1629: A Shipwreck and Mass Murder Off Australia

The Dutch vessel, the Batavia, left Holland on her maiden voyage bound for the Dutch East Indies (today's Jakarta, Indonesia) ), on the 27 October 1628. There were 322 people on board and a wealth in silver coins and jewels.

Replica of the Batavia, during the filmshooting of De Scheepsjongens van Bontekoe, Ad van der Zee

Plots and Piracy

The commander of the ship, Francisco Pelsaert, worked for the Dutch East Indies Company, but he did not know that Jeronimus Cornelisz, who also worked for the company and the ship's skipper, Ariaen Jacobsz, were plotting to mutiny and seize the Batavia, for piracy, and to steal all its precious cargo.

Rijksdaalder silver coins from the Batavia (1629) wreck. This part displayed in Geraldton Museum, Guy de la Bedoyere

Shipwrecked

Before the conspirators could engage in this mutiny, the Batavia struck Morning Reef near Beacon Island, just off the coast of Western Australia.

Forty people drowned, but the rest of the passengers and crew managed to make it safely to nearby islands, in the ship's longboat and yawl. But it soon became apparent that there was a lack of safe drinking water on the islands.

Pelsaert, Jacobsz and some other crew members took the longboat and set off to find water. And even though they did find water, they did not return to the survivors of the shipwreck, but arrived at the island of Nusa Kambangan in Indonesia, 33 days later.

Meanwhile, back on the island, Cornelisz was in charge of the survivors. But he still had dreams of piracy and delusions of grandeur, and so, he decided to get rid of any possible challengers to his despicable plans. These people, mostly soldiers, were taken to islands further away in small boats and instructed to look for water, and, as part of the cunning plot, left there to die without food. 

Murder

Then began the ruthless killings, which were planned with great care, with the most hardy and strong people being murdered and buried at night. Some were thrown off rafts to drown and others, had their throats cut, and in one case, beheaded. 

One of the Batavia mutiny (1629) victims, excavated on Beacon Island and now displayed at Fremantle Shipwreck Museum, Guy de la Bedoyere

A group of women was kept aside and used for the "common service" of these mutineering men.

Cornelisz ordered his twenty or so, fellow mutineers, to carry out killings of at least 110 men, women, and children. Cornelisz was only directly responsible for trying to poison and then, strangling, a baby. 

The soldiers, led by Wiebbe Hayes, who had been left to die on the nearby island, had managed to find water and food, but they didn't know about the scenes of horror taking place under the direction of Cornelisz until informed of the butchery by other survivors fleeing the massacres.

Attack

Cornelisz decided to attack the soldiers after he heard that they had found water and food sources. But the soldiers were prepared, as they had built forts and fashioned weapons and they managed to defeat the mutineers in several battles, eventually taking Cornelisz hostage.

The mutineers retreated and then attacked again, but Wiebbe Hayes and his men prevailed. Amazingly, at this point, a rescue ship carrying Pelsaert arrived and Cornelisz was handed over.

Cornelisz’ men did not surrender until Pelsaert threatened to sink their boats. Then a trial was conducted. However, as Dutch law required the confession of a crime before execution, the men were interrogated and tortured until they signed confessions. Cornelisz had to be tortured five times before he confessed.

Justice Served

Seven of the mutineers were hanged, some had their hands cut off before hanging, and two of the youngest, Wouter Loos and Jan Pelgrom de Bye, were sentenced to be marooned on the Australian mainland. This made them the first Europeans to permanently live on the Australian continent. They were never seen again.

The Batavia shipwreck (1629) stern internal timbers as displayed at Fremantle Shipwreck Museum, Western Australia. Guy de la Bedoyere

1606: When The First Europeans Reached Australia

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Aboriginal people had inhabited the Australian continent for thousands of years before the accidental arrival of Europeans on its shores. Though many Europeans did believe in the existence of a southern land (Terra Australis, Latin for South Land), which would balance the landmasses in the northern hemisphere.

Gerard de Jode, Universi Orbis seu Terreni Globi, 1578. This is a copy on one sheet of Abraham Ortelius' eight-sheet Typus Orbis Terrarum, 1564. The Terra Australis is shown extending northward as far as New Guinea

The Italian, Ludovico di Varthema, who travelled about the globe between 1503 to 1508, was aboard a Javanese ship when he asked the captain about the existence of land to the south of Indonesia. The captain said that there was land to the south, though he had never seen it himself. This land is believed to be Australia.

Another man, named Manuel Godinho de Erédia, who was a Malay-Portuguese writer and cartographer, who had written several books, wrote of his interest in exploring a "southern land", thought to be Australia.

Gold?

However, Willem Janszoon (1570-1630), who was also known by the name Willem Jansz, was the first known European to see the Australian coast. Janszoon, who was a Dutch navigator and the captain of the small boat, Duyfken, was interested in investigating rumours that a “great store of gold" could be found on the land of New Guinea.

Relica of the Duyfkenunder, Rupert Gerritsen

The Duyfken set off on the journey but ended up travelling alongside the Australian, western coast of Cape York and landing near the town now known as Weipa. Janszoon then continued to chart the coastline for another 320km, believing the land was part of New Guinea.

On this voyage, the crew of the Duyfken clashed with the Aboriginal people of Cape York and a number of them died. An English, East Indies Company representative, Captain Saris reported:

 “Flemmings Pinnasse which went upon discovery for Nova Ginny, was returned to Banda, having found the Island: but in sending their men on shore to intreate of Trade, there were nine of them killed by the Heathens, which are man-eaters: so they were constrained to return, finding no good to be done there.”

Janszoon, it seems, was more concerned with commerce than with discovery and since the Aboriginal people were uninterested in trade and were not friendly, he decided to return to Bantam (in Indonesia). So it was not until 1770, that the unknown southern land would be identified as a separate continent, by Captain James Cook.

Australia: Aboriginal People Arrive

Almost all populations who live outside of Africa, left that continent more than 50,000 years ago, in a single migration event.

According to the analysis of whole genomes, about 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, Australian Aboriginal people and Eurasians, as a single group, left Africa and spread out around the world.

The analysis of whole genomes is regarded as the gold standard for population studies. So when geneticists from the University of Copenhagen set about comparing Aboriginal genomes to the genomes of other groups, they found that Aboriginal people diverged from Eurasians sometime between 50,000 and 70,000 years ago. This was after the main group already split from Africans. That means that Aboriginal people and all other non-African people descend from the group who left Africa at the same time.

It is evident that Aboriginal Australians are the oldest continuous culture on Earth. According To Darren Curnoe from the University of New South Wales, the DNA analysis of 83 Australian Aboriginal people shows that the Aboriginal group came to Australia only once before Europeans landed.

China, however, has the longest continuous culture with a written history, in the world,i.e. 3,500 years of written history.

Australian aboriginal family in canoe - circa 1920. Photos taken by Australian Missionary Anthropologists

It should also be mentioned that the ancient origin of Aboriginal Australians is also supported by the human fossil and archaeological records.

However, research from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology claims that around 4,000 years ago, a group from South India arrived on Australia's shores and they were absorbed into the Aboriginal culture. The evidence being that a pattern of SNPs only found in Indian Y chromosomes matched with the Y chromosomes of the Aboriginal men.

Just to confuse the issue, DNA testing has often been dismissed on technical grounds in Australia, due to the deficit of Indigenous autosomal samples that are found in public and private databases. Autosomal DNA contains both maternal and paternal genetic information. Whereas Y-DNA traces the male-line (patrilineal) and mtDNA traces the mother's line (matrilineal).

But it is evident that whatever the specifics of the situation, we do know that Australian Aboriginal people have lived on this land a very long time.