemed to be a good chance that the raad would spare his life. Jeronimus, it seems, decided to exploit this fact by demanding that both the guilty men be executed, fully expecting to be met with opposition.
“On 4 July, when Abraham Hendricx, from Delft, had tapped a Wine barrel several times and drank himself drunk—and had also given up some to a gunner, Ariaen Ariaensz, so that he also became drunk—Jeronimus proposed to his council, which he had called together, that they were worthy of death without grace or delay, and must be drowned forthwith.
“The council consented insofar as it concerned Abraham Hendricx, because he had tapped the barrel, but insofar as it concerned the other, Ariaen Ariaensz, they made difficulties and would not vote to sentence him to Death. Whereupon Jeronimus burst out, and said, ‘How can you not let this happen? Nevertheless, you will soon have to resolve on something quite else.’ At which words each one became afraid, and could not understand what he meant by that.”
Precisely what Cornelisz intended became clear enough next day, 5 July, when the under-merchant suddenly dissolved the raad and removed all the other councillors from their posts. This extreme, but not illegal, move allowed him to “choose for his new council such persons as accorded with his desires, to wit, Coenraat van Huyssen, cadet; David Zevanck, assistant; and Jacop Pietersz Cosijn, lance corporal.”
With this council of mutineers in place, Cornelisz at last felt secure. Zevanck and the others could be relied on to follow his instructions, and the other people on the island were unlikely to take issue with their edicts, so long as they were dressed up with a veneer of legality.
The under-merchant proved this point immediately by executing Hendricx*30 and accusing two carpenters named Egbert Roeloffsz and Warnar Dircx of plotting to make off in one of the little homemade yawls. The latter charge seems to have been based on nothing more than island gossip, but the new raad had no compunction in passing death sentences on both men and, significantly, there was no sign of dissent among the rank-and-file survivors. Roeloffsz and Dircx were killed later the same day by two of Jeronimus’s men, Daniel Cornelissen and Hans Frederick, both cadets. “Daniel,” the Batavia journals relate, “has pierced the foresaid Warnar with a sword; of which he boasted later, saying that it went through him as easily as butter . . . [and Hans Frederick] has let himself be used very willingly [and] has also given two or three hacks to Warnar.”
Cornelisz thus contrived to rid himself of not one but three possible opponents within a day of seizing control of the ship’s council. He was, however, perfectly aware of the overriding need for caution in the methods he employed. He and his men were still heavily outnumbered, and it was important to proceed so that the people of the island did not suspect that their numbers were being systematically reduced. Some better way had to be found of disposing of the strongest loyalists covertly,