Product Description

When the Dutch East Indiaman Batavia struck an uncharted reef off the new continent of Australia on her maiden voyage in 1629, 332 men, women and children were on board. While some headed off in a lifeboat to seek help, 250 of the survivors ended up on a tiny coral island less than half a mile long. A band of mutineers, whose motives were almost beyond comprehension, then started on a cold-blooded killing spree, leaving less than 80 people alive when the rescue boat arrived three months later. BATAVIA'S GRAVEYARD tells this strange story as a gripping narrative structured around three strong principal characters: Francisco Pelsaert, the cultivated but weak-willed captain; Jeronimus Cornelisz, a sinister apothecary with a terrifying personal philosophy influenced by Rosicrucianism who set himself up as the ruler of the island; and Wiebbe Hayes, the only survivor with the courage to fight Jeronimus's band. The background to these events, including the story of the Dutch East India Company, and the discovery of Australia, is richly drawn.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #179910 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02-14
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
If you happen to pass Houtman's Abrolhos, the tiny uninhabited archipelago just off Australia's west coast, you'll find out why it's known as Batavia's Graveyard . For there amid the brightly coloured coral, you can still see the sun-bleached bones of the victims of one of the worst civilian maritime massacres. It's not often that the evidence speaks so clearly and yet it's a racing certainty almost no one in Britain had ever heard of the Batavia. As ever when no Brits are involved, we just aren't that interested. But this could all change with Batavia's Graveyard. Mike Dash had a surprise bestseller in 1999 with Tulipomania, the story of the fascination with the tulip in seventeenth century Holland, and Batavia's Graveyard is another slice of Dutch history from the same period.

In 1628, the Batavia, the newest ship in the Dutch East India Company's fleet set sail on its maiden voyage to Java, with its hold crammed full with gold, silver and precious stones. Also on board was a man called Jeronimus Cornelisz, a member of the extreme Protestant sect, the Mennonites, and a dangerous psychotic with it. Cornelisz orchestrated a mutiny on board, but before his plans could be carried out the boat came to grief on Houtman's Abrolhos. And there the fun and games started. The Batavia's captain, Francisco Pelsaert, having got wind of the mutiny, headed off to get help in the only open boat, leaving the survivors to fend for themselves. Which is where Cornelisz steps in; realising that if he wants to remain undiscovered he will need to first kill all the survivors who weren't part of the mutiny before taking out the rescue party on its arrival, he splits the survivors into two groups. The strongest are sent to live on a nearby atoll where Cornelisz anticipates they will starve to death. Then the killing begins. The denouement, when it comes, is too perfectly timed even for Hollywood. It may be X-rated, but this really is the sort of story you just couldn't make up.--John Crace

Review
In 1628 a fleet of ships owned by the Dutch East India Company set sail for Java. Among their number was the Batavia, a large new ship laden with gold, silver and gems. Ostensibly she was under the command of an experienced merchant named Francisco Pelsaert; she also carried an under-merchant, the untried, untested Jeronimus Cornelisz. Unfortunately this man was not only a disgraced bankrupt - he was a heretic and troublemaker. Cornelisz was already fermenting mutiny within a group of discontented sailors when disaster struck the Batavia. In the early hours of June 4 - after 211 days at sea - the ship impaled itself on a barely submerged coral reef at the edge of an unexplored archipelago off the west coast of Australia. Amidst appalling storms, over 200 survivors were transferred to the relative safety of the islands and there they remained, while Pelsaert took the only boat and headed for Java. Left alone, with little chance of rescue, dwindling food sources and almost no water supplies, the survivors were in chaos. It was a situation that Cornelisz was happy to take advantage of and, with the help of an elite group of loyal supporters, he seized control. So began a killing spree that led to the bloody murder of most of the Batavia survivors. Painstakingly researched and told in compelling detail, this is the true story of what happened. Mike Dash is convinced that, aside from being a heretic and a mutineer, Cornelisz was also a psychopath. Away from the moral and legal constraints of an organized society he allowed his bloodlust to take control. This is a truly horrifying and gripping account that grabs the reader's attention from the very first sentence and keeps it right to the end. (Kirkus UK)

Popular historian Dash ("Tulipomania", 2000) rediscovers an astonishing, sanguinary, and sexy 17th-century drama of mutiny, shipwreck, murder, and mayhem. In June 1629, the Dutch East India Company's ship "Batavia", seven months out of Amsterdam, hit a South Pacific reef at full speed. Passengers and crew scrambled to survive and to save as much as they could of the valuables aboard. At this charged moment in the narrative, Dash takes us back to the Netherlands for some background on the principal players in a gory drama whose first act has only just begun. They include: randy captain Ariaen Jacobszoon; Dutch East India Company representative Francisco Pelsaert, the ultimate authority onboard; and apothecary Jeronimus Corneliszoon, an "under-merchant" just below Pelsaert on the organizational chart. The "Batavia "was on her maiden voyage when she hit the reef and sank. But she had already become, like all long-range vessels of the time, a home for vermin of every description and a fetid community of the unwashed. (Dash gives as many details as he can find about the ship, including her salvage in the 1960s, and he's lavish with sidelights in Dutch history as well, such as the fact that among the main customers for spices from the Indies were butchers who used them to mask the smell of rotting meat.) Immediately after the wreck, Captain Jacobszoon deposited most of the survivors on a barren, deserted island while he and some of the sailors headed for Java and a rescue vessel 900 miles away. "The calibre of the men on the island," states Dash dryly, "left a great deal to be desired." Indeed it did. By the time the rescuers arrived, Corneliszoon and his henchmen had murdered and raped scores of people, but they received justice as cruel and unusual as their crimes in the form of torture, mutilation, and hanging. A thoroughly researched, riveting journey into the heart of darkness. (4 pages maps, not seen)" (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
Mike Dash read history at Cambridge and received his PhD from the University of London. Having worked for the FORTEAN TIMES and The Ministry of Sound, he is now setting up his own company.

Customer Reviews

Absolutely fantastic!
Batavia's Graveyard has to rank as one of the best books I've ever read. It tells the incredible story of how a bunch of several hundred Dutch people travel (for various reasons) on the great ship Batavia to the Dutch East Indies to fill the ship with spices worth an absolute fortune back home. But the ship crashes many miles west of the Australian coast leaving the many survivors stuck on a tiny island. It's what happens next that is really unbelievable. While the head of the ship sails off in a smaller boat to try and find help, one of the other officers assumes control of the island, which might have saved many lives if he wasn't a genuine psychopath who binded a number of loyal men to him and systematically began killing just for the fun of it. But some survivors collected on another island nearby and made preparations to defend themsleves from the inevitable assault that would come. It really is one of those stories so incredible you couldn't make it up. The author writes in a very neat and reader-friendly fashion which makes the book a real page-turner. Apart from the main story he also writes about the historical context, including the early European history of Australia and the men who got marooned there, never to be seen again. In short, buy it - you'll never read another true story quite as dramatic.

Brilliant but disturbing
A really scarey book which shows you what a human is capable of doing to his fellow human beings. Jeronimus was indeed a real psycopath but the 'Heren XVII' and general management of the VOC were just as bad. It's so easy to compare the way we live today with our standards and ethics to the way life was 400 years ago but the VOC really were a bunch of criminals intent on only making money on the backs of poor desparate people.

This book is very well written and keeps you glued to the pages as the saga unfolds. It traces Jeronimus's background in Holland to his execution in detail. It also gives you a brief history of the VOC and how it came about. If you think the company you're working for is mean and unfare at times, try thinking of working for the VOC when it was at its prime. You'll never complain again. It's also interesting to note that the first European settlers of Australia were possibly not British but Dutch.

A forgotten tale of terror
This book is interesting from a number of perspectives. It tells about life in Holland in the 17th century, gives an insight into life aboard a VOC trading ship (it puts paid to the romantic notion of sailing off to the Far East to make your fortune from the spice trade - the majority of sailors and VOC employees were desperate men and conditions aboard were far from pleasant for most), and recounts the frightening story of shipwrecked life under the assumed command of probably the most bloodthirsty psychopath in history.

The story of the Batavia fired the public imagination for many years after the event, and has over time fallen from memory. Mike Dash has brought the story to life again.

Highly recommended.