Batavia's Graveyard: The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History's Bloodiest Mutiny - Softcover

Dash, Mike

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0609807161 ISBN 13: 9780609807163

Publisher: Crown, 2003

Synopsis

In 1628 the Dutch East India Company loaded the Batavia, the flagship of its fleet, with a king’s ransom in gold, silver, and gems for her maiden voyage to Java; the ship itself was a tangible symbol of the world’s richest and most powerful monopoly.

The company also sent along a new employee to guard its treasure. He was Jeronimus Corneliszoon, a disgraced and bankrupt man with great charisma and dangerously heretical ideas. With the help of a few disgruntled sailors, he hatched a plot to seize the ship and her riches. The mutiny might have succeeded, but in the dark morning hours of June 3, 1629, the Batavia smashed through a coral reef and ran aground on a small chain of islands near Australia. The captain and skipper escaped the wreck, and in a tiny lifeboat they set sail for Java—some 1,500 miles north—to summon help. More than 250 frightened survivors waded ashore, thankful to be alive. Unfortunately, Jeronimus and the mutineers had survived too, and the nightmare was only beginning.

About this title

Review:

In 1629, the Dutch merchantman Batavia grounded on a desolate atoll near Western Australia. Of the 200 survivors, 115 were subsequently murdered, in coldest blood, by a group of the ship's sailors and their psychopathic leader, Jeronimus Corneliszoon. Batavia's Graveyard is Mike Dash's unnerving, measured account of the incident. The victims included children, babies, and pregnant women; the crimes took place over a period of several months. Though the killings make a substantial, chilling tale in themselves, Dash adroitly places the shocking spree in larger context with illuminating discussions of 17th century medical practices, religious heresy, global politics, and shipboard sociology and daily life. Additionally, he draws dozens of portraits of the participants in this ghastly drama, most fascinatingly that of Corneliszoon, who emerges as a grotesquely charismatic predecessor of the likes of Charles Manson and Ted Bundy. Batavia's Graveyard, a skillful melding of accessible scholarship and evenhanded narrative and of overview and telling detail, is a welcome achievement. --H. O'Billovitch

From the Back Cover:

“Brilliantly crafted, deeply researched . . . a gruesome and powerfully written history. [Dash] provides a thorough look at the underlying subject of all expedition stories—the human heart.” —Star-Tribune (Minneapolis)

“Horrific and mesmerizing . . . No history I’ve read in years places you so deeply inside a piece of the past.”—National Geographic Adventure

“Scholarly and exhilarating. Not only history, but an enthralling sea yarn and true-crime thriller.” —Associated Press

“I read it in one sitting, absolutely enchanted.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

About this edition

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0609807161
• ISBN 13: 9780609807163
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 512