What happens under his "leadership" was an outright tragedy and massacre. The group divided itself onto three small islands all closely linked. He left them under the charge of one Jeronimus Cornelisz, certified nutcase who believed that anything a person did, including the taking of life, was sanctioned by God. To his credit, the captain managed to get all of the civilians traveling on the ship off of the ship and onto the island there were in all about 250 survivors. It is excruciatingly well documented (this author has notes & sources for every little detail).Synopsis:In June, 1629, a ship filled with goods, money & jewels on its way to Java (the ship belongs to the Dutch EIC) is wrecked on a reef on an uninhabited island. This book most definitely measures up to my rigorous standards for reading history. I first became aware of this story, which is true, through a wonderful program on the History Channel about recent finds on that island by archaeologists hoping to solve some of the mysteries of what exactly happened there in 1629 and the years during which the islanders, survivors of the shipwreck of the Batavia, were literally being held captive by a group of mutineers under the command/control of one single psychopathic individual. What's between the covers of this book is NOT for the squeamish.I thought the story of the wreck of the Essex was bad but this takes the cake.Batavia's Graveyard was the name given to a small island off the western coast of Australia, now known as Beacon Island. If you are planning on reading this, let me give you a heads up. Leaderless, unarmed, and unaware of Jeronimus's treachery, they were at the mercy of the mutineers. Nearly all of the passengers survived the wreck and found themselves trapped on a bleak coral island without water, food, or shelter. The commander of the ship and the skipper evaded the mutineers by escaping in a tiny lifeboat and setting a course for Java to summon help. With the help of a few disgruntled sailors, Jeronimus soon sparked a mutiny that seemed certain to succeed-but for one unplanned event: In the dark morning hours of June 3, the Batavia smashed through a coral reef and ran aground on a small chain of islands near Australia. She set sail with great fanfare, but the Batavia and her gold would never reach Java, for the Company had also sent along a new employee, Jeronimus Corneliszoon, a bankrupt and disgraced man who possessed disarming charisma and dangerously heretical ideas. The Batavia was the pride of the Company's fleet, a tangible symbol of the world's richest and most powerful commercial monopoly. It was the autumn of 1628, and the Batavia, the Dutch East India Company's flagship, was loaded with a king's ransom in gold, silver, and gems for her maiden voyage to Java.
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