The remains of the Batavia

At the Western Australian Museum

ONE OF THE MOST brutal events in Australia’s early European history unfolded after the Batavia came to grief off the West Australian coast on the morning of 4 June 1629.The flagship at the time of famed Dutch East India Company, Batavia was on her maiden voyage between Holland and Batavia (now Jakarta) when she struck a reef in the Houtman Abrolhos islands.

An estimated 316 were on board. Forty drowned as the ship broke up. A further 47, including the ship’s commander, Francisco Pelsaert, and all the senior officers, set off in the ship’s sloop looking for water and help.The remaining survivors, including 30 women and children, were stranded on two nearby low-lying islands.

Among the castaways was Jeronimus Cornelisz who’d been planning a mutiny during the voyage and now saw a chance to follow through with his plans and take over any rescue vessel sent. Enlisting the aid of a few likeminded men, he set about brutally slaughtering the other survivors. By the time Pelsaert returned with help three months later at least 125 men, women and children had been murdered.The commander’s retribution was swift and brutal. He hanged seven mutineers including Cornelisz, after both his hands were first cut off.

The wreck site was discovered 300 years later in the 1960s and excavation of the Batavia began in 1972, one of the most ambitious archaeological projects ever undertaken by the WA Museum.Today the Batavia Gallery is the centrepiece of the museum’s permanent shipwreck exhibit, housing the carefully reconstructed remains of the Batavia’s stern.