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Episode 4077: The Island of Appalling Murder, Batavia, King of the Flies
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On The island of Sivalbe, not far from Australia's west coast, there is a humble, rock-strewn simple fortification that is currently the oldest surviving European architectural site on Australian soil, a full century and a half before James Cook's settlement. Behind this fortification, there is a terrible story.
More than 300 people on board were stranded on a desert island 400 years ago by a Dutch East India Company ship near an isolated island in western Australia, where they carried out a bloody massacre on what would later be known as Murder Island.
Batavia was a ship of the Dutch East India Company. It was built in 1628 in Amsterdam and was equipped with 24 cast iron cannons and some bronze guns. The Batavia sank on its maiden voyage and became known for the mutinies and massacres of survivors of the shipwreck. A 20th-century replica of the ship was also named Batavia, owned by the Dutch East India Company, the Amsterdam Chamber of Commerce, launched in 1628, with the ultimate fate of sinking in the waters off Hotman in Western Australia on 4 June 1629.
A Dutch East India Company vessel carrying 341 men and various cargoes, the Batavia, hit a reef in 1629 while sailing into the Indian Ocean, drowning more than 40 people on the spot, while the survivors swam to nearby Lighthouse Island to survive. However, because the entire area of Lighthouse Island is covered with sand and sparse vegetation, the survivors are unable to seek any help, and as time passes, the island's people begin to kill each other.
A vicious pharmacist crossed the line and led his subordinates to massacre the other survivors, men who disobeyed him would be beheaded or dismembered after torture, women would be used as tools of sexual catharsis, and more than two hundred survivors would be killed in two months, and their bodies would all be thrown into a mass burial post. It wasn't until three months later, when the head of the East India Company, Pelsaert, drove a boat to search for the rescue that the incident came to light, and Lighthouse Island was renamed The Tomb of Batavia, also known as the Island of Murder.
Archaeologists are currently analyzing the wreckage in the mass grave where the killers abandoned them, and so far they have found 125 bodies, including women and children. The researchers pointed out that they also found the remains at different locations on the island, hoping to piece together the truth about how the survivors of the shipwreck survived on the island and how it evolved into a massacre.
On 27 October 1628, the new East India Company merchant ship Batavia set sail in Turksel, The Netherlands, ready for the Dutch East Indies. It was a 650-ton, armed merchant ship armed with 24 cast iron guns and several bronze guns, carrying 341 crew members, commanded by Francesco Persart, a senior commercial officer who had worked in Agra, India, for ten years in Agra, India, and had just returned to his home country. The well-equipped and experienced commanders convinced the senior brass of the East India Company that the Batavia's China Eastern Airlines would provide a great boost to the spice trade of companies as far away as Southeast Asia, and the crew included the families of many company employees, who also looked forward to starting a new life in Asia.
One of the crew members, Jerónimos Konelitz, a low-ranking businessman from Friesland who was originally a pharmacist who ran a pharmacy in Helen, went bankrupt after being involved in a lawsuit related to the death of his young son. There are also rumors that Konelitz had a close relationship with a local painter in Helenm who was debauched and suspected of heresy, which aroused suspicion among the religious authorities. In any case, Konelitz's life was not successful, his interpersonal relations were not good, and he could be beaten into heretical masses at any time because of religious problems. In this case, he chose to work for the East India Company and traveled to the Far East to try his luck.
The experience of Vibby Hayes, another Frisian on board, is even more insignificant. He was only a young man from a poor family, with a basic education, who had just signed a five-year military employment contract with the East India Company for the garrison of the Banten Fortress, and he boarded the ship as the most junior soldier, at the age of twenty-one.
None of the crew members on board the Batavia could have imagined that these two humble Frisians would greatly influence the fate of the merchant ship in the future.
As batavia had just sailed out of Cape Town, Africa, Konelitz began to show his unusual ambitions. He co-opted a part of the crew to become his confidants, including Jacobs, the captain of the Batavia, to seize control of the ship and use the ship's full load of silver and other goods as capital for a new life. Under his planning, the drinking captain Jacobs deliberately sailed the ship away from the original channel, causing the Batavia and other merchant ships that had originally sailed to the Far East to be scattered and left alone on the sea to make it more conducive to their rebellion.
Corneliz's next plan also included deliberately flirting with a young high-ranking woman on board to provoke a conflict between the crew and the sailor, but because the victimized woman accurately identified the perpetrator afterwards, Koneglitz was afraid to take any further action to avoid the plot being revealed. Upon learning of the incident, Persart only ordered the arrest of the crew who caused the incident, but did not implement specific interrogation and punishment measures — he was ill at the time, and his health prevented him from concentrating on tracing the cause of the incident. Because of this, a small group of bad guys in Konegliz temporarily evaded punishment, but the crew conflicts they expected did not occur, and they had to wait for the next opportunity.
The Dutch were not very skilled in navigation, and they did not even know how to navigate accurately, and their merchant ships soon deviated from the course.
On 3 June 1629, misfortune finally struck batavia. Disturbed by the night, batavia's crew was unable to identify the nearby shoals, causing the vessel to crash into a coral reef close to Australia's west coast at high speed. Inevitably, the hull was severely damaged, forcing all the crew to jump into the sea to escape. In addition to nearly 40 people drowning, survivors landed on a small island known as a lighthouse, but the island has no natural fresh water resources and does not have enough food. Persart was aware of the seriousness of the situation and decided to personally lead a small group of high-level personnel to the Australian mainland in search of water.
The search after the landings was unsuccessful, and the Australian continent at this time had no pioneering value in the eyes of shrewd Dutch merchants, who, according to Persart's diary, "saw only a dry, barren plain, dense and huge, which from a distance looked like the huts of the locals." They saw only a few naked black men who, unwilling to communicate with them, fled in a hurry. The only water they found was rainwater collected in shallow recesses of the rocks, and they found nothing else. ”
Despair made Persart feel cowardly. He and other high-ranking officials decided to leave the survivors who remained on the island for the time being, boarded a dinghy from the Batavia, and went to Jakarta, the headquarters of the Dutch East Indies, far away in Java, to seek assistance. The dinghy later managed to reach Jakarta after a 33-day voyage.
Among the survivors who remained on the island, the highest rank was Coneglitz, who was a low-ranking commercial officer, so he naturally became the boss of the survivors. But Konelitz was well aware that, since his accomplices included the members returning to Java in the dinghy, once they had successfully returned to Jakarta, the various plots he had planned during the voyage could be revealed. Instead of that, it would be better to take the arms and materiel from the shipwrecked ships and then head to the west coast of Australia to conquer the indigenous people there and establish their own independent kingdom on this southern continent. Although the dream is full, Koneglitz must first get rid of those who may oppose him among these survivors, and the most threatening of these is the aforementioned vibe Hayes, another young man from Friesland.
Although a junior soldier, Vibby Hayes showed his natural leadership and courage soon after the shipwreck. He and his companions actively carried the ship's remaining supplies to the island and helped the survivors build temporary shelters, while also instructing everyone to collect rainwater with canvas or catch seabirds and seals for food. These acts earned him prestige, and soon quite a few survivors gathered around him, mainly junior soldiers who were as young as he was.
Corneliz naturally could not ignore this potential threat, so his next plan was to get rid of Hayes and gain control of the weapons and supplies available. He pretended to send Vibby Hayes to lead a group of young soldiers to the neighboring island of Valeby in search of drinking water, but on the grounds of the defense of his camp, he forbade them to carry any weapons, and agreed that when Hayes and his party found the drinking water, they would raise smoke on the island to inform him. Of course, he didn't care if this agreement would actually be enforced, because he concluded that this group of hairy boys who didn't even have weapons could not successfully find water in such a harsh wild environment and died of hunger and thirst. Even if they had their lives recovered, the prestige of Hayes, who had failed to return, would have been greatly damaged and would have fallen under the control of Corneliz.
After Hayes and his party left, Konelitz was able to take control of all the remaining weapons and supplies without any other obstacles. The fangs of evil no longer need to be hidden, and the most terrifying and tragic two months for survivors other than Konelitz and his henchmen are about to begin. The Konelitz party carried out a brutal massacre of the remaining survivors of the shipwreck. Almost every day people are executed.
The original massacre was only to get rid of those who might rebel against Konelitz, as well as those who claimed to have committed theft. But gradually, Konelitz's men began to use the massacre as a perverted pastime. Anyone, men, women or children, who makes any slight mistake caught by Coneglitz, is immediately arrested and executed individually or in groups. Executions also take a variety of ways, including drowning, strangulation, crushing, or large unloading. The women who had managed to escape the slaughter were also gathered at the behest of Corneliz and reduced to sex slaves by their men, except for the young girl who had been flirted with on the ship at the time, who had not been poisoned and was treated well, apparently by Konelitz as the princess of the future Kingdom of Australia.
Although in the interrogation afterwards, Konelitz completely denied that he was directly involved in the massacre, there is no doubt that at his behest and instigation, his men became a group of brutal beasts, executing 110 to 124 innocent compatriots, including women and children, in just two months. Even more frightening, this number did not meet his expectations, and his original plan was to limit the population to the island to less than 45 people, so as to minimize the consumption of drinking water!
The ultimate bankruptcy of this plan, which was shedding the blood of innocents, was also attributed to the young Hayes. Contrary to Creselize's expectations, Hayes and his party were fortunate enough to find abundant fresh water on two other islands (East and West Valebí), and they also found that these two islands were inhabited by a large number of wild small kangaroos (presumably why the two islands were named Valebí), which will undoubtedly provide them with an abundant food source.
The elated Hayes, unaware of the horrific massacre that was now taking place on another island, simply raised a smoke from the commanding heights of the island as agreed, waiting for Conelitz to lead his surviving compatriots to the island. In the end, however, they were greeted by several survivors who risked their lives to escape the clutches of Konelitz, telling Hayes about the various massacres, abuses, and rapes that had taken place on the island.
Hearing this unfortunate and tragic news, Hayes and his party were shocked and immediately began to prepare for the war. Using the island's resources and the iron nails from the wreckage of the Batavia they had brought with them, they improvised a fleet of rudimentary spears and sticks as weapons, while fortifying dry rocks on the heights of the island and digging a freshwater well to ensure adequate water supply. The fortress also stocked a large number of boulders and sharp small stones as throwing weapons to prevent enemy sneak attacks. Even with rudimentary resources, the defense work can be completed in a short period of time, and Hayes's military and organizational talents are once again reflected.
Knowing that Hayes was well prepared for war on another island, Corneliz immediately led his men to Valeby Island, both to fight against what he saw as a betrayer and to seize more abundant resources. One is a pharmacist who has lost his humanity in the midst of infinite ambition and desire, the other is a young soldier who is fledgling but has the ability to lead, and the two Frisians are about to face off in a strange wilderness.
In the following August and September, the Konelitz Army launched three attacks on Vallebi Island, but all were defeated. Although Konelitz was well-equipped, it was far from being able to match Hayes's soldiers in terms of morale, supplies, and military qualities. In the third attack, in particular, Corneliz lost three of his best men, and he himself was captured by Hayes.
The capture of the mastermind did not ensure victory for Hayes's side, as a large number of weapons were still in the hands of the remnants of the Creneids. Sure enough, the latter soon launched a fourth attack, and this time the Hayes army, which was not much better equipped than the natives, may not be able to hold out, and the remnants of Konelitz poured out all their strength and brought plenty of muskets to participate in the siege. The superiority of the enemy's long-range firepower soon put Hayes on the brink of extinction on the one hand, but God was once again on Hayes's side.
At this moment, a huge sail shadow appeared on the distant sea level, and it was Persat's party, who had fled to Jakarta for help three months ago, and under the orders of jan Cohen, the governor of the East Indies, came to rescue the surviving compatriots in a small sailing ship, the Sadan. This is the light of hope that the Dutch, tormented by terror and hunger, have been looking forward to for two months!
Hayes's decisiveness was once again superior to that of his opponents. He quickly organized a small group of men and horses to take the dinghy and paddled quickly in the direction of the Sadan, informing the Creneliz party of the crime of rebellion. The remnants of Konelitz then reacted, but by the time they arrived at the Sadan, all the plots had already been known to Persart. The supporters of Konelitz knew that there was no hope of overturning the market and had to surrender. The horrific usurpation of the throne, which lasted two months, came to an end.
For survivors, the nightmare is finally over. Since the Sadan was a much smaller sailing ship than Batavia and could not carry too many crews, Persat decided to carry out summary executions of some of the rebels in order to provide more space for others who were ready to return to Jakarta — to save rations by reducing the population, which had been a terrible tactic of Konelitz against his surviving compatriots, and now the same retribution was about to befall him.
After the trial, the chief conspirator, Konelitz, and several key usurpers were sentenced to death. They were all stripped of their hands before being taken to a gallows on Seal Island and then questioned; the commander-in-chief who commanded the fourth siege of Valaby Island and a young sailor who were found an accessory by the Provisional Court and sentenced to exile were thrown on the main continent of Australia to fulfill their unfulfilled dreams on behalf of their masters, and never again lived or died without a word (in fact, exile in those days was not necessarily a more compassionate punishment than the death penalty, and prisoners could be tortured to death by harsh circumstances); According to the first report of the British colonists who first came to this area, it was found that there were some people in the local aboriginal tribes who were obviously different from their peers in skin color and appearance, which may suggest that these two exiled people later integrated into the Australian Aboriginal society!
The rest of the rebels were escorted back to Jakarta in preparation for a second trial by the East India Company. At the second trial in Jakarta, the second in command of the Circle of Friends of Konelitz was found guilty of the most human lives and was sentenced to brutal wheel torture (torturing the prisoner to death by tying him to the wheel and breaking one of his joints); the remaining five were hanged and several were flogged. As the commander of the voyage, Persat was also punished by the confiscation of personal property as unshirkable by the court for the usurpation of the throne, so that not long after the trial, the discredited senior commercial officer had to board a merchant ship to Sumatra in the hope of making a comeback in the middle of the business world, but unfortunately died of illness less than a year later. As for the captain of the Batavia, who had conspired with Konelitz, he escaped death because of insufficient evidence of the charges, and was eventually imprisoned in a prison in Jakarta for the rest of his life.
Those responsible were duly punished, and the soldiers led by Hayes were rewarded for their loyalty and heroism in the incident, especially Hayes was warmly welcomed in Jakarta and sought after by his compatriots as national heroes. With the approval of the East India Company, the young Hayes was promoted to lieutenant and earned five times his monthly salary. Unfortunately, this promotion record is also the last time Hayes appears in the historical data, and no one knows hayes' fate after that. Maybe he was killed in a shipwreck or military conflict later? Maybe he spent five years of service in Jakarta safely and quietly, and then quietly returned to his homeland for the rest of his life? In short, this legendary boy was so dramatically short-lived in the history of the Age of Discovery, and then disappeared dramatically.
This tragic event was later revealed with the publication of Persart's diary in 1647, and for more than three centuries the story became fodder for many literary and artistic works. The details of the shipwreck described in Persart's diary have also become an important basis for helping archaeologists today search for the wreckage of the Batavia. Today, the wreckage parts of the Batavia and the excavations on board the ship are placed in the Western Australia Museum in Australia, while in the Dutch port city of Lelystad on the other side of the world, a 20th-century reconstructed Batavia is moored on the shore for tourists to board the ship and quietly pay homage to the ghosts of the innocent deaths lost at the hands of their compatriots more than 300 years ago.
Aftermath: On 25 September 1999, the new Batavia traveled to the National Maritime Museum in Sydney, Australia for an exhibition. In 2000, a replica of the Batavia became the flagship of the Dutch Olympic team at the 2000 Olympic Games... According to Michael Greshko, the other passengers on the Batavia were thrown off the ship or beheaded, but the fate of the latest discovery of the victims was slightly milder.
Paleologists have discovered a mass grave on an island off The West Coast of Australia, which is associated with a nightmare-like shipwreck, in contrast to the novel Lord of the Flies.
The grave lay five passengers of the Batavia, the flagship of the Dutch East India Company, which sank on the maiden voyage from the Netherlands to Java in 1629. The bodies were laid out neatly and buried without signs of violence, and may have died of dehydration shortly after the shipwreck — before the madness descended on other survivors.
It is well known that after the ship struck morning reef near Beacon Island, many other passengers on the Batavia were killed by the rebels. Traces of such atrocities abound in other graves excavated by archaeologists. For example, the top of the head of a male skeleton was cut off by a sword. His body was casually dragged to the final resting place.
The commander of the Batavia, Francisco Pelsaert, left 282 survivors on Beacon Island, part of the Houtman Abrolhos Islands, 80 kilometres off the coast of Australia, and tried to find a nearby water source, but soon the island was in disarray. Thanks to his astonishing bad luck, it took him three months to return with aid.
In Persat's absence, a hedonistic businessman, Jeronimosch. Jeronimus Cornelisz seized power and directed dozens of murders, even killing women and children. But when the men he sent to explore the other islands turned back to betray him, so did his reign of terror; after Pessart's return, Konelitz and several of his rebels were executed.
A total of 115 people died after the shipwreck, most of whom were massacred. Lighthouse Island now has a nickname called Batavia's Graveyard... The mass graves found on Lighthouse Island, though tragic, contributed rare and extravagant scientific material. Because Pessart published his journal after the event, archaeologists were able to contrast their findings with detailed historical narratives.
It's a series of explorations that scientists have been pursuing for decades. In fact, Green said the discovery of batavia in 1963 prompted Western Australia to pass a bill to protect the state's underwater archaeological heritage , the earliest law on Earth.
Although some remains were found on Lighthouse Island at the time, it took more than 20 years to find more victims of the Batavia. In the late 1980s, fishermen on Lighthouse Island tripped over a human bone while digging a ditch for their bathroom. In 1994 archaeologists began excavating the site, which contained the bodies of three adults, a teenager, a child and a baby.
Since that year, archaeologists have continued to search for new tombs. "During our research project, a total of ten remains have been found in the central strip of Lighthouse Island over the past three years, providing valuable new information," said Daniel M. Thompson, a professor at the University of Western Australia. Daniel Franklin said in a statement.
Physical anthropologist Lisbeth Berger of the University of Amsterdam. Liesbeth Smits plans to measure the precise elemental composition of newly discovered bones, chemical clues that point to the victims' diets and hometowns. "People eat like food," she said.
She had previously used the technology to discover that although batavia's home port was in the Netherlands, it still had many passengers from Scandinavia, Britain, France and Germany.
Green said the cosmopolitan crew had a background in their time. In the 1620s, Europe was mired in the bitter Thirty Years' War, and the Netherlands was still fighting a decades-long war of independence with Spain.
Joining the Dutch East India Company was risky; only one of the three Europeans who sailed out could return. But with the various conflicts of the time leaving many people with nothing, some saw batavia as the way out. "People look for opportunities. [They can] be fed and get a reasonable salary, and hopefully make a small amount of money if they're lucky," Green said.
Research on these undoubtedly unlucky passengers continues. Green said the research team will publish the academic paper they found next year — unraveling the dark atrocities of nearly four centuries ago in the light of science. "I've been doing this for a long time, so I'm used to seeing violent deaths," Smit said. In the case of the Batavia, "you know what's really going on with them and you know how horrifying it is, [so] sometimes it feels personal, but you have to always be objective." ”
Jumbo Huang Notes: Batavia ( (About this soundlisten)) was a ship of the Dutch East India Company. Built in Amsterdam in 1628 as the company's new flagship, she sailed that year on her maiden voyage for Batavia, capital of the Dutch East Indies.
On 4 June 1629, the Batavia wrecked on the Houtman Abrolhos, a chain of small islands off the coast of Western Australia. As the ship broke apart, 40 of the 341 passengers drowned in their attempts to reach land. The ship's commander, Francisco Pelsaert, sailed to Batavia to get help, leaving merchant Jeronimus Cornelisz in charge. Cornelisz sent about 20 men to nearby islands under the false pretense of searching for fresh water, abandoning them there to die. He then orchestrated a mutiny that, over course of several weeks, resulted in the murder of approximately 125 of the remaining survivors, including women, children and infants; a small number of women were kept as sexual slaves, among them the famed beauty Lucretia Jans, reserved by Cornelisz for himself.
Meanwhile, the men sent away had unexpectedly found water and, after learning of the atrocities, waged battles with the mutineers under soldier Wiebbe Hayes' leadership. In October, at the height of their last and deadliest battle, they were interrupted by the return of Pelsaert aboard the Sardam. He subsequently tried and convicted Cornelisz and six of his men, who became the first Europeans to be legally executed in Australia. Two other mutineers, convicted of comparatively minor crimes, were marooned on mainland Australia, thus becoming the first Europeans to permanently inhabit the Australian continent. Of the original 332 people on board Batavia, only 122 made it to the port of Batavia.
Associated today with "one of the worst horror stories in maritime history", Batavia has been the subject of numerous published histories, the earliest dating from 1647. Due to its unique place in the history of European contact with Australia, the story of the Batavia is sometimes offered as an alternative founding myth to the landing of British convicts in Sydney. Many Batavia artefacts, including the ship's stern and skeletal remains from the massacre, are housed at the Shipwreck Galleries in Fremantle, Western Australia, while a replica of the ship is moored as a museum ship in Lelystad.