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THE ABROLHOS TRAGEDY
Stirring Times in the Seventeenth Century. Australia’s First White Residents. The Batavia’s Castaways. How they Fought and Suffered. One Hundred and Twenty-five Massacred. First Complete Translation in English of the Original Dutch Account, |
islands of the two groups are barely within sight of each other. They are accordingly so detached that the shipwrecked crew of the Batavia when wrecked upon them naturally kept to their first position, and did not transfer themselves northwards to any larger island. There are some twenty islands in the Pelsart or southern group, all of coral formation, and many coral reefs. They form a rude triangle of which the apex points south. The western side is a long reef over which the great ocean rollers constantly break in a heavy surf on the east lies the largest island of the group, now named Pelsart Island, but formerly termed Batavia’s Churchyard; and between the reef and the island and to the north lie the balance of smaller islands and reefs. Near the centre of this group is Middle Island, about a square mile in extent, and probably identical with the High Island mentioned in the journal. It reaches twenty or twenty-five feet above the sea level, while the others are only about half that height. A little more than a mile from Middle Island is Square Island, some three acres in extent It is supposed that much of the fighting took place on those two islands. On Square Island are two pits which may have been dug as rifle pits to resist an invading force. The Abrolhos have been the scene of many wrecks. In the century following 1639 the Dutch East India Company had to mourn the loss of the following vessels there: The Batavia in 1629, the Verfulde Draeck in 1656, the Ridderschap van Holland in 1693, the Zuysdorp in 1711, the Zeewyk in 1726. The last resembled the Batavia wreck in so much as the vessel was totally destroyed, and the crew had to build a boat from the wreckage in which to go north to the Straits. | THE ORIGINAL JOURNAL
The book from which our narrative is taken is the original Dutch publication dated 1647 — only eighteen years after the occurrence it records. Printed with heavy, old-fashioned type, and lines close together, bound in yellow parchment, it is in its durability and excellent preservation, a testimonial for the compositors who set up the type and the printers who put it through the press, if they had not ceased fretting over such things centuries ago. The author, with a modesty scarcely to be expected, conceals his identity, so that no one knows to whom we should return thanks for this earliest of Australian books — for though its heroes and villains are Dutch and Frenchmen, and its publisher honest Jan Jansz, of Amsterdam, the whole deals with — Australia and Australian settlement, and gives us a glimpse of aborigines similar to those who still inhabit our colony. His style varies so much that we must regard him as, to a great extent, a compiler. The description of the wreck is, for vividness, worthy of Defoe, and other parts, for terse force, recall the same author. But great patches are a mere copy of a mariner’s log. Yet even in the most monotonous of its leaves this old book has quaint gleams that are both interesting and amusing. The author keeps right on with a stolid persistency worthy of his race. He shows equal care in chronicling the day when seaweed was sighted, and the exact stage at which the fortitude of the wicked Cornelius gave way to the torture - “some water already poured into his mouth”. Nothing surprises him except, perhaps, the mutineers’ “bold pride and arrogance” that made them “not hesitate to lay hands on the company’s precious materials” and cover their |
book-shop in London by Mr. F. C. Broadhurst. It was in all respects a lucky find, for besides being rare and in good preservation, it related to a subject of which Mr. Broadhurst had made a study. To him we take this opportunity of tendering our thanks for his permission to use the volume and reproduce the original copper-plate illustrations. After his return to Western Australia, Mr. Broadhurst lent the volume to Mr. W. Siebenhaar, a Dutch gentleman, belonging to the Registrar-General’s
Department, who made the excellent translation which we use. Apparently no English translation has been made of this work prior to that which we now publish. Mr. Battye, librarian of the Victoria Public Library, Perth, has obligingly looked up the bibliography of the subject. This appears to be the earliest edition of Pelsart’s voyage. A translation was made in French in 1663 for the “Recueil de Divers Voyages Curieux”, by Thevenot. On this, which is very much abridged, all the subsequent English translations even more condensed have been based. They are to be found in Harris’s “Collection of Voyages”, Callander’s “Terra Australis Cognita”, and Major’s “Early Voyages to Terra Australis” (Hakluyt Soc.). Other French translations have been made, but they are little more than reprints of that by Thevenot. The story has been used by Mr. W. J. Gordon as the basis of a novel entitled The “Captain-General”, but still awaits the coming of someone who will put permanent life into its dry bones. If there is any ambitious Australian poet who desires to emulate, say Browning's “Ring and the Book”, he may find in these records something that will afford more scope than the old parchment-bound tale of Roman murder and the trial of Count Guido, on which that great poem was reared. The title page bears a characteristically lengthy inscription redolent of times when the title rendered a table of contents unnecessary. The following is the interpretation.— DISASTROUS VOYAGE
OF THE VESSEL BATAVIA TO THE EAST INDIES, Stranded on the Abrolhos of Frederick Houtman, at Latitude of 28 1/2 degrees South of the Equinoctial Line. Sailed under the Worthy Francoys Persert CONTAINING The Wreck of the Vessel, as well as the Horrible Murders among the Rescued Crew and Passengers on the Island “Bataviaes Kerck Hof” (Batavia’s Church-yard), also, the Punishment of the Criminals Occurred in the Years 1628 and 1629. FURTHERMORE A Happily Ended Disaster which Befel the Servants of the East India Company in the Year 1636, at the Royal Court of Siam, in the Town of Judia, Under the Command of the Worthy Jeremias Van Vliet. FINALLY The Acts of Extreme Tyranny of Abas, King of Persia, in the Year 1645, to the Highest Dignitaries of his Empire, at his Royal Court of Ispahan. All Compiled by a Dilettanta from Various Writings, and Published as a Warning to all Persons Sailing Thither. Illustrated with Several Fine Copper Plates. AMSTERDAM Jan Jansz, Anno 1647. As the reader will see, the volume deals with three subjects, of which the “Journal” is the first. The spelling of the names is somewhat erratic, that of the Commodore being “Pelsert” here and “Pelsaert” elsewhere. We give a fac-simile of the sub-title regarding the Batavia’s voyage and wreck, and a translation of the whole. It contains the shipwreck; the massacre of 125 of the party, including women and children: the treatment of the women captured and kept alive by the mutineers; | ||||
| The history of the earliest Australian exploration is, on the whole, of a dim, unadventurous sort, strikingly unlike the romantic happenings that followed the discoveries of Columbus in the West. But there are exceptions, and the greatest of them is the tragic story of the ill-fated Dutch ship, Batavia, whose passengers and crew were for four months the first settlers — involuntary, it is true — in Australian territory. The portion of the continent now called Western Australia was the first viewed by Europeans. In the far back ages Chinese junks seem to have found the north of our island-continent only to slowly chop back again to their own coasts with true oriental apathy. A few proas manned by Malays swept down into the Gulf of Carpentaria, and finding the new land unfavourable for head-hunting went home again. The Portuguese, in their great century of colonising and trading enterprise, sought out all the wealthy parts of the East, and between the years 1511 and 1529 some of the exploring vessels were driven onto the coasts of the new land, which proved too uninviting to attract them permanently. This was no rich Mexico or golden Peru, but a continent that seemed to suffer from a chronic oversupply of sand, aggravated by a distressing lack of water, while the natives were too naked to want to trade, and too few to attract the missionary zeal of the Jesuits.
The first expedition that took our continent seriously was one under the charge of Cornelis Houtman, a Dutchman, who had served the Portuguese as an East Indian pilot, till their anxiety to turn him from the error of his ways caused him to pass a very unpleasant season in the Inquisition. Offering to lead an expedition of his countrymen to the Indies, he conducted his ships in the closing years of the sixteenth century to Java and other islands. On one tour he sighted a cluster of rocky islets in Australian waters, and named them after his brother, “Frederick Houtman’s Abrolhos”, the latter term being a contraction of the Portuguese “abri vossos olhos” - “Keep your eyes open”. The history of the islands and of the wrecks on them suggests that their christener put into their name a Cassandra warning. In 1616 came Dirk Hartog, who found the island which still bears his name. Other vessels touched various parts of the northern and western coasts, but nothing very notable happened till the year 1628, when the expedition with which this narrative deals sailed from Holland. Gradually the Portuguese pre-eminence in the East had been waning, as the loss of national independence through Spanish conquest and the cramping influence of the Inquisition destroyed their motive power. The Dutch, on the other hand, had the activity of a nation newly freed. From Alva’s fires, the pillage of the Spanish troops, and all the horrors of their war of independence, they had risen like a clutch of phoenixes. The blood of the “Sea Beggars”, who had swept Spain from the Channel, was in their veins, and they quickly sought mercantile supremacy. In 1628, when our story opens, they were in the bloom of their power. It was only about twenty years since they had thrown off the yoke of the foreigner, and for over twenty years more they were to hold on unchallenged. Then were to come Cromwell and Blake and English rivalry. To fix the time more exactly the reader may remember that Britain had experienced three years of the rule of Charles I, and, becoming vastly dissatisfied, was on the incline which led to the great civil war. So, in 1628 the ships sailed from Texel, |
under Commodore Francis Pelsart. The commodore’s ship was separated from its consorts, and a long and tempestuous voyage, depriving her officers of opportunities to “shoot the sun”, left her wandering in Australian waters without any idea of where she was. It is at this point that the quaint old story, which we publish, commences. It tells of three months of crowded life, full of such experiences as would suffice to provide a complete outfit of nightmares for even a long-lived antediluvian. It would be hard to tell what element of terror was wanting. To be wrecked in unknown seas is a dire calamity, and when the only land is a cluster of barren waterless islands, the situation becomes one of horror. Had that been all, the long boat voyage undertaken by Pelsart — perhaps one of the longest in the history of marine disaster — and the agony of those left behind, with no hope save in the | ||||||
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| slender chance of the Commodore’s hazardous double voyage being safely accomplished, would have been two subjects round which a deft hand could have woven a thrilling romance. But in this case the survivors of the wreck had, in addition, all the woes of a general massacre followed by piratical and savage warfare waged on them by those who should have proved their allies. The culminating point was the boat race to the vessel bringing succour, the prize of the contestants being life and liberty.
THE SCENE OF THE DISASTER
The supposed scene of the wreck of the Batavia is shown in one of our photographic illustrations, and from it the general character of the little archipelago that composes Houtman’s Abrolhos may be judged. The description of these given in the narrative we publish is vague as to details; and probably the accounts of later visitors must form the basis of judgment. The Abrolhos, it may be mentioned, stretch for nearly fifty miles along the coast of Western Australia — a dreaded line of low islands and sharp-toothed coral reefs, among which a vessel fares ill. They fall naturally into three groups — the Wallabi and then the Pelsarto group in the south; a group in the north, then the Eastern group. As Mr. Saville-Kent shows in his recent work “The Naturalist in Australia”, these islands give a unique opportunity for scientific research. “At some future date”, he says, “these reefs will constitute one of the happiest and most productive hunting grounds and fields for biological investigation to the associated students of and graduates in Natural Science”. The Pelsart group is about twelve miles long and seven broad, and lies some thirty-five miles from the mainland, being separated from the Easter group by the Zeewyk Channel, which is so wide that with a good glass on a fine day the nearest |
At the present day the islands are known as the centre of the guano industry, which is in the hands of Messrs. Broadhurst and McNeil. Mr. C. E. Broadhurst leased Houtman’s Abrolhos in 1883, three years later associating his son, Mr. F. C. Broadhurst, with him, and shortly afterwards handing over to him the entire control of the business. The output up to date has been about 52,000 tons. Houses have been built on the larger islands, Rat, Pelsart, and Gun Islands, with quarters and laboratories. Jetties and tramways have been constructed, and the group has undergone a marked transformation since its islands were untenanted, except by the sea-fowl, who seem to go to the Abrolhos from far and near as their breeding-ground. The noddy terns are specially numerous. Hair seals were visitors to the islands till the arrival of regular inhabitants scared them away. There are many rabbits on Pelsart Island. They were introduced in the fifties of the present century by Captain Thomas, of the Murray district. Fish abound, a great part of the Geraldton supply being captured here. It is somewhat strange that in the narrative of the “Batavia” no mention is made of sea-fowl or fish.
These islands have an additional attraction for those who long to discover hidden treasures. Many years after Pelsart’s time the Dutch East Indian Company anxiously instructed its traders to keep a look out for a treasure of six or eight thousand rix dollars that had not been recovered when he left the archipelago. The absence of fresh water, which sent Pelsart off on his long boat journey and gave Cornelius his opportunity to mutiny, is still a feature of the Islands. A small supply is procurable by sinking, but it cannot stand a heavy drain upon it, and Messrs. Broadhurst and McNeil import the water they require from Geraldton. |
clothes with gold lace. This seems to have struck him as a far worse crime than the cumulative breaches of all the commandments that astonishes the present-day reader. But on the whole he is economical of condemnation, and resembles rather the laconic historian of the Hundred Year war, who found nothing stronger to say of the frightful struggle that depopulated half France than “It was a pity”. The man of the first quarter of the seventeenth century seems to have kept his vituperative adjectives for theological discussion. Our author accordingly waxes exceeding wroth in denunciation of Cornelius’s “abominable creed”, including its denial of the existence of the Devil and hell. The scoundrels, themselves, show an equally theological tendency, and their worse of deeds, the partition of the unhappy women was duly-chronicled in a resolution by which they “bind themselves on their soul’s salvation, and by the help of God to be true to each other”, while in another document they consign the man who proves false to be “the Devil’s own”, a title which they seem to have deserved in any case.
Cornelius, the villain of the tragedy, is painted as black as Iago. There are no redeeming gleams about him, except perhaps his confession that he had lied “because he longed to see his wife once more”. Yet this accords ill with his conduct towards the women who fell into his power, and belongs, probably, to the “glib tongue” to which the historian refers somewhat complainingly. The repeated confessions extracted from him under torture have a peculiar interest, and the sage admonitions to tell the truth addressed to a wretch who, one suspects, was ready to confess anything rather than undergo further torture have a humorous aspect of their own. The volume from which our translation is made was in 1893 purchased at a second | |||||
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