Batavia was a ship of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Built in Amsterdam in 1628 as the company’s new flagship, she sailed that year on her maiden voyage for Batavia, capital of the Dutch East Indies.
On 4 June 1629, Batavia was wrecked on the Houtman Abrolhos, a chain of small islands off the western coast of Australia.
As the ship broke apart, 40 of the 341 passengers drowned in their attempts to reach land. The ship’s commander, Francisco Pelsaert, sailed to Batavia to get help, leaving merchant Jeronimus Cornelisz in charge. Cornelisz sent about 20 men to nearby islands under the pretense of having them search for fresh water, abandoning them there to die.
He then orchestrated a mutiny that, over the course of several weeks, resulted in the murder of approximately 125 of the remaining survivors, including women, children and infants; a small number of women were kept as sex slaves, among them the famed beauty Lucretia Jans, who was reserved by Cornelisz for himself
