The year was 1628, and the Dutch were still a relevant world power¹. Like all world powers at the time, Holland’s primary focus was sending extravagant ships crewed by hundreds of people half way ‘round the world in search of a pinch of paprika. The grandest of these ships was the Batavia; a 24 cast-iron cannon monster, commissioned by the Dutch East India Company, and captained by Commander and Senior Merchant² Francois Pelsaert.

He was a dickhead³.

His first mistake was hiring his long time nemesis Adrian Jacobsz as his captain. His nemesis!! Surely the first rule of the sea is to never, under any circumstance hire your nemesis in any capacity, let alone captain. His second (and perhaps most puzzling) mistake was hiring Jeronimus Cornelisz; a bankrupt pharmacist who was fleeing prosecution for practicing heresy, as his Onderkoopman (Junior Merchant)⁴.

With these two disgraceful human beings and a combined crew/passenger population in excess of 340, the Batavia set sail on the 29th October, with none on board suspecting just how horrific a time they were about to experience⁵.

For the first few months, things were pretty smooth sailing⁶, until in April when the Batavia resupplied in South Africa with a full compliment of gold and silver. Jacobsz and Cornelisz formed an unlikely friendship, and saw the shipment as their ticket to a new life of luxury, where they would live as kings and demigods respectively.

Their two-phase plan involved Jacobsz steering the Batavia off course, and Cornelisz gathering a group of men to help instigate a mutiny. Once gathered, Cornelisz and his small brigand army attacked a young girl, hoping that the ensuing punishment of the crew would be seen as unfair, and a mutiny would ensue.

Unfortunately and for reasons known only to him, Commander Pelsaert employed a ‘what happens on the ship stays on the ship’ approach to juvenile rape, and accordingly; didn’t discipline anyone. Through a unique combination of incompetence and apathy, Commander Pelsaert was going to prove a most cunning adversary.

 It wasn’t long after these shenanigans that the Batavia hit a reef near Beacon Island, just off the coast of Western Australia. 40 crew couldn’t swim and drowned almost instantly⁷, with the remainder ferried to the island. After finding limited food⁸ and no fresh water, Commander Pelsaert chose a select group⁹ to accompany him in a longboat on a quest for water. Little did he realise that upon his return, only 68 people would still be alive.

 Within minutes of Jacobsz departing with the Commander, Cornelisz went into a panic. Convinced that his partner in mutiny would sell him out, he decided that in order to defend himself against any rescue ships, he would have to establish his own island kingdom, with himself installed as God-Emperor.

 I shit you not. 

To facilitate a peaceful transition of authority, Cornelisz convinced the Commander’s soldiers to leave the ship under false pretences¹⁰, using this window of opportunity to usher in his new regime. This involved (for reasons still unclear), violently murdering 125 men, women and children. CHILDREN!!

His lunacy didn’t end there however. Shortly after committing this heinous atrocity, Cornelisz realised that his kingdom would be useless without children to operate his mines, men to plough his fields, and women to plough him. There was only one logical course of action available to him:

Necromancy.

Cornelisz would need to draw on all of his heretical powers in order to resurrect his 125 victims into a complicit army of the damned. However a spell of this magnitude would require fresh blood, and lots of it. Cornelisz and his henchmen rounded up the remaining survivors, in a fiendish plan to sacrifice their lives to the dark god Sethos, in the hope that he would grant them the non-unionised zombie workforce they so desperately needed.

Unfortunately¹¹, it was at this exact moment that Commander Pelsaert returned with a rescue crew to save the day. Putting aside his usual ‘softly softly’ approach to crew discipline, Pelsaert held a mock trial¹², before cutting Cornelisz’ hands off, and hanging him on the spot. The survivors were taken to Indonesia, where Cornelisz’ henchmen were tortured and killed, and Webbie Hayes was promoted¹³.

Pelsaert took his inexplicably misguided approach to the nemesis dynamic by marrying Adrian Jacobsz in a lovely beachside ceremony. The two retired from the navy and opened a small Haberdasher in Amsterdam¹⁴.

FOOTNOTES