House bricks from the wreck of BATAVIA

BATAVIA was a ship of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), built in Amsterdam in 1628, and armed with 24 cast-iron cannons and a number of bronze guns. BATAVIA sailed under Francisco Pelsaert but was shipwrecked on the maiden voyage, and was made infamous by the subsequent mutiny and massacre that took place among the survivors.

On 4 June 1629 the ship struck Morning Reef near Beacon Island, part of the Houtman Abrolhos off the Western Australian coast. Of the 322 aboard, most of the passengers and crew managed to get ashore, although 40 people drowned. Pelsaert then sailed the 30ft longboat to BATAVIA (present day Jakarta) for help. While he was away, Jeronimus Cornelisz the under-merchant, who had been left in charge of the survivors, presided over two months of unrelenting butchery and savagery. At least 110 men, women, and children were drowned, bashed, strangled or stabbed to death.

A group of soldiers managed to hold out on another island close by and eventually captured Cornelisz before Pelsaert returned from Batavia. Cornelisz and several of the major mutineers had both hands chopped off before being hanged and two others were marooned on the West Australian coast. The remaining mutineers were taken to Batavia for trial. Of the original 341 people on board BATAVIA, only 68 made it to the port of Batavia.