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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Wilson. So we have our second shipwreck story

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Speaker 1: and as many weeks, and the Batavia was not just

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Speaker 1: a shipwreck. It's a shipwreck and a mutiny and also

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Speaker 1: a massacre. So this perfect storm of nautical carnage. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's a lot going on. Yeah, as you were researching,

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Speaker 1: Tracy would keeping some messages is like, this is crazy

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Speaker 1: because everything knew she would uncover would add another layer

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Speaker 1: of infanity to it. Yeah, it's it just escalates and escalates.

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Speaker 1: And there are a couple of notes that we're going

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Speaker 1: to just lay out in the beginning, and the first

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Speaker 1: is the names in this episode. So the main cast

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Speaker 1: of characters in the story came from what's now the

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Speaker 1: Netherlands and Belgium. And at this point in history, the

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Speaker 1: Dutch didn't generally use surnames the way most of us

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Speaker 1: are used to today. Instead of established surnames that were

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Speaker 1: passed down through the family and stayed the same, people

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Speaker 1: had patronymic names which came from their father's first names.

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Speaker 1: So Adrian Jacobs, who was our ship's skipper was Jacob's

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Speaker 1: son Adrian, and his father would have been Yacob somebody

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Speaker 1: else's son. Uh. But then our ship's upper merchant um

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Speaker 1: Francisco Pelser. He was from Antwerp, and he had a

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Speaker 1: more typical family surname that we would expect to see today,

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Speaker 1: which was Pelser. So for the sake of consistency, we're

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Speaker 1: just going to call everybody the equivalent of what their

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Speaker 1: surname was, because it gets a little confusing. The other

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Speaker 1: note is that you may notice as you are listening

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Speaker 1: to this episode and the next one, because the story

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Speaker 1: is so big, it's in two parts. Um. The number

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Speaker 1: of passengers and crew on the Ovat, these numbers don't

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Speaker 1: seem to quite add up all the time, and this

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Speaker 1: is because as the voyage went on, people were born,

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Speaker 1: other people died. Sometimes crew just went a wall. When

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Speaker 1: the ship would stop to take on supplies somewhere, people

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Speaker 1: would just decide they were done with this mess and

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Speaker 1: they would go away. Um. Even the starting number of

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Speaker 1: people on board is not totally clear because there were

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Speaker 1: some last minute no shows and people who just never

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Speaker 1: reported for duties. So if you're if you're doing the

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Speaker 1: math on this episode and you kind of go with

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Speaker 1: this numbers these don't You just don't sink that is why.

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Speaker 1: So today's episode is going to be about the first

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Speaker 1: part of the voyage, the shipwreck, and the rescue mission

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Speaker 1: that happened afterwards, and then our next episode will be

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Speaker 1: about sort of what happened to the survivors while their

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Speaker 1: bosses were away trying to get help. Ready, yeah, okay,

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Speaker 1: so this whole story starts with the Dutch East India

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Speaker 1: Company or in Dutch the verenegda Ostendesa Company. I practiced

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Speaker 1: that I probably still did not say it perfectly, So

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Speaker 1: we're just going to call them the v o C,

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Speaker 1: which is what that boils down to. So the v

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Speaker 1: C was dominating trade in the East Indies, which is

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Speaker 1: basically Indonesia and the surrounding islands in the seventeenth and

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Speaker 1: eighteenth centuries. It became this political and commercial powerhouse, and

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Speaker 1: it sent ships from the Netherlands to Asia to buy

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Speaker 1: things like spices and silk and then to return to

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Speaker 1: Europe to sell them. And the v C was headquartered

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Speaker 1: in Batavia, which is what's now Jakarta in Indonesia. One

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Speaker 1: of the v o C s ships, which was also

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Speaker 1: called the Batavia, left Tessel Holland on its maiden voyage

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Speaker 1: to Batavia in October of sixty eight, and its cargo

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Speaker 1: included an enormous amount of silver and jewels. The ship

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Speaker 1: also carried materials for a gatehouse which was to be

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Speaker 1: built at v O C headquarters. In command of the

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Speaker 1: Batavia was the upper Merchant, also called the Supercargo, and

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Speaker 1: this was a man named Francisco Pelsert, and he was

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Speaker 1: one of the most experienced merchants in the Dutch East

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Speaker 1: in the India Company's fleet. He was also very fond

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Speaker 1: of women and money, and at one point, sort of

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Speaker 1: extraneous to this story, set himself up as a money lender,

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Speaker 1: using company funds while charging people extremely steep interest. This

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Speaker 1: was something that was discovered after the end of the

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Speaker 1: Batavia's story, but it kind of clues you in to

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Speaker 1: a little about this man's character. Willing to misappropriate company funds,

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Speaker 1: that's no problem, right. Next in command was the ship's skipper,

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Speaker 1: Adrian Jacobs, who was a sea captain with more than

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Speaker 1: twenty years of experience, and he was in a rather

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Speaker 1: awkward leadership position because in any other nautical context he

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Speaker 1: would be the one ultimately in charge. However, on a

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Speaker 1: V O C ship he reported up to the upper merchant,

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Speaker 1: who was a merchant and not a seaman. This is

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Speaker 1: pretty much how things worked in most of the big

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Speaker 1: trading companies. You would have somebody who was ultimately in charge,

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Speaker 1: whose job was to safeguard the financial interests of the company.

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Speaker 1: Everyone ultimately reported to this person, even though this person

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Speaker 1: did not necessarily know how to sail a ship. So

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Speaker 1: that led to some headbutting in many contexts, not just

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Speaker 1: this one. I imagine we have um several listeners at

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Speaker 1: the moment thinking that this is very similar to some

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Speaker 1: corporate cultures. Yeah, not ours, I'm happy to report, but

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Speaker 1: it does happen. I mean I've certainly been in companies

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Speaker 1: where the person in charge it doesn't really know how

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Speaker 1: anything works. Yeah. I attempt one time for a company

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Speaker 1: where there was somebody who was in charge of I

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Speaker 1: T who had a history degree and they had been

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Speaker 1: hired because he was a people manager. But the people

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Speaker 1: who were working in I found that very frustrating. So

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Speaker 1: Jacobs and Pelser had actually sailed together before, and they

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Speaker 1: had never really gotten along, and their headbutting only got

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Speaker 1: worse after this incident, on a voyage where Pelser was

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Speaker 1: traveling as a guest, Jacobs had gotten extremely drunk and

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Speaker 1: insulted him in a very loud old way, and that

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Speaker 1: ship's upper merchant had given Jacobs a really public reprimand,

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Speaker 1: and Jacobs always blamed Pelsert for having gotten him dressed

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Speaker 1: down in front of everybody. Always a good relationship to

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Speaker 1: start along voyage with. Always good to blame other people

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Speaker 1: for your own behavior. Third in command was the under merchant,

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Speaker 1: Uronymous Cornelis, who had very little experience at see and

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Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit more about his backstory as

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Speaker 1: we go on, because it becomes really really relevant later

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Speaker 1: on in the tale. Yeah, his his story is is

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Speaker 1: really relevant to part two, So it's in part two

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Speaker 1: of the episode. Gotch So. Also on board the Batavia

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Speaker 1: were about three and forty other people, and about two

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Speaker 1: thirds of them were officers and crew of the ship.

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Speaker 1: They're also about a hundred soldiers along with some civilians

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Speaker 1: seeking passage to the Indies, and some of these were

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Speaker 1: women and children. These were mostly families of voc employees

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Speaker 1: or other people who were going to join their family

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Speaker 1: in the Indian ease and before we talk about the

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Speaker 1: voyage itself, shall we take a moment and talk about

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Speaker 1: a word from our sponsor, Capital Idea. And now we

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Speaker 1: will get back to the journey of the Batavia. The

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Speaker 1: Batavia left Tessil in a convoy of seven ships, but

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Speaker 1: at the very start of the voyage they went through

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Speaker 1: a huge storm in the North Sea and most of

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Speaker 1: the ships lost sight of each other. Only three of

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Speaker 1: them managed to find one another again. Once the weather

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Speaker 1: had improved, the Batavia, ass and dev and the Burin

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Speaker 1: sailed on together towards South Africa. These three ships made

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Speaker 1: really good time. They got to the Cape of Good

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Speaker 1: Hope an entire month ahead of schedule. But on board

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Speaker 1: the Batavia, the under merchant Cord Cornelis and the shipper

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Speaker 1: Yakubs started to conspire to commit mutiny um. They also

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Speaker 1: drew the ship's high Boson into their plot as well,

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Speaker 1: and so as the ship departed from South Africa, in

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Speaker 1: order to further their plan of mutiny, Jacobs deliberately steered

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Speaker 1: the ship away from the two remaining ones in the convoy,

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Speaker 1: and so the Batavia wounded up going on the rest

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Speaker 1: of its journey alone. And then during the last stretch

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Speaker 1: of the Batavia's route northward through the Indian Ocean, Upper

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Speaker 1: Merchant Pelser became seriously ill and had to be confined

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Speaker 1: to his cabin under the care of the surgeon Franz Yawns.

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Speaker 1: At this point, Jacobs and Cornelis put their plotting on hold.

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Speaker 1: They were kind of enjoying Pelsart's absence and biding their

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Speaker 1: time and waiting to see if he would just die

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Speaker 1: and leave the ship in their hands. They weren't sort

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Speaker 1: of an interesting attitude to have about it. They weren't

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Speaker 1: going to have to put the effort into staging a

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Speaker 1: mutiny if the you know, the Upper Merchant was just

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Speaker 1: gonna die. Yeah, it takes some work. Yeah, so uh

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Speaker 1: sadly thwarting their plans. Eventually, Pelser recovered, and when it

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Speaker 1: became clear that he was going to live, Jacobs and

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Speaker 1: Cornelis realized that they had wasted some time and getting

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Speaker 1: their whole mutiny plan off the ground. They hadn't recruited

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Speaker 1: an enough men to physically take over the ship from

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Speaker 1: the people who would be loyal to the Upper Merchant,

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Speaker 1: so they decided to have another ploy. They conspired to

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Speaker 1: have a wealthy female passenger named Lucretia Yawns or you

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Speaker 1: all also see her name as Lucretia Vandermilion, which was

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Speaker 1: her husband's last name. They conspired to have her sexually

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Speaker 1: assaulted by masked members of the crew, and Jans was

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Speaker 1: traveling to Batavia to join her husband, and her station

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Speaker 1: was high enough that she had one of the best

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Speaker 1: cabins on the ship and her own maid. And by

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Speaker 1: attacking someone so prominent, they hoped to lure Pulser into

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Speaker 1: punishing those responsible, which they hoped would trigger a revolt

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Speaker 1: among the rest of the Skipper's team. It seemed like

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Speaker 1: a sure thing after Jan said she recognized the voice

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Speaker 1: of one of her attackers and it was the high Bosen.

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Speaker 1: What a horrible plan. It was not a good plan

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Speaker 1: in in every possible respect it was. It was not

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Speaker 1: good to to plan to do that in the first place,

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Speaker 1: and also on top off of it being a terrible

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Speaker 1: thing to do, it didn't work. Uh. Pelser investigated the incident.

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Speaker 1: He we know he accepted her her assessment of who

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Speaker 1: had attacked her didn't punish anybody. Part of this is

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Speaker 1: because he was still pretty sick, even though he was

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Speaker 1: now recovering, and he also was starting to suspect that

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Speaker 1: maybe there was something bigger going on and he should

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Speaker 1: not get involved in it quite yet until he had

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Speaker 1: a better sense of exactly what was happening. Yes, so

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Speaker 1: he was kind of keeping his cards close to his vest,

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Speaker 1: so to speak. He didn't want to I didn't want

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Speaker 1: to incite the riot that he thought might be coming now.

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Speaker 1: But before they could come up with some of their

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Speaker 1: ploy to bring the Upper Merchant down, the mutineers plan

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Speaker 1: was spectacularly derailed because the ship was wrecked. Yes, before

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Speaker 1: we tell the story of the wreck, let's take another

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Speaker 1: moment for another word from our sponsor. Now back to

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Speaker 1: our story. On June four, a couple of hours before

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Speaker 1: Dawn Pelser, who would this point, was still not well.

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Speaker 1: He was in his bunk but awake. He felt a

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Speaker 1: quote rough, terrible movement, the bumping of the ship's rudder,

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Speaker 1: and then he felt the ships strike rocks so hard

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Speaker 1: that he was knocked out of his bunk. Because they

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Speaker 1: were not really anticipating that they were suddenly going to

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Speaker 1: run into land. They were traveling at full speed when

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Speaker 1: they struck this reef and huge waves and a bit

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Speaker 1: really heavy wind continued to just pound on the ship

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Speaker 1: and push it harder and harder against the rock. Pelser

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Speaker 1: ran on deck to see that there were breakers all

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Speaker 1: around them, and according to his journal, he said to

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Speaker 1: Yakubs skipper, what have you done that, through your reckless carelessness,

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Speaker 1: you have run this noise around our necks. The crew

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Speaker 1: really scrambled to try to lighten the ship. They threw

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Speaker 1: cannons overboard, they felt the masts, and they started sounding

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Speaker 1: the depths to try to find a way that they

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Speaker 1: might be able to work the ship back into deeper water.

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Speaker 1: But it was no use. The ship was stuck, and

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Speaker 1: on top of that, they really did know where they were.

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Speaker 1: This part of the sea was virtually uncharted by Europeans

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Speaker 1: at this point. And on top of all that, when

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Speaker 1: they felled the main mest of the ship, it came

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Speaker 1: So their effort to lighten the ship just broke it worse.

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Speaker 1: It was only after some discussion that Pelzer and Jacobs

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Speaker 1: the western coast of Australia. Their name comes from Portuguese abrojos,

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Speaker 1: Dutch East India Company vessel Door Direct stumbled upon them

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Speaker 1: were in open ocean, and then suddenly reef and islands

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Speaker 1: in history Europeans had not explored or charted all of this,

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Speaker 1: likely completely unexplored by Australia's Aboriginal people's as well. So

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Speaker 1: kind of just a big mystery danger sitting out there

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Speaker 1: in the ocean. Yeah, that's why they got that name

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Speaker 1: about keeping your eyes open. There's another collection of islands

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Speaker 1: for the same reason, like people venturing into them believing

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Speaker 1: they were in totally open ocean and then whoa, not

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Speaker 1: so much islands everywhere. So after the wreck, about a

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Speaker 1: hundred and eighty people were removed from the ship and

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Speaker 1: taken away in boats. This included about thirty women and children,

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Speaker 1: and about seventy men stayed on board, including under merchant Cornelis.

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Speaker 1: Most of the survivors made their way to an island

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Speaker 1: which was later named Beacon Island, while the commander of

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Speaker 1: the captain and about forty other men went to an

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Speaker 1: island that was nearer the shipwreck and that later came

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Speaker 1: to be known as Traders Island. But the party split

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Speaker 1: up this way. The majority of the survivors at this

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Speaker 1: point very panicked and in poor health from the length

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Speaker 1: of their journey. We're on an island by themselves, and

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Speaker 1: no one was really in charge. Yeah, you had basically

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Speaker 1: top of that, no supplies. So the men who stayed

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Speaker 1: by drinking, plundering the ship's stores, looting things for themselves,

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Speaker 1: to salvage supplies from it. A delightful bunch. Uh. The

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Speaker 1: crew did manage to get some provisions off the ship,

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Speaker 1: but it was not enough to sustain them for very long,

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Speaker 1: and these islands were basically barren. There were some birds,

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Speaker 1: there were some fish, and there were some sea lions

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Speaker 1: that they could eat, but almost nothing in the way

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Speaker 1: of water or shelter. So it was more like they

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Speaker 1: were stuck on a big chunk of coral and rock,

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Speaker 1: just sticking out of the ocean. And because this larger

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Speaker 1: group of survivors just became more and more desperate as

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Speaker 1: time went on, the officers started to balk at the

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Speaker 1: idea of trying to get supplies from the ship to

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Speaker 1: the island where most of the survivors were. It started

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Speaker 1: to become really risky, like there was a genuine risk

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Speaker 1: that panicked survivors were going to mob the boat and

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Speaker 1: capsize it and possibly destroy the cargo or the boat

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Speaker 1: itself or kill the crew. So after a while it

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Speaker 1: was like, we're just we're just not gonna mess with

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Speaker 1: them on that island because we're scared of them. Just

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Speaker 1: keeps getting worse. I know, it's awful. There are so

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Speaker 1: many just callous and horrible moves made along the way

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Speaker 1: that it's it's hard to Yeah, you don't. There's not

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Speaker 1: really a lot of people to root for. The officers

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Speaker 1: debated at this point what to do, because staying where

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Speaker 1: they were seemed completely hopeless. Once the storms that had

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Speaker 1: driven them into the islands cleared, they didn't have a

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Speaker 1: source of fresh water unless it started raining again. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and they would need just enough to provide water without

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Speaker 1: threatening their lives. Or an equally unlikely scenario, if the

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Speaker 1: hull of the ship broke apart and the current happened

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Speaker 1: to carry all of the ship's stores directly to the islands. Uh,

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Speaker 1: they might get some relief. So what they did was

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Speaker 1: they decided to start scouting the islands and the mainland

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Speaker 1: for sources of water. So Pelsert, most of the officers,

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Speaker 1: and some crew and passengers, including two women in a baby,

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Speaker 1: went searching for water. This wasn't really Pelsert's idea. He

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Speaker 1: was sort of feeling like at this point it was

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Speaker 1: his job to stay with the survivors and to die

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Speaker 1: with them if that was what happened. His job as

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Speaker 1: a per merchant also involved the responsibility for making sure

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Speaker 1: the cargo stayed safe, and so he was really reluctant

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Speaker 1: to leave it behind, like his priority was definitely more

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Speaker 1: on the cargo than the people in terms of his

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Speaker 1: job description. But some of the sailors were pretty set

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Speaker 1: on trying to save themselves at whatever cost, and so

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Speaker 1: ultimately he went with them in the ship's longboat. Forty

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Speaker 1: eight total people went to look for water while they

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Speaker 1: stayed behind. Pretty much the only senior officer that was

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Speaker 1: not among the scouting party was Eronymous Cornelis back aboard

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Speaker 1: the Batavia. Their four day search for water was fruitless,

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Speaker 1: and finally Pilsert decided that the only possible way that

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Speaker 1: they were going to get out of this smith was

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Speaker 1: to go to Batavia for help. So they took their

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Speaker 1: long boat, which was about thirty ft long, and they

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Speaker 1: crossed nine hundred nautical miles of the open Indian Ocean.

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Speaker 1: Imagine Australia on a map, so the Hootman Abrojo's Islands

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Speaker 1: are about halfway down the straight ish part of the

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Speaker 1: western coast of Australia. Batavia is in Indonesia, and in

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Speaker 1: between them is just this long expanse of the Indian Ocean,

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Speaker 1: and that is what they were crossing. Yat and a

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Speaker 1: long boat that had like ten pairs of oars. I

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Speaker 1: think there are some shipwreck and mutiny survival stories that

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Speaker 1: are that involved long ocean crossings and remarkably small craft

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Speaker 1: in this, but still the fact that there there were

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Speaker 1: just these, all these people packed in the boat, including

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Speaker 1: two women in a baby. This astounding to me. Uh So,

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Speaker 1: to cuttle this part of the long story short, they

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Speaker 1: made it. It took them thirty three days to get there.

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Speaker 1: When they did get there, after thirty three days across

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Speaker 1: the ocean open, they had less than two pints of

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Speaker 1: fresh water left. And once they got to Batavia, Pelsart

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Speaker 1: charged the ship's high boson for outrageous behavior before the wreck,

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Speaker 1: because remember he was implicated in the sexual assault of

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Speaker 1: a passenger and he was executed, and skipper Yakovs was

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Speaker 1: arrested for negligence in causing the wreck. Pelser gathered supplies

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Speaker 1: and bordered the yachts Ardem and they headed back to

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Speaker 1: find the survivors. It took them sixty three days to

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Speaker 1: find them again, so basically twice as long months and

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Speaker 1: months of misery. So a whole lot happened on the

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Speaker 1: island in this three month in between when Pelser left

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Speaker 1: and when he got back with help, and probably the

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Speaker 1: survivors didn't even know they were heading out across the

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Speaker 1: Indian Ocean to begin with. They had no idea, but

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Speaker 1: they were just there three months, not knowing what was

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Speaker 1: going believing they had been abandoned. And that is the

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Speaker 1: story that we're going to talk about in the next

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Speaker 1: episode because as I discovered as I was researching this

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Speaker 1: crazy story, but they get long and involved. They do

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Speaker 1: when you're taking a long boat across the Indian Ocean

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Speaker 1: and when there is a shipwreck and a mutiny and

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Speaker 1: a masker. So we're going to continue the mutiny and

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Speaker 1: massacre part of this story in our next episode. In

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Speaker 1: the meantime, do you have listener mail me to have

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Speaker 1: some listener mail. Our listener mail is actually two comments

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Speaker 1: from our Facebook page in response to our recent episode

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Speaker 1: about Crucifixion in the in Greece and Room. The first

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Speaker 1: is from Tony, and Tony says, kind of sad that

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Speaker 1: you continue to push the myth that Jesus existed. You

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Speaker 1: admit there is no contemporary account his quote life, but

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Speaker 1: revert to the Christian normative position that he was real

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Speaker 1: sad position for quote historians, and the other is from Susannah,

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Speaker 1: who says, considering that there's zero evidence outside of the

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Speaker 1: New Testament, which was assembled beginning one of the existence

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Speaker 1: of Christ at all, I find it difficult to buy

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Speaker 1: any allegations that he was crucified. So I responded to

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Speaker 1: both of these on our Facebook page. But this is

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Speaker 1: actually something that you and I talked about when we

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Speaker 1: were recording whether we should address because we talk about

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Speaker 1: Jesus in a couple of places in our episode on Crucifixion,

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Speaker 1: we don't really talk about like Jesus has a historical figure, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because that really, I mean, while that we mentioned in

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Speaker 1: the episode that was the most famous one everyone knows about,

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Speaker 1: that really wasn't what the episode was about. It was

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Speaker 1: about the practice that was taboo but still very common. Right.

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Speaker 1: You kind of can't talk about that without at least

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Speaker 1: mentioning said Jesus elements. And the general consensus among modern

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Speaker 1: historians is that they're Jesus is a real person who lived.

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Speaker 1: That's pretty much the the general consensus of today's scholars

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Speaker 1: of history. There are some people who debate this idea

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Speaker 1: based on some of the things that these a couple

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Speaker 1: of people commented on our Facebook page. Uh. But my point,

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Speaker 1: in the point that I made several times, is that

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Speaker 1: this same exact trait like there are not there's not

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Speaker 1: a first person, eye witness account of Jesus written down

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Speaker 1: during his lifetime, right. That is the case for many

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Speaker 1: many figures in antiquity. Um and and So if you're

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Speaker 1: if your rule for deciding that a person is real,

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Speaker 1: if that's your standard for what you need to have

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Speaker 1: to believe that a person is real, you're discounting many,

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Speaker 1: many historical figures from Greece and room. You're also discounting

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Speaker 1: the entire histories of cultures that kept their histories oral

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Speaker 1: rather than writing them down. Yeah. That often we're written

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Speaker 1: down by later culture when they either had it relaid

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Speaker 1: to them or discovered some element of yeah, of that culture.

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Speaker 1: So you can't kind of erase anything just because there's

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Speaker 1: not a first person contemporary account for it. So if

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Speaker 1: you would like to write to us on this or

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Speaker 1: any other topic, you can. We're at History Podcast at

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Speaker 1: Discovery dot com. We're also on Twitter at Misston History,

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Speaker 1: and our tumbler is missed in History dot tumbler dot com.

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Speaker 1: Our Pinterest is pinterest dot com, slash missed in History,

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Speaker 1: and we have our very own website now at www

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Speaker 1: dot miss in history dot com. If you would like

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Speaker 1: to learn a little more about one of the things

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Speaker 1: we talked about in this episode, come to our website.

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00:22:41,359 --> 00:22:44,840
Speaker 1: Our other website, how stuffworks dot com. Uh put how

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00:22:44,920 --> 00:22:47,320
Speaker 1: to survive a shipwreck into the search bar and you

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Speaker 1: will find how to survive a shipwreck. Very helpful to

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Speaker 1: read an advance before you get on ship, just just

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Speaker 1: to put you out there be safe. You can do

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Speaker 1: all that in a whole lot more at how stepworks

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Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.

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Speaker 1: Because it has stuff works that comed this. Equal Monsters

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