Episode 608: The Tragedy of the Batavia Part IV - My Boss Is Gonna Kill Me!

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Speaker 3 There's no place to escape to.

Speaker 1 This is the last time.

Speaker 1 On the left.

Speaker 3 That's when the cannibalism started.

Speaker 3 What was that?

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's how I like to start. Hell yeah, man.
That's how I like to start. I can't wait for this episode.
I love a happy ending. You know,

Speaker 1 this is going to be so, I'm so excited. I like when everyone's just great, but

Speaker 1 it's all filled with kisses. The best part about this is the very, very end, when they do the flash mob together.

Speaker 1 Forgiveness is our favorite word.

Speaker 1 Whoa, favorite. And then all the mutineers do the thriller dance at the same time.
Oh, yeah, some Dutch millionaire, man. Whoa, something.

Speaker 1 Welcome to the last podcast on the left, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Marcus Parks.
I'm here with Henry Zabrowski. Justice Fed.
Justice Fed. I am filled with justice.
What'd you do?

Speaker 1 How did you, who did you declare it on? Not in real life. Oh,

Speaker 1 just in this story. Oh, and for me.
Justice for me. Yeah.
Justice for Henry. Did you win an argument with your wife? No.

Speaker 1 That's the funny, a funny idea.

Speaker 1 It's a funny idea. No, no.

Speaker 1 I'm just, this, this story,

Speaker 1 this ending is probably my favorite part of it. It's fucking awesome.
I love it so much. How's How's the nutmeg? You guys have been using it in your various nogs every day.

Speaker 1 I want to say thank you to Gurney today. Did you receive? I did.
They were fantastic. Gurney made us a commemorative for the end of the Batavia series nutmeg macarons.
Oh, I feel bad.

Speaker 1 She asked me if I got my macarons. I was like, I don't want it.
And I didn't know it was, I thought there was just macarons here. I didn't know she made special Batavian ones.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you insensitive clod.

Speaker 1 Oh, man. You classless simpleton.
God damn it. I love it.
I'll boof it later. Yeah, you put it right.

Speaker 1 I will say, I've never had a nutmeg mechan. I haven't either.
How was it? Nutmeggy. It was delicious.
It was Christmassy.

Speaker 1 Very tasty. She did a great job.
Yeah. And we have the future boofer at Larson.
How you doing? Stick it up there. We'll see you in a little while.

Speaker 1 Tell me, Eddie,

Speaker 1 did you actually, did you get your shipment track for the yay shirt?

Speaker 1 Because I went and I looked at my order and they're saying that my yay, my new yay shirt is going to be fucking delayed by like a month and a half. Oh, I didn't know you got me one.

Speaker 1 I just went ahead and made my own.

Speaker 1 I got a bunch of electrical tape in.

Speaker 1 That's a blur show.

Speaker 1 Now, on our last episode, we took you on a journey through the nightmare world created by Euronymus Cornelis and his band of brutes on the islands where Upper Merchant Pelsart left the survivors of the Batavia to live or die by the whims of fortune.

Speaker 1 Nice. But if you'll join us as we go all the way back to the end of episode two,

Speaker 1 Upper Merchant Pelsart had a journey of his own ahead of him, as he still had to go to Java to request help for the survivors.

Speaker 1 But more importantly, as far as he was concerned, Pelsart also had to report to the VOC on the full extent of just how badly he'd fucked up.

Speaker 1 So today, before we return to the battle between the so-called defenders and the evil hordes of Euronymus Corneles, let's rejoin Upper Merchant Pelsart and Captain Jakobs for their trip to Java. Yeah,

Speaker 1 I just love the word Java. It's beautiful.
The more we say it, because it's also

Speaker 1 Java. Nice hot cup of Java.
It's something you say as you like push your child down a well.

Speaker 1 Now, to keep the timeline straight in your head, we're rewinding the story all the way back to the days just after the Batavia shipwrecked, long before Euronymus took over and began ordering the murders of over a hundred people.

Speaker 1 This is the journey to Java, made by the rescue vessel that was supposed to return to the islands with help.

Speaker 1 So the longboat that sat on the Batavia's deck prior to the ship sinking was a 30-foot-long craft with 10 oars and a single mast.

Speaker 1 Very much the sort of ship you'd expect to see being piloted by a few dozen Vikings. Eddie, you are correct.
Hell yeah. Yeah, we went to the British Museum.

Speaker 1 You remember they had the entire Viking ship that they had excavated and they had all that kind of cool stuff in there. We learn on vacation.
That's right.

Speaker 1 I love to go to museums and pretend I'm reading. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You're just thinking about food.

Speaker 1 And then also, there's something about the devastation there that really makes it sweet.

Speaker 1 Now, stupid question: Is it 10 double oars, or are there five and five on each side? Because that's going to depend on how fast they can move. You know?

Speaker 1 It's not a

Speaker 1 stupid question, per se. It's

Speaker 1 on the boat for some reason. I feel like I'm playing because I do play DD with Mike Lawrence, and so I think that it's always the question: like, how many port culluses are there?

Speaker 1 And you have to go under DM, just go,

Speaker 1 three.

Speaker 1 You know, like, you have to go, like, I don't know.

Speaker 1 Well, as far as the crew on the longboat went, Upper Merchant Pelsar made sure to bring the most experienced sailors from the Batavia, so his chances of reaching his destination 2,000 miles north was about as good as it could get.

Speaker 1 The experienced sailors, however, included both Captain Ariana Jakobs and the boatswain, who had both been pegged by Upper Merchant Pelsart as mutineers before the longboat even shoved off.

Speaker 1 It does seem, though, like all three of them had to just pretend like nothing was going on for the entirety of their journey to Java. Beautiful sunrise we're having.

Speaker 1 Yeah, what a great day to be a loyal ship captain. Yes.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's nice that you said that. It's nice that you say that.

Speaker 1 There's also, I'm just getting caught on the world. Have you seen the movie The Tragedy of the Batavia?

Speaker 1 Where they peg all the mutineers with the longboats?

Speaker 1 It's amazing what happens in that film. And it's just that the clove oil is thick and it's coming in hot.
So it is 10 half oars because one side's made for the pegging.

Speaker 1 They always get the short side of the oar

Speaker 1 inside of themselves.

Speaker 1 How are they going to do that? Don't most oars have like the T at the very end of it? Oh, yeah, you work it in the old corner way. You ever try to get it? Oh, like a couch.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 I see.

Speaker 1 Hook in the corner.

Speaker 1 Now, the experienced sailors had correctly surmised that they'd shipwrecked about 50 miles from Australia, which Australia back then was little more than a large blob on all the maps, and it was still about a century and a half away from being settled by Europeans.

Speaker 1 But land was land.

Speaker 1 So the rescue boat's initial plan was to find water somewhere off the coast of Australia and bring it back to the survivors on the islands before the boat made its final push to Java.

Speaker 1 But after taking six full days to find even a safe spot to put in due to the coast's cliff-ridden geography, the rescue boat was too far away to return to Batavia's graveyard once they finally found water.

Speaker 1 So Upper Merchant Pelsart had his men gather what little water they could before heading straight to Java, with the hope that the survivors would figure out something until they got back.

Speaker 1 And we'll talk a little bit about Pel Sart's journal, but one of the things he wrote that I thought was really funny is that when you see it, it's like they're all very short.

Speaker 1 You know, like day one, this many knots, this many miles, and the clouds, day two, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1 Man on the coast doesn't want us to land, pulling away as quickly as possible. Like they literally are like, they keep also hitting.
the Indigenous people. Yeah.
Aboriginal.

Speaker 1 Oh, they keep hitting them and they're all like, no, thank you. No, thank you.

Speaker 1 please don't stop here we know what you guys do those good instincts by them oh yeah they're like we heard what you guys did for nutmeg

Speaker 1 don't once you find out how thick and juicy your butts are here i don't want you to fucking park permanently but by the time pelsart's boat left australia they'd already put a good amount of sea behind them but there was still 900 miles of open ocean to go but with a good crew and boat sailing fair weather and winds they made it to java presumably without incident.

Speaker 1 Although we don't know exactly what transpired during the journey because Pelsart only recorded notes about weather and estimated locations in his journals. Because that was

Speaker 1 essentially what he was going to have to show Kuhn when he arrived. Yeah, and he kind of didn't know what story he was going to tell.
No, because he wasn't quite certain how many mutineers there were.

Speaker 1 He knew that Jakobs was one and he knew that the boatswain was one, but he did not know who else was on the boat.

Speaker 1 Also, it's like if you're writing it down in this little book, at any moment they could read it. Oh, yeah, you know,

Speaker 1 yeah. If you're over in the corner writing, like making sure that no one looked good, what's your journaling?

Speaker 1 Oh, just checking the sea. This water's beautiful, ain't it? Yard, teal blue, like my mother's asshole.

Speaker 1 You can put that down for one of your skits. Mother's asshole.
You're right. It was teal, wasn't it? When you do your skits on the island, you can tell my old story.
Let's talk about 2,000 flushes.

Speaker 1 You know, someone posted a very interesting article on the Reddit that got to me that I thought was really interesting about why one in seven sailors could swim.

Speaker 1 It is because they had one of the big things was a superstition, which I thought was fascinating, was that the sea takes what it takes and that it gets a taste for you.

Speaker 1 So their belief is that if you swim in the water, the ocean gets a taste for you and will reclaim you. They have this fatalist view about the ocean that it just takes and takes and takes and takes.

Speaker 1 So they, they are like, it's, and it's this unfeeling beast that they're on, and they, and they also believe it seeks retribution. I'd rather be reclaimed than just claim.
That's what, yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, because then somebody's choosing me. Because if you love something, you let it go.
Unless you really love something.

Speaker 1 And then you put it in the basement and you create several walls all around you. Listen, if you really love something, especially a daughter,

Speaker 1 Did you bring your shovel or do you want to use mine? Hey, Joseph Fritzel is going to be free soon, and we better clean up our act before if we're not going to get him on the show.

Speaker 1 Because he is going to look through. You know, he is going to look and listen to our entire catalog to see if he'd be willing to give us his spot.
I think Casey Anthony already booked him. No.

Speaker 1 No, that would be he cute.

Speaker 1 My name's Casey. My name's Yosef.

Speaker 1 I'm Joseph. Nice and boobies.
You used to be a doctor. Yeah, it's fun to think about.
Oh, doctor, come back and doctor.

Speaker 1 Back to Java.

Speaker 1 Well, every person who left Batavia's graveyard on the longboat arrived safely in Java in late June after just 19 days at sea. And that drives me fucking crazy.

Speaker 1 That when the Batavia, when it shipwrecked, it was about two and a half weeks. And then we've been on the ocean for what, like a year? Yeah, six months.
Crazy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, or actually eight months, I think, six to eight months, somewhere around there.

Speaker 1 Upper Merchant Pelsart soon regrouped with one of the other boats that had been in the Batavia's original flotilla, the Sardom.

Speaker 1 And by July 7th, the 48 survivors had arrived in the VOC colonial capital, which, confusingly, is also named Batavia.

Speaker 1 So, just to make it as clear as possible here, there's Batavia the ship, dead and gone at the bottom of the ocean, and Batavia the colony, located 2,000 miles north of the shipwreck on the island of Java.

Speaker 1 It was easy for me to remember there were two Batavias because it almost rhymes with labias.

Speaker 1 And so you know what they say is loose lips must do kegels.

Speaker 1 Very funny.

Speaker 1 Because that's a pirate. That's a pirate thing.

Speaker 1 When they pull into Batavia, is it like uh like when they arrive? Is it like you remember the get was the gambling planet in the worst part of the last Jedi? When they arrive, is it like a fun thing?

Speaker 1 Are they excited? I don't think anybody is excited that Palsart's not excited to show up on one of his escort ships.

Speaker 1 And I'm about to get into exactly why the people of Batavia were very, very, very upset that the Batavia, the ship, had sunk. Let's rock.

Speaker 1 Now, if you'll remember from episode one, the colony of Batavia had been hard-won territory for the VOC.

Speaker 1 See, before the Dutch, Batavia was the site of a thriving indigenous community of 3,000 people, a town known as Jakartra.

Speaker 1 Today, this territory is known as the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, which won its independence from the Dutch in 1949, over 300 years after the VOC first arrived on their shores.

Speaker 1 But back in the 17th century, the Dutch weren't even the first European settlers to arrive. The English East India Company had already begun building warehouses on Java when the VOC showed up.

Speaker 1 So after a series of skirmishes, the VOC engaged in a hostile takeover of sorts by sending 2,000 mercenaries to burn Jakarta to the ground.

Speaker 1 They then overthrew the local indigenous leaders, built a castle on the ashes of the town they destroyed, and named the settlement Batavia in 1619, making it the center of all VOC trade in the Indies.

Speaker 1 Because remember, when I'm saying like the Dutch did this, I'm saying like Dutch people did this. It wasn't the Dutch government.

Speaker 1 This is a private company, the VOC, taking land, killing people, enslaving people, and doing whatever the fuck they want.

Speaker 1 And I will say that the country that it represented did definitely take those spoils with a smile,

Speaker 1 which is what we're in the middle of now too, which we're in the middle of now that we'll see with what it means to have a bunch of oligarchs do all of your foreign policy.

Speaker 1 Now, as far as who lived in in this settlement, the majority of the population were enslaved locals, while the rest were a motley crew of 2,000 European soldiers, merchants, and craftsmen.

Speaker 1 Batavia, however, was a true company town, as every single person who lived there either worked for the VOC or was married to someone who did.

Speaker 1 Most of the people who lived in Batavia never actually left the castle walls in all the years they spent there, because the lands surrounding the settlement were filled with rhinos, tigers, monkeys,

Speaker 1 and bandits who were ever so happy to kill a Dutchman if given the opportunity. God, you know what they say if you give a monkey some nutmeg.

Speaker 1 That old story. Oh, yeah.
If you give a monkey some nutmeg, they kill a Dutchman. They kill a Dutchman.
You gotta train them. You gotta train them to kill a Dutchman.

Speaker 1 You know, I live my life by that attitude. Every day I think about if I was just a monkey with some nutmeg,

Speaker 1 I'd cross this goddamn world and I'm subjugated people and I'd squeeze so much goddamn spice out of them. My God, what freedom!

Speaker 1 Now, the man who was in charge of Batavia the Colony at this point in time, the one upper merchant Pelsart had to report to, was Jans Kuhn, the thin, spindly-fingered governor we talked about in episode one, who should be played by the same dude who played The Father and the Witch, if the Batavia movie is ever made.

Speaker 1 Let's just say I am not the most pleased to see you, Pelsart,

Speaker 1 so early

Speaker 1 in your trip.

Speaker 1 I mean, like,

Speaker 1 that's my impression of it. That's a good

Speaker 1 impression, actually. The Batavia movie should not be made.

Speaker 1 I've thought about this long and hard throughout this month. Why? Because it can never be done as funny as we talked about it.

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 1 no one can do the little noose for the babies joke

Speaker 1 in the movie. Everyone believes that.
I feel like that's the only chance that has to be made: if it is, in fact, a comedy. Yeah.
Because, like, it is just the comedy of the Batavia.

Speaker 1 very funny title for a film

Speaker 1 it could be a hell of a mini series yeah i'd say that give it three four episodes and man you got something fucking special there but jans kuhn if you'll remember he was the man who'd secured the world's nutmeg supply for the voc through a campaign of genocide and slavery he hid behind a strict christian faith to justify his crimes against humanity in other words if you'd fucked up as badly as upper merchant pelsart had just fucked up by sinking the company's flagship, stranding 270 people, and losing over $50 million in gilders and treasure, Jans Kuhn was the last man you wanted to go to hat in hand.

Speaker 1 Also, I have a hang now.

Speaker 1 I am extremely irritable. I've been drinking too much coffee.
We're in Java after all.

Speaker 1 No one tells me, could someone find half and half island?

Speaker 1 Because I'm dying here. The acid alone, I'm just, I am up to, I can't sleep.
I'm burp, I'm burping pure hydraulic. It's coming right out of my mouth.

Speaker 1 Making matters worse for Pelsart was the fact that Jans Kuhn was in a particularly bad mood in July of 1629 because things were not going well at all for the VOC in Batavia.

Speaker 1 And to really understand the decisions Pelsart and Kuhn were about to make, you've got to understand what was happening in the Indies outside of the shipwreck.

Speaker 1 You're going to take that context and you're going to fucking choke off it.

Speaker 1 You're gonna take that fucking context and you're gonna fucking understand it. We're the very maze of it, because if you fucking don't, you've lost everything.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we didn't get to the fourth fucking episode to skim some context, you piece. You're gonna get the fucking context and I'm fucking catching.

Speaker 1 You can fucking open up wide and throw some KY down your throat because you're gonna fucking jam some context down.

Speaker 1 See, as we discussed on episode one, Jans Kuhn had secured the nutmeg and clove fields of the Indies by committing genocide on the people known as the Banta.

Speaker 1 And while the VOC didn't necessarily agree with Kuhn's methods, they still made him governor of the islands after the genocide because Kuhn was a loyal company man who got results.

Speaker 1 But the Bantanese weren't the only people native to the Indies. Amongst many established societies, there was an entire kingdom of indigenous people called the Mataram Empire.

Speaker 1 They ruled over much of the island of Java, where the colony of Batavia was actually located. And these are the guys that are always a problem at the beginning of CivSex.

Speaker 1 These guys are always a problem.

Speaker 1 There's always a hyper-aggressive local colony that starts picking at you while you're trying to start your very first couple of cities.

Speaker 1 Yeah, meanwhile, the Russians got fucking nothing around them, and they're just going miles ahead of you.

Speaker 1 They've already discovered a goddamn art, and I'm sitting over here trying to just get a settler made. But that's why it's important.

Speaker 1 You've got to use scouts. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Boy Scouts?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 I always throw five Boy Scouts at any problem because three of them can be killed.

Speaker 1 Now the Madoram Empire was an agrarian society. Should I? Yes, please.

Speaker 1 Agrarian. That operated on the barter system.

Speaker 1 So the VOC was fine with letting them do their own thing just so long as they didn't interfere with the spice trade. Spice.

Speaker 1 But the leader of the Madaram Empire fancied himself a bit of a conqueror. They always are.
And suddenly decided that he wanted Batavia for himself.

Speaker 1 So about a year before the VOC's flagship sunk to the bottom of the ocean, a force of 10,000 Madam Aries warriors attempted to take the VOC's colonial capital.

Speaker 1 So such a pain in the ass, especially if you haven't fortified anything. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And all of a sudden they're all over your shit and they're fucking destroying your resources and they're pillaging your, like, the little areas of your fucking guy.

Speaker 1 It's just fucking such a pain to deal with these other cultures. You know, but like if they're bringing 10,000, what are these hundred soldiers really gonna do? A couple thousand.

Speaker 1 Well, they've got fortifications. That's the thing is that the other soldiers, I mean, it's not like these 10,000 people are showing up with guns and catapults and trebuchets and all that shit.

Speaker 1 They've got pretty primitive weapons. And Batavia, like, they have built an actual castle on the ashes of the town they destroyed.
So they can just go behind the walls. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 And that's exactly what Jans Kuhn did. Like, he led his people into the most fortified section of the fortress and he burned down the rest of the settlement.
Your classic scorched earth maneuver.

Speaker 1 The VOC were under siege for three months before the Matamaris ran out of supplies and left.

Speaker 1 But Galans-Kuhn knew that when the Matamaris harvest came in the next August, the indigenous forces would return and attempt to take the city again.

Speaker 1 Which is also how Humankind beat the Hyomo sapien beat the Neanderthal.

Speaker 1 How? By hiding behind the castle walls? No, what we did was that we realized that they would attack again.

Speaker 1 And then we fortified and changed. And that's something the Neanderthals weren't expecting.

Speaker 1 And so that's why in the end we defeated them. And also it's hot in August.

Speaker 1 Well, this inevitable second attack was a big part of why Jans Kuhn was counting on the Batavia to arrive, because he desperately needed the soldiers the Batavia was carrying to fortify the castle defenses when the Mataram Empire mounted its next attack.

Speaker 1 The Batavia colony was also still mostly in ruins almost a year later, which would have made those sandstone blocks being carried by the ship Batavia quite useful.

Speaker 1 There was also the matter of the cash, the equivalent of $52 million,

Speaker 1 which was central to the VOC's future plans in the Indies.

Speaker 1 But that's all to say that when Upper Merchant Palsart showed up in Java with a boat of mostly sailors and nothing else, he was about to deliver the worst news possible to the biggest hardass in the VOC, right when said hard ass desperately needed good news why wouldn't he bring some gold

Speaker 1 well that's actually what yan cohen like brought up like you didn't bring anything yeah like nothing you just brought a bunch of sailors they're a dime a dozen we can get sailors anywhere

Speaker 1 and he was like

Speaker 1 You know, it's just kind of like what I did. I just made a couple decisions real fast.
Like, it's the truth

Speaker 1 is that I didn't know what to take. And I knew that it didn't matter what because you don't think that Jan Kuhn would have been like, so you're bringing me five gold pieces.
It would be the other way.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Yeah, like he's going to lose out no matter what.
Yeah. He didn't even bring the hats.
Where are the hats? All of my men look stupid showing their stupid Dutch hair.

Speaker 1 It's bad. Their hair is bad and it's dumb.
They need hats. I hate looking at them.
Oh, Pen Sartere, did he bring the hats? No, no.

Speaker 1 Back to looking like a bunch of idiots. You all look like a bunch of rentriloquist dolls.
I'll be so embarrassed when the Matarams show up.

Speaker 1 None of you could be seen with me if I met Jennifer Anderson. None of you could be seen with me.
You're embarrassing. Guys from North Lake.

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Speaker 1 Now luckily for Upper Merchant Pelsart, Governor Kuhn had nearly been shipwrecked two years earlier in almost the same spot where the Batavia sank.

Speaker 1 So he did have the tiniest bit of sympathy towards Pelsart's plight. But Kuhn was ultimately unimpressed by the fact that Palsart had arrived with no valuables whatsoever.

Speaker 1 Kuhn was a company man through and through, and since he knew that the top priority for the Gentleman 17 would be the cargo, Kuhn's first priority was the same.

Speaker 1 So Kuhn gave Pelsart explicit instructions to return to the islands immediately, where he would prioritize not the survivors, but the loot. Yes, Mr.
Kuhn. Absolutely, Absolutely, Mr.
Kuhn.

Speaker 1 You couldn't be more right. Fuck the children.
Fuck the women. You're absolutely correct.
Let's get the money.

Speaker 1 It took months, and whoever was still alive when Pelsart returned would just have to wait until the VOC had scraped every inch of ocean for every last bit of recoverable loot before being brought back to civilization.

Speaker 1 The implication here was that if Pelsart did not recover enough VOC property to satisfy Governor Kuhn, then Pelsart could very well have found himself totally responsible for the losses, which could have resulted in jail time or even execution if Kuhn was feeling particularly saucy on the day he made his decision.

Speaker 1 And you better be careful, because it's Marinara Monday

Speaker 1 and the sauce is getting thicker than it's ever been.

Speaker 1 And I'm about to bring you down deep like one of the meatballs burnering Sundays.

Speaker 1 I mean, people casually say today, like, oh, my boss is going to kill me. But with the VOC, VOC, your boss could actually kill you.
We really need to bring that back.

Speaker 1 Up to you two to do it. I can't wait.
All right, well, we'll have a powwow. Can we execute someone?

Speaker 1 Let's put it out on the Slack and see what everyone thinks. Come on, Ron.
Let's execute. Let's choose one.
Travis.

Speaker 1 But then there was, of course, the matter of what to do with the mutinous Captain Jakobs and the boatswain.

Speaker 1 Now, we don't know exactly how it went down, but soon soon after their arrival in Java, Pelsart distanced himself from his former shipmates.

Speaker 1 At some point, Pelsart had to tell Governor Kuhn, on top of everything else, that a mutiny had been fomenting on the ship just before it wrecked.

Speaker 1 This was the cherry on top of Pelsart's Sunday of Incompetence, and it seems like it took Pelsart about four days to work up the nerve to mention it to his boss.

Speaker 1 But once Kuhn was told, Captain Jakobs and the Boatswain were immediately arrested arrested and thrown into the dungeons of Castle Batavia, to either await justice or rot until the end of their days.

Speaker 1 God damn it

Speaker 1 He deserves it.

Speaker 1 Now, two days after the captain and the boatswain were arrested, Upper Merchant Pelsart was given command of the Sardom, a smallish yacht staffed with a skeleton crew of 30 guys, so as to make sure they had enough room for survivors and loot.

Speaker 1 Mostly loot. Mostly loot.
They set sail from Java for a relatively short journey to the islands, where Pelsart hoped he would find most of the survivors still alive, if not thriving.

Speaker 1 You just never know with these people.

Speaker 1 Some people, you know what they say?

Speaker 1 A woman's like a packet of tea. You never know how strong she is until you put her into

Speaker 1 hot water. And you never know with these people.
This could be the best time of their lives. Yeah, I'm sure they're great.
I need a vacation.

Speaker 1 I bet you, when we get out there, they're going to say, hey, take the gold. Get out of here.

Speaker 1 We want to stay right here. The snorkeling's phenomenal.

Speaker 1 Well, instead, when Palsart arrived at Batavia's graveyard, he found the survivors in the middle of a war. Yeah!

Speaker 1 And so, now that we've told you all about what happened to Upper Merchant Palsart after he left the survivors, let's back things up a couple of weeks in the timeline to where we left things off in episode three.

Speaker 1 We're now back on the island chain with Viva Haias and the defenders on the highlands, and Euronymus Cornelis on Batavia's graveyard with his band of murderous mutineers. Back to the boredom.

Speaker 1 You think those guys are going to attack us, man?

Speaker 1 I'm thinking so, man. Thank God we found that crazy plant.

Speaker 1 Fuck yeah, dude. That one plant sure does make me not care.

Speaker 1 Jamming.

Speaker 1 What is that you're doing? What are you doing there? Who are you talking to me? Yeah,

Speaker 1 what's that sound you just made?

Speaker 1 Oh, it's a steel drum. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 It's the funkiest sound. Wow.

Speaker 1 I almost forgot I was right.

Speaker 1 Now, if you'll remember, refugees from Batavia's graveyard were washing up on the highlands for weeks in groups of four or five, where they found that Viva Hayes and his men were having a grand old time, enjoying near unlimited water and a veritable buffet of island creatures for sustenance.

Speaker 1 But each and every person who arrived at the Highlands had a new, horrific story to tell about what was going down over on Batavia's graveyard, from casual murder to full-on massacres, all committed in service of Euronymus's fantasy of becoming a pirate.

Speaker 1 I watched a fucking 15-year-old boy murder a bunch of other boys and then laugh about it. And then I watched a man kill that boy.

Speaker 1 Fucking bummer, man.

Speaker 1 Should we check that out or send it? Did you buy a ticket for that?

Speaker 1 Someone passed me some tiny kangaroos. Yeah, fucking geez.

Speaker 1 I love this tiny kangaroo.

Speaker 1 I love how unafraid they are.

Speaker 1 Well, after hearing all this, Viva Haias knew that it was only a matter of time before Euronymus and his men came for them.

Speaker 1 See, both Viva and Euronymus knew that the first group who made it to the rescue boat was going to be the ultimate winner here.

Speaker 1 If Viva made it first, then his group could warn their rescuers about the mutineers, and after defeating the mutineers, they could all go to Java to continue living the soldier's life.

Speaker 1 But if Euronymus made it, the mutineers would likely kill everyone aboard the rescue ship and leave Viva's men to die.

Speaker 1 And that's if the mutineers didn't use the rescue ship's cannons and weapons to slaughter Viva's group just because they wanted to. They seem to be doing quite a bit of that.
Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So I think that that makes, uh, oh yeah. They're definitely gonna fuck them all up.
Yeah. But aren't the mutineers like fucking weak as hell at this point?

Speaker 1 At this point, they are, but if you've got weapons,

Speaker 1 especially if you've got superior weapons, it can really make all the difference. Also, you know, when you listen to anything about history, there are certain X factors.

Speaker 1 Dan Carlin talks about it all the time, where sometimes that level of hunger and desperation and more, like, you have more murders under your belt, and that actually makes you a stronger adversary.

Speaker 1 Because these guys have been killing people left, right, but they're also getting drunk and lazy. Yeah, but this is also an island full of soldiers and sailors.
So you think they'd be strong as fuck?

Speaker 1 We'll see.

Speaker 1 But that's all to say that Viva knew that the stakes were high, and he had to be prepared. The biggest problem Viva had, though, was that Euronymus's men had all the muskets and swords.

Speaker 1 But that didn't mean Viva didn't have advantages himself. Most importantly, Viva had made sure that everyone who showed up on the highlands was well provided for, which engendered real loyalty.

Speaker 1 And the abundance of resources on the highlands meant they had no less than 50 healthy people willing to fight.

Speaker 1 In contrast, Euronimus ruled his men by fear, and their rations were limited to what rainwater they could catch with tarps along with stray birds and a rapidly dwindling supply of hardtack.

Speaker 1 Viva was also a hell of a soldier, so he and his men studied the geography of the highlands to surmise where they could best defend the island against Euronymus when he and his men finally mounted their attack.

Speaker 1 Eventually, Viva pegged a shore of mud flats as the most likely landing spot, so a lookout was posted there at all times with clear vantage points to send signals inland, where most of the real defenses actually were.

Speaker 1 But since their strategy was based almost solely on defense, Viva's men took to calling themselves the Defenders. Go-Go Island Defenders!

Speaker 1 Go-Go Island Defenders!

Speaker 1 Everything doesn't need a name. Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 Hey, I don't know. Having a name for your group,

Speaker 1 it's a team thing, you know? I guess so.

Speaker 1 The gorillas.

Speaker 1 They don't know what a gorilla is. How about, yeah, something like, you know, the football team.

Speaker 1 The highest island football team. The flotillas.
The commanders. I like the flotillas.
Yeah, that's fun. The tiny kangaroos.
Yeah. The cats.
Ooh, the cats.

Speaker 1 Now, having no military experience, no understanding of strategy, and a shallow bench when it came to military advisors, Euronymus Corneles fell back on manipulation and deceit as his opening volley in the war.

Speaker 1 He wrote a letter to Viva, warning him that the people who'd escaped to the Highlands were all telling lies. They were the evil ones who were planning to betray Viva.

Speaker 1 So, Euronymus suggested, it would be in Viva's best interest to arrest those who had escaped and wait until Euronimus came to take them away.

Speaker 1 Don't worry, we're on our way. Let's go, go, go, go, go,

Speaker 1 apprehend the criminals for me.

Speaker 1 We're gonna do a big investigation We're gonna get to the bottom of this and find out what's really going on and I want to try one of these tiny kangaros Exo exo

Speaker 1 that they're on an island and the first thing is like dictate a letter

Speaker 1 Yes, bring me my quill and it's just like you're on a fucking you're surrounded by the corpses of infants

Speaker 1 now Euronymus's letter was delivered by a young VOC cadet who'd helped with the drownings in the early days of Euronymus' executions.

Speaker 1 But since Viva wasn't an idiot, the defenders took him captive as soon as he landed. When the cadet didn't return, Euronymus knew his plan hadn't worked, so he decided for an all-out attack.

Speaker 1 A group of 20 men, led by the psychopathic David Zivank, boarded boats to attack the highlands, but the defenders were well prepared.

Speaker 1 The mutineers landed exactly where Viva thought they would, but when faced with the full force of healthy soldiers armed with homemade weapons, the mutineers retreated immediately.

Speaker 1 They figured out that, so muskets take a lot to use, right? It takes a second. Especially back in the 1600s.

Speaker 1 You got to pack it, you have to put in the wick, you sight, you like light the fuse or whatever it is. Like you have to do it.
It's about around a minute. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so what he's, but what he realized is that, okay, they have guns. We only have the slings and rocks and all this bullshit.

Speaker 1 But what we can do is we can make their guns useless by instead of using the rocks, which is at first they thought, like, oh, they're going to sling rocks at us. We're fucking got guns.

Speaker 1 He was shooting it at the water so that when they were wading, when they, because the way they put it, they had to get out of the boat and wade to the beach. Mud flats.

Speaker 1 Like mud flats is literally like what they did, they try to do on D-Day.

Speaker 1 And so they had to wade through the water with the muskets held up like this, so that they would shoot the slings into the water to splash all over them to get the wicks wet and to make the guns useless.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you know how good they got at slinging rocks. They got nothing else to do.
All they're doing.

Speaker 1 And there's a lot of rocks. And not to mention, they're a lot harder to kill than starving children.

Speaker 1 I mean, I don't know.

Speaker 1 So now that the mutineers knew what they were up against, they returned with their entire crew a few days later, all, of course, except for Euronymus, who stayed behind on the graveyard.

Speaker 1 This time, the defenders and the mutineers actually clashed, but the mutineers again retreated without any real casualties on on either side.

Speaker 1 Totally at a loss on how to break through, the mutineers made no further attempts at attack for another month. But in that month, the survival situation for the mutineers became dire.

Speaker 1 Their food and water rations were running dangerously low, while it was quite obvious that Viva's group was living high on the hog, relatively speaking.

Speaker 1 So what started as a war to save the mutineers from execution became a battle for resources. Now like many demagogues throughout history, Euronimus thought he was much more clever than he really was.

Speaker 1 While he had no problem manipulating men who were already dissatisfied, ignorant, and prone to violence, he had a much harder time fooling anyone with a sense of decency.

Speaker 1 So when Euronymus moved on to his next plan of taking the highlands through subterfuge and deception, Viva Hayes saw through Euronymus' bullshit almost immediately and was able to turn Euronymus' plan against him.

Speaker 1 Yeah, all it takes is it's amazing how sometimes incompetence comes up against the barest form of competence and how it falls apart. Yeah.

Speaker 1 See, the defenders had plenty of food and water, but they were dressed in rags, and they had to use driftwood planks strapped to their feet for shoes.

Speaker 1 Euronymus, meanwhile, had plenty of material for clothes since Batavia's graveyard was far closer to the wreckage of the Batavia itself, and more stuff had washed ashore on his side of the archipelago.

Speaker 1 I'll dare them to fight without hats.

Speaker 1 Don't look stupid. Oh, you found the hat box.
Yeah, but I'm keeping it for myself.

Speaker 1 Because, as the seasons change, so do hats.

Speaker 1 So, Euronymus proposed a simple trade, red wine and canvas for food and water.

Speaker 1 The trick Euronymus planned to pull, if you could even call it a trick, was that when the trade was made, the mutineers would take a few of the defenders aside to sow dissension and convince them to come and turn coke.

Speaker 1 I want to ask you a question: Is it hurter to kill a baby or a six-year-old?

Speaker 1 Whatever answer you got, we support.

Speaker 1 All right, hurt.

Speaker 1 Well, if the mutineers were successful, then it would be far easier for Euronymus to mount an attack and murder every defender on the Highlands.

Speaker 1 But like most of Euronymus' plans, it was about as ham-fisted as you could get. No offense.
None take him.

Speaker 1 So basically, his plan was for him and his boys to be like, listen, I know you got all this food and water, but how about shoes?

Speaker 1 Basically,

Speaker 1 how about look like shit? Why? Well, not just shoes, but how about shoes and gold? We've got a lot of treasure over there. But out here, it doesn't fucking matter, bro.
It doesn't matter at all.

Speaker 1 That's why the plan's fucking stupid. Now, this time around, Euronimus got a little more clever with his envoys.

Speaker 1 Instead of sending a mutineer with a trade offer, he sent the minister, who was received kindly and told that the defenders were open to negotiations, even though they knew Euronymus was planning something.

Speaker 1 So, Euronymus took his full company of 37 men to the highlands with the red wine and canvas to complete the illusion. See?

Speaker 1 Yeah, see, see? And it's also, this just speaks to Euronymus's narcissism as well. That he even, this is very much magical thinking.

Speaker 1 You know, that he knows that 20 people have showed up and told Vive Haius all about the massacres that have happened, but he thinks that he's clever enough to work his way through it.

Speaker 1 And how did they get there? Did they swim? No,

Speaker 1 mostly that like they were rafts. They were building boats out of the leftover wood from the Batavia.
So you remember that he had the other side of the island.

Speaker 1 There were the people that were technically not members of the mutineer party that were stuck on one side. So what they did was build boats.
So they built their own boats.

Speaker 1 They had some of their own like kind of half-made boat raft things.

Speaker 1 And then kind of like basically the first couple of people that landed on the highlands that were running away from Batavia's graveyard, they left those boats.

Speaker 1 And then those boats would go back and forth.

Speaker 1 Well, so as to not appear too aggressive, Euronymus left most of his men on a small islet 400 yards off the highlands when he went to go do his little trade subterfuge, while he and his five best men continued to the mud flats to meet with Viva.

Speaker 1 Now, Viva could immediately see how pitiful Euronymus and his men really were once they were not in the heat of battle, as each man was rail thin from three months of trying to survive on whatever meager rations they could obtain on their barren wasteland.

Speaker 1 We're still fit. Are we still strong?

Speaker 1 I just, my fingernails are falling off.

Speaker 1 And they're also all dressed in these ridiculous costumes that they've like put together through like other officers, you know, people they've killed. I couldn't notice, but you don't have a hat on.

Speaker 1 And as you can see,

Speaker 1 I've got two on my shoulders.

Speaker 1 They're all like broomsticks dressed like kings. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 Viva also saw through Euronymus's plan immediately, especially after Euronymus's five companions walked up to Viva's men and clumsily offered them gilders to switch sides right in front of Viva.

Speaker 1 It's so funny because I feel like I'm getting called out for my own. Now, obviously, I'm sorry that it's all Civ.
Civ 7 came out.

Speaker 1 I haven't started it yet, but I've been kind of watching a lot of videos on it.

Speaker 1 And I am stuck in that mode right now because it's really it's embarrassing because this is one of my big moves that i love to do and i'm kind of mad that highest like pulled this apart so quickly but it works in civ where what you do is you send somebody in you send the diplomat out you send a diplomat in but then what you do is you park an army too far for them to see and then while they're doing the negotiations you just attack yeah That's awesome.

Speaker 1 But he's saying it's not. And he can suck me because, and honestly, it works for me quite a bit.
It's a video game. This is a

Speaker 1 people.

Speaker 1 Now, when the mutineers attempted to bribe his men right in front of him, Viva figured enough was enough and took the opportunity to arrest Euronymus and his five mutineers on the spot.

Speaker 1 We fucking got him. It was just that easy.
He's such a fucking bitch. Yeah.
400 yards away on the islet, the rest of the mutineers saw the arrest of their companions and prepared to advance.

Speaker 1 Seeing this, Viva Haias ordered the immediate execution of every mutineer except Euronymus, and five men, including the psychopathic David Zivank, were exterminated on the spot.

Speaker 1 This is when bullies meet actual bullies. Yeah.
The other mutineers were shocked and demoralized by the executions, although I don't know exactly what they expected to happen here.

Speaker 1 But instead of attacking. Oh my god, we can die!

Speaker 1 But I thought you were as bored as we. What do you have there? Oh my god, it's burnt easy.

Speaker 1 Listen, don't kill me. There's women to kill.

Speaker 1 Kill a woman. Don't you want to kill a child?

Speaker 1 But instead of attacking, the mutineers returned to Batavia's graveyard. And in the end, the defenders also got the red wine and the canvas without having to give anything in return.

Speaker 1 I will say there is something to chopping the head off the snake. Yeah.
I think that they fall apart. I think that you also,

Speaker 1 when you're stuck out there, and this also calls from like, this is a little bit of a culty. thing,

Speaker 1 right? Where they

Speaker 1 have the sunken cost fallacy of just the six weeks of being under this man's control that they just jumped under, right? They literally just said, All right, rolling with you. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then they realize, like, oh, like the whole world is not going to sort of like bend over for us.

Speaker 1 Well, it's the paper tiger thing where they immediately see, like, oh, fuck, like, he's just a bunch of talk doesn't really work. You just collided with the wall that is reality.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And if Euronymous had half a fucking brain and was a decent apothecary, just poison the wine. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's what you do in in the goblin camp. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Talking about PG3. PG3.
God damn it. I need a life.

Speaker 1 I need to kill people for real.

Speaker 1 I need more interesting stories.

Speaker 1 I'm going to go and join a mercenary group or do something so that I can come in with these types of scenarios and I can really tell you stories like how Christopher Lee told everybody on set of Lord of the Rings like what it actually sounds like when you stab a man in the back.

Speaker 1 He's done it a bunch.

Speaker 1 You know, like I need that. I need that type of, especially as a podcaster.
Yeah. No, no, podcasters definitely need war experience.
I need more time

Speaker 1 in the, maybe in a prison cell or something. I can fight my way out.
We could get you into a prison easier than we can get you into a war. Legally.

Speaker 1 Let's say I go in, not having committed a crime, but find out if I can get myself out. Ah, that's, I believe, an arrested development plot.

Speaker 1 Wow, yes.

Speaker 1 Or the escape plan movie with Stallone.

Speaker 1 I'm not pitching this as a movie. I'm saying this as my life.
Yeah. Oh, okay.
All right.

Speaker 1 Now, after arresting Euronymus, the defenders tortured and humiliated the now former mutineer leader by throwing him into a limestone pit, where they gave him the task of plucking and cleaning all the birds the defenders hunted.

Speaker 1 This sucks. I promise I'll learn my lungs.

Speaker 1 They allowed Euronymus to keep one bird out of nine as so-called salary, but his job kept him constantly covered in blood and feathers, languishing in a pit quickly filling with bird guts.

Speaker 1 Ugh, the health department of a field day with that.

Speaker 1 Not anymore.

Speaker 1 I honestly sound like that's incredible. What an amazing way to fuck.
I love an entire pit filled with bird guts. It's actually how I sound like this.
I take feathers. Annually.

Speaker 1 Do you know bird guts can actually cure the measles? You actually give it a shot. It's going to be one of the most miracle cures you've ever seen.

Speaker 1 Sorry, I'd want a Cheryl Hines' pussy hair stuck in my fucking lungs. Oh, wait, no, that's just a worm screaming out of my brain.
Oh, I don't want my fucking wife.

Speaker 1 That's a curb your enthusiasm plot line. Yep.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, back on Batavia's graveyard,

Speaker 1 the mutineers were going through a crisis of leadership. The next in command, a soldier named Stonecutter Peterez, was ineffectual and unpopular.

Speaker 1 So the mutineers elected a 24-year-old Dutch soldier as the graveyard's new leader. Might be the worst name I've ever heard.
Wowder Losch.

Speaker 1 Don't you say that?

Speaker 1 I am the leader of the island group now. And everybody

Speaker 1 wants us to know we are going away. We are doing lip syncs.

Speaker 1 It's not doing lip syncs instead. Wowderlosch sounds like the comeboy at a Berlin nightclub.
I was.

Speaker 1 I did such a good job before the recession.

Speaker 1 Because now people come for free.

Speaker 1 They clean it up. They get their people.
They get their families to clean it up for them.

Speaker 1 Well, under Bowder-Losch's command, nobody else was murdered on Batavia's graveyard. And the reign of terror was effectively at an end unless, of course, you were a woman.

Speaker 1 Things continued to be horrible for them. But not now, that's for certain.

Speaker 1 Women, the problems for them and of them have been cured. Solved.
Finally.

Speaker 1 But at the very least, no one lived in fear of random stabbings or stranglings from that point on. And they even reinstated the council.

Speaker 1 But even though some semblance of civilization had been restored, it didn't solve the inevitable execution or resource problems. So the plan to attack the Highlands was soon back on.

Speaker 1 And so, after trying to send the minister one more time with a false peace offering that was immediately rejected, the mutineers launched another attack on September 17th, an attack that would prove to be their last.

Speaker 1 Why wouldn't the minister just stay at the highlands? I've actually asked myself that question. I think it's fear, partly.

Speaker 1 And he also signed the loyalty oath.

Speaker 1 And for these people, paperwork is sacred. I'm not even fucking joking here.
Paperwork is very sacred. He signed a loyalty oath to Euronymus Cornelis and his men.
His men are still there.

Speaker 1 They're still fucking hanging out. So he has to honor that loyalty contract.
He also signed a loyalty contract to his dead wife.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 He sure did. He sure did, but it just, something about when it comes to wives, they don't care as much.
Yeah. Until death do his part, though.
Yeah. So over.
Yeah, his contract ended. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Now, the mutineers were at their greatest disadvantage yet in this offensive.

Speaker 1 All their best military men had been executed on the mud flats, and Viva had larger numbers who were better fed, as well as the high ground.

Speaker 1 But the advantage the mutineers still hadn't brought into play were the guns.

Speaker 1 Either because they were saving them for the rescue ship, or because Euronymus thought he was clever enough to get by without them, the mutineers still hadn't fired the muskets that they'd had since day one.

Speaker 1 But with no other options, the mutineers incorporated the muskets into a strategy that had a good chance of working.

Speaker 1 What we will do is we will use the guns to shoot at the birds, and the birds will make so many noises that it will make the sailors frustrated. And they will give up.

Speaker 1 They'll give up the whole thing because they're like, damn many birds are yelling. I can't think strength enough to make

Speaker 1 strength enough to make decisions about the wall.

Speaker 1 Euronymus just became Joseph Fritzel.

Speaker 1 That's not Euronym. That's not

Speaker 1 strong.

Speaker 1 That's Vouterloch.

Speaker 1 He's a lighter version of Fritzel. Different character.

Speaker 1 Under your new regime, what is your hat policy?

Speaker 1 I still believe that hats are important for our reputations as soldiers, and they are important for our feelings as men. So, hats on.

Speaker 1 Your very happy feelings are being taken into account. I love a brim.

Speaker 1 I love a brim.

Speaker 1 My feelings have been pushed down for too long.

Speaker 1 Now, once the mutineers loaded into their boats, rode over to the highlands, and landed on the mud flats, they used their two muskets to keep the fight at long range by firing one round a minute.

Speaker 1 And while this sounds like it wouldn't work, the mutineers were able to injure three defenders and kill one. That rock thing, it sounded like a good idea, didn't really work in practice.

Speaker 1 It started because, again, if they stayed on the boats. And it is interesting, though, because they really just show that musket warfare had its like time.
Yeah. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 They worked hard on it. Like when we were watching the armored the AMMA, where it's like you kind of forget that like, no, these weren't like, you know, the entire body suits of armor.

Speaker 1 They were built to be functional. They're not just art pieces.
Like you can roll around them. Like that was a whole thing.
Now there's tactics to every single one of these weapons.

Speaker 1 If there wasn't tactics behind them, they wouldn't be a part of warfare.

Speaker 1 Now this strategy very well could have translated to total victory for the mutineers, a rescue for Euronymus Cornelis, and the slaughter of every man, woman, and child on the highlands.

Speaker 1 But just as the mutineers were about to overtake the defenders and kill them all, they spotted something on the water off in the distance.

Speaker 1 It was Upper Merchant Pelsart returning after three months with 30 men and a fully stocked VOC ship, right in the middle of a battle.

Speaker 1 I don't know why that's a good thing. Why dress a car? I don't know.

Speaker 1 That's the hella on the helicopter.

Speaker 1 Somebody all show up and they're like, it's a boat.

Speaker 1 Like, it's fun. I love this part.

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Speaker 1 Now, Pelsart should have shown up days before his dramatic entrance, but with Captain Jakobs and the boatswain in jail back on Java, it took Pelsart forever to find the islands again. Where exactly

Speaker 1 was that island? Left. Shit! Right! Fuck on!

Speaker 1 Backwards! Oh, no, no! Okay, let me orient myself. Let's go back to Java and then I'll think about it.
It's this way more than this way.

Speaker 1 Well, Pelsart actually had no idea if anyone was even alive on the archipelago. But when he saw smoke coming from the islands, he dropped anchor and had his crew load the ship's boats with supplies.

Speaker 1 And just by a fluke of geography, the first island Pelsart came to was the Highlands.

Speaker 1 Now had Pelsart landed on Batavia's graveyard with no knowledge whatsoever of what had transpired in the three months he'd been gone, it was entirely possible that the mutineers could have surprised them and taken the ship, because Pelsart's crew was mostly people focused on recovering the loot.

Speaker 1 But the mutineers didn't know that, And when they saw that the rescue ship was definitely heading towards the highlands, they broke off their attack and retreated to their camp, while Viva Hayas raced to meet Pelsart's boat to warn him about the mutineers.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the lost music playing in my head.

Speaker 1 Hey, these other guys suck.

Speaker 1 They suck.

Speaker 1 Did you say they fucked? No, They suck! I think he said. They fuck.

Speaker 1 I'm fucking. I mean, I fuck.
I wonder what. You fuck.
Do we fuck? Yeah, I think we could. I wish I could.
Why don't we go to the other island? The one where they fuck.

Speaker 1 Now, with the VOC back in the picture, the fight had gone out of many of the mutineers.

Speaker 1 But of all people, the rabid yet impotent cabin boy, Jan Pelgram, acted as the mutineers' mascot and got the men fired up again. Don't you guys want to kill?

Speaker 1 Don't you know when that boat comes and takes us to Java, we'll never be able to kill another boy again? Don't you wish that we could just

Speaker 1 take that boat? And I swear, boys, we're gonna come out of that high seas, and boy, oh boy, we're gonna be the rudeness, stupidest bunch of pirates the whole world's ever seen.

Speaker 1 If I go, we can shut the fuck up.

Speaker 1 Shut the fuck up.

Speaker 1 Okay, I'll go. I'll go.
I'll go. Have a positive out.

Speaker 1 He fucking stabs a little girl to death.

Speaker 1 Within minutes, Jan Pelgram convinced a group of mutineers to get back in their boats and row for one last shot at taking the rescue ship and killing everyone who stood in their way.

Speaker 1 Because at this point, death was coming for them no matter what they did. You just got to remember that at this point, death is coming for us no matter what we do.

Speaker 1 So let's kill voluntarily. Yay!

Speaker 1 You know, he's a good mascot. Let's have a positive outlook.

Speaker 1 Come on, guys.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I guess it's not fun if everyone's got a bad attitude. That's the thing.
No one's having fun, and no one's having fun.

Speaker 1 Can I ask Eddie, did you fart? No. Okay, good.
No, neither did I. Well, that's funny you didn't even ask me.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry, Marcus. I know your farts.
And I do know Eddie's farts. Yeah, my farts are much worse than those.

Speaker 1 Party wonder if I farted. There is a smell.
Yeah. Rob? No.
All right. All right, well, good to see you.

Speaker 1 Now, over on the Highlands, The problem the defenders had was that they'd hidden all their boats on the north side of the island to keep them safe from capture during the battle.

Speaker 1 That meant that Viva had to cross two miles of rough ground, then row his boat another three miles to the sardom before the mutineers got there first.

Speaker 1 Upper Merchant Palsart had also, somewhat foolhardily, boarded a boat full of supplies along with half his men to look for survivors on the highlands.

Speaker 1 So the sardom was lightly crewed by just a dozen sailors. Easy pickings for armed mutineers.

Speaker 1 But once Viva Hayes reached his raft, he rowed out until he spotted Upper Merchant Pelsart standing dumbly on the beach, waiting for something to happen.

Speaker 1 You know when I see? I'm going to stand up. You can see this on the Patreon.
You know the Forrest Gump meme?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 He's got his hands in

Speaker 1 the small of his back and just

Speaker 1 waiting. The only ship that survives.
Something's got to happen soon.

Speaker 1 Well, Viva quickly made his way to Pelsard and told him to go back to his ship immediately because a party of scoundrels from the other islands had intentions to seize the sardom.

Speaker 1 After hearing a very brief version of what had transpired over the last three months, lots of fucked up shit. I can't even fucking meet him again.

Speaker 1 There's a kid, and there's another guy, and they did a bunch of stuff, and then we're fucking, and we're retraining the kids, and then we had a rape circle, and there's a lot of stuff, man.

Speaker 1 And fuck it, my belly hurts, and I've been eating nothing but biscuits.

Speaker 1 These tiny kickers are delicious.

Speaker 1 Honestly, try them if you got a shot.

Speaker 1 We call them cats.

Speaker 1 Pelsart jumped into action and got back in his boat, but not before he told Viva to bring Euronymus Cornelis to the sardom with all haste.

Speaker 1 Pelsart, however, was still some distance from his ship when he saw, rounding the southern point of the highland, a sloop carrying the mutineers. So he told his men to row, row, faster, faster.

Speaker 1 And he barely had enough time to clamber up the side of his ship to alert his crew before the mutineer sloop pulled aside. It was a photo finish, but the defenders had warned Pelsart just in time.

Speaker 1 Minutes! And when Pelsart looked down at the 11 men in the sloop below, dressed in their ostentatious homemade uniforms and armed with swords, he knew that Viva Hayas had told him the truth.

Speaker 1 There's the fucking hats!

Speaker 1 After a brief standoff, the mutineers saw sense that their cause was finally lost. And with their surrender, the three-month-long mutiny on the Batavia was finally over at the cost of over 120 lives.

Speaker 1 Dude, on fucking islands, less than, like, less than a football field links across and over like maybe two months. Three months.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'd say three, three months from the, from the arrival, it's like June to September. 120 people? 120 people, over 120 people.
I think it's something.

Speaker 1 They don't really know exactly how many people died, but they think it's somewhere between like 120 and 130. And I got to say, that was the best summer of our lives.

Speaker 1 Summer of 1629.

Speaker 1 Now, Pelsart began interrogations immediately, and one of Euronymus' top men, perhaps tired of the whole goddamn affair, he quickly confessed to the murders of 20 people committed on the orders of Euronymus Cornelis.

Speaker 1 We were bored.

Speaker 1 He then laid out the entire conspiracy, starting with the original mutiny plot that began three months earlier on the Cape of Good Hope, continuing with Euronymus' brutal reign, and ending with the attempted capture of the rescue ship.

Speaker 1 Now, once Euronymus was brought before Upper Merchant Pelsart, still covered in the blood and feathers of dead birds, he tried blaming everything on the men who'd already been executed by the defenders on the mud flats a month earlier, who were too dead to say otherwise.

Speaker 1 Have you ever tried to stay popular? You're not difficult enough. You know what that is? How hard it is to stay popular with a bunch of this man of mean.

Speaker 1 The mean, I gotta be mean to be in charge of them. But they were the ones, Euronymus said, who had wanted to murder the survivors.

Speaker 1 This whole thing was just one big misunderstanding, because all Euronymus had ever wanted was to maintain the peace and save as many survivors as he could from these terrible soldiers and sailors.

Speaker 1 And he'd never had any plot to seize the Batavia nor any other ship. Now, Pelsart was understandably overwhelmed with information here.

Speaker 1 So he put Euronymus in the brig and sailed to Batavia's graveyard the day after his arrival to arrest any remaining scoundrels and save whoever was still in the thrall of the mutineers.

Speaker 1 Pelsart was of course prepared for a fight, but once the mutineers saw a boat of fully equipped soldiers sailing towards them, the defenders with new gear, they all surrendered and were arrested, then bound on the spot.

Speaker 1 In searching the island for VOC valuables and gilders, Pelsart found the written oaths the mutineers had sworn to Euronymus, but that was only part of the evidence.

Speaker 1 Euronymus had also kept extensive journals, which were soon cross-referenced with the accounts of survivors and the confessions of the mutineers.

Speaker 1 That's why this story, which I'm thankful for in one way, is that I'm so, I hate,

Speaker 1 I am so sick of when stories become a debunking. Yeah.
Because you're like, oh, well, we went through all this and then it's not real.

Speaker 1 And now actually we know that all of the things that we talked about on this island definitely happened. Yeah.
Because Euronymus detailed it. Well, not just Euronymus, but many people detailed it.

Speaker 1 A lot of people, like the minister, actually wrote a book, an entire book after being rescued from the island that detailed like everything.

Speaker 1 So there's a ton, a ton of first-hand accounts, primary sources on this. I feel like no man should ever have a diary.
I have a diary.

Speaker 1 It just gets you in trouble. No, fill it with lies.

Speaker 1 Certainly don't fill it with incriminating information.

Speaker 1 My huge cock hurts from fucking today.

Speaker 1 I hope that one day my wife,

Speaker 1 my wife, Christy Canyons.

Speaker 1 What's her name? No, you got it.

Speaker 1 Now, as I said earlier, Pelsart's ultimate mission here was not the rescue of the survivors. This was primarily a recovery mission.

Speaker 1 So while Pelsart sussed out the crimes of Euronymus Cornelis and his men, he ordered the divers he'd brought with him to begin scouring the Batavia shipwreck to salvage whatever they could, an operation that was set to take months.

Speaker 1 But I suppose, thankfully, as far as entertainment went, the months of recovery gave Pelsart plenty of time to form a council that would be in charge of punishing the mutineers right there on the island, with full criminal trials and executions backed by the authority of the VOC, which again was a private company.

Speaker 1 Ironically, though, one of the men on the council was himself a mutineer and a murderer.

Speaker 1 Pelsart's former clerk, the man who'd killed the baby on on Euronymus' order, the one with the tiny little noose. Sari.
He was the only person available who could read or write.

Speaker 1 So he made recordings of the proceedings and signed judgments of his former comrades. We need more beachside courts.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Why is that? Volleyball courts. You know, yeah.

Speaker 1 And have a judge on them, though. And be able to have like.
Well, I have referees in a high chair. Volleyball traffic court.
Ooh. Right? Are you versus a lawyer in volleyball?

Speaker 1 Like, and then if you beat the lawyer in volleyball, you get off. MTV Spring Break Justice.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I feel like in the private prison industry, which is huge right now,

Speaker 1 you could get it in the ground floor with that, with a nice, let's just call it a captive resort.

Speaker 1 That's all it is. It's a full, it's an all-inclusive.
Yeah, it's right off the coast of Cuba. You go right there.

Speaker 1 There's an island available that we can get.

Speaker 1 Can I have a quick stupid ore type question?

Speaker 1 So the divers are every day, they're going down, they're trying to get the gold, right? Trying to find it, trying to recover it, yeah. How, what's the diving equipment like in the 16? Yeah, right?

Speaker 1 That's it. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if they have

Speaker 1 like a hose. I don't know.
Usually, it's 1629.

Speaker 1 Oh, sorry.

Speaker 1 Sorry. Fuck that up.
Shit.

Speaker 1 Shit. You get out of here.
You get out of here right now.

Speaker 1 I actually don't know.

Speaker 1 Exactly. We've undercovered time.
Oh, my God. We don't need to get in.
Where are you doing this? I'm just

Speaker 1 doing this. I imagine they held their breath.
Yeah, probably. But there might have been hoses.
They might have been something like that. Yeah, the diving suit wasn't there until the 1860s.
Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right. The open diving dress.
It's really, they're just really good swimmers. Okay.
Oh, they had a diving bell. Oh, yeah, but the diving bell.

Speaker 1 And butterflies as well. Yes.
They would put you down to the water and they would, you go through a thing. And and I guess it was like, uh, oh, because it has like air and yes in it.

Speaker 1 That's kind of fun. Now,

Speaker 1 now the proceedings were held in accordance with Dutch law, which stated that a man could only be condemned to death if he freely confessed.

Speaker 1 The loophole was that confession under torture still counted as freely confessed. So, if a mutineer resisted questioning on the island, he was tortured until he admitted to murder.
Simple. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Euronymus, however, held out for a surprisingly long period of time and only broke under the dreaded water torture, which is far worse than it sounds. He was like super duper thirsty, but then

Speaker 1 super ironic.

Speaker 1 Now, if Euronimus went through what most people went through with water torture, he was stripped naked and tied up spread eagle to an upright wooden frame. Hey, you guys, take me off to identify.

Speaker 1 Where his captors tied a canvas collar around his neck that reached up to his eyes, something like a doggy cone.

Speaker 1 Once the interrogation started, his captors poured water over his head, which trickled down the collar and formed a pool of water at the bottom.

Speaker 1 If a question wasn't answered, or if his captor didn't like his answer, they poured more water into the cone until it overtook Euronymus's mouth and nose. I can hear that too.
It's the,

Speaker 1 oh, it looks like somebody's still thirsty. You know, like it's

Speaker 1 like,

Speaker 1 you know, I can see that afternoon being really: here comes the airplane.

Speaker 1 The only way to breathe, therefore, was to drink the water. So Euronymus alternated between gasping for air and gulping down liquid until he passed out, hideously bloated.

Speaker 1 Once unconscious, Euronymus was cut down and forced to vomit so the torture could begin again.

Speaker 1 After going through that cycle three or four times, Euronymus' body was swollen to two or three times its original size.

Speaker 1 His cheeks would have looked like balloons, and his eyes would have swollen out past his forehead. And he would slowly have slid into modern Marlon Brando.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But even as horrible as this is, it still took several days of water torture before Euronymus confessed to both the mutiny plot and ordering the murders, although he continued blaming others for his crimes.

Speaker 1 It was only after the, and I don't know why I find this funny, but they brought in all the confessed mutineers one by one to confront him. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then you're, and that's when Euronymus finally admitted to ordering the murders of three dozen people of his own free will. You're mean.
You made us do mean things.

Speaker 1 Just cause we were bored, we shouldn't have done bad things. So you should feel guilty for that.
I'm gonna go to have sex with my hands.

Speaker 1 Euronimus then signed a confession, entrapping all the mutineers at once. And with that, it was time for sentencing.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 For leading the mutiny and turning Batavia's graveyard into a slaughterhouse, Euronymus Cornelis was given the maximum penalty under Dutch law.

Speaker 1 He would be hanged, of course, but the Dutch added the extra indignity of cutting off the condemned's hands first.

Speaker 1 Whoa.

Speaker 1 Also annoying. No,

Speaker 1 I'm very blown away by that. That's fucking awesome.
Yeah. Can you imagine fucking being able to be a manager at fucking Borders and get to fucking hack somebody's hands off? That's awesome.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's like, how do you kill someone worse? And then they figured it out. Yeah, it's human ingenuity.

Speaker 1 I find it interesting interesting that the first place you went to was borders manager at borders which was a job that you once uh helped oh yes i always think about the manager i had that used to wear knee pads and he used to have um he had many many pewter rings and he was a uh uh swinger and he used to talk all about the time of being like you should check out my fuck pad like he was like that style of guy like he's a 50 year old dude who was talking about his fuck pad and he was the guy that told me that if anybody tries to walk out of here with a book I need you personally to chase him down the parking lot and get that book back.

Speaker 1 And I remember just being like, no,

Speaker 1 absolutely not. I'm 18.
Yeah, also, no one's going to steal your stupid book. It's a fucking book.
Also, it's Florida State. Let them steal the books.
They should be reading. They can read the books.

Speaker 1 It's okay.

Speaker 1 This is information they need. And also, they're asking you, of all people, at 18 years old, to chase down.

Speaker 1 I was a unit.

Speaker 1 I could be pretty fast, you know, in 10 years.

Speaker 1 Yeah, as long as they're 10 feet away. They were in the bookstore.

Speaker 1 Well, also, in accordance with Dutch law, all of Euronymus Cornelis' worldly goods and possessions, including anything owned by his wife, were to be given to the VOC because it was deemed that the corporation had been the one most harmed by Euronymus's actions.

Speaker 1 And I think about them a lot. Yeah.
And I think of people, especially like in 9-11,

Speaker 1 I think about

Speaker 1 those investment companies that didn't get to move on.

Speaker 1 I think about the various private military companies that were inside of that building and how they were doing work with our enemies.

Speaker 1 And I miss them. I miss the restaurant on the top floor.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Fucking, I think it was called Spinnies.

Speaker 1 Now, four more mutineers were given the same sentence as Euronymus, while five others, including cabin boy Jan Pelgram, were allowed to be hanged without having their hands chopped off first.

Speaker 1 Gee, thanks! Honestly, I wish I could. Come on, it'd be kind of fun, right? I want to see what stops.
Could you please chop off his fucking hands? Come on, I want to see what it's like.

Speaker 1 What about inside of my armful? He wants me to see, we gotta just hang him normal. He won't shut up until you do what he asks you to do.

Speaker 1 I want to see my bones

Speaker 1 straight fucked up, man.

Speaker 1 14 more mutineers would have been taken to Java for further interrogation and punishment.

Speaker 1 While the rest of the men who'd signed loyalty oaths to Euronymus, just to survive, they were freed until it was proven that they had done something to deserve punishment.

Speaker 1 Really, the only person who came out of the wreck of the Batavia on top was Viva Hayas. Pelsart raised his rank to sergeant, placed him in charge of the soldiers, and doubled his pay.

Speaker 1 He fucking did his job. He fucking deserves it.
Yeah, all the defenders actually got raises. Now, wouldn't the murder be going backwards again? I'm sorry.
Sure. Chopping off the hands.

Speaker 1 They're bleeding out. Well, you know, we're going to get to it again.
Okay, good. But

Speaker 1 wouldn't it be better to not hang them and just let them bleed out on the beach? No, that's too relaxing. You think so? Yeah.
Yeah, because that's just kind of going to sleep.

Speaker 1 Or do you slap them to death? No, they cauterize the wounds. Oh, they do.
They don't cauterize the

Speaker 1 wrap them up. Yeah.
Okay, all right. Yeah, we'll get into it.
Now, the executions were set to take place on Seals Island.

Speaker 1 Seals Island is actually very nice. Seals Island is extremely nice.
Just don't go to Heidi Klum's Island because she will tear you to fucking shreds.

Speaker 1 Well, this is, of course, where Euronymus had ordered the massacre of well over a dozen people just a few months previous.

Speaker 1 The condemned were therefore held in makeshift jail cells on the island until the execution date. But Euronymus decided that he was going to take himself out before the VOC had a chance to.

Speaker 1 He somehow convinced someone to bring him items from his apothecary kit, which he used to concoct a poison to kill himself. But again, Euronymus was a shitty apothecary.

Speaker 1 And just like the botched murder of the baby months before, Euronymus only succeeded in making his last hours on Earth a living hell of writhing stomach pain.

Speaker 1 Honestly, I should have went to school.

Speaker 1 Sad ultimate irony that he just tortured himself. He's such a fucking pathetic idiot.
He was rough, yeah.

Speaker 1 And so also, he just like, if he was just kind and went to the high island, everyone would have just ate. Yeah.
He deserves the fuck out of this. Yes.
He deserves every single that.

Speaker 1 I thought about cutting that from the story, but I thought, like, nah. No, fuck him.
Yeah, that is hilariously. He's such a bad apothecary and a bad villain.

Speaker 1 And the only thing that bad villains, they are literally bad at being villains. They cause a lot of damage.

Speaker 1 But what's really nice is sometimes they also fuck collide with those consequences so hard, it's really satisfying. I'd say almost 100% of the time, like much of the time,

Speaker 1 they do collide with the consequences. The consequences come in hard and fast.
But yes, you're right. The problem is all of the damage they do before that.
Yes. Try and hang me and cut my hands off.

Speaker 1 I'll show you.

Speaker 1 Oh, my belly.

Speaker 1 Oh, my hands.

Speaker 1 It's like when I ordered too much sushi.

Speaker 1 Or the time you got that weird-ass egg pizza in Italy, and then you were just going like, What? Carbonara pizza. Not weird thing.
It sounds fucking delicious. They had a bunch of warm

Speaker 1 eggs. That's all Italians eat eggs.
That's not how they eat eggs. So the egg was black.
I was like, holy shit, these Italians got fucking black eggs.

Speaker 1 I remember the look on the man's face. He was like,

Speaker 1 yes,

Speaker 1 see.

Speaker 1 When you just called me fat, remember? Hell yeah,

Speaker 1 fuck it.

Speaker 1 I miss her.

Speaker 1 Well, once the gallows were constructed on Seals Island, the condemned were executed on October 1st, with Euronymus going first. After his hands were chopped off with an axe by the executioner,

Speaker 1 tourniquets were tied around his wrists to ensure he was conscious for his ultimate death.

Speaker 1 Because it hurts having your hands chopped off. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Euronymus was then walked up the gallows ladder to meet his doom with the minister at his side, the very minister whose family Euronymus had ordered to be slaughtered.

Speaker 1 Doing his job, the minister asked Euronymus if he wanted to confess his sins. Euronymus, however, ever the heretic, refused.
You motherfuckers are gonna have to buy the DLC for that shit.

Speaker 1 Now in those days, Dutch gallows involved a short rope tied to a horizontal beam. The prisoner was walked up a ladder and the noose was wrapped around his neck.

Speaker 1 Then it was the executioner's job to thrust a knee into the small of the prisoner's back, launching him to his death. This is my death knee.

Speaker 1 This is the knee I hurt playing skip rope when I was nine. So this knee can't do the killing, but this one does the killing each time.

Speaker 1 The worst part is when the rain comes, because then my killer knee kills me.

Speaker 1 This is my killer knee. This is the knee I used to bounce my granddaughter.

Speaker 1 Bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce. Oh no, she bounced off and died.
Now they're both killing me!

Speaker 1 Well, if the condemned was lucky, his neck would snap instantly, but that was a rare occurrence.

Speaker 1 Most slowly strangled to death over 20 agonizing minutes, and indeed, Euronymus Cornelis entertained the crowd with his convulsive kicks for quite a while before the evil bastard finally left this earth.

Speaker 1 You know, I was bored all this whole time. Until today.

Speaker 1 This is by far the most entertaining time on the island. I call his hat.

Speaker 1 I'll kill the hat. I'll kill you alive.

Speaker 1 Why haven't we been hanging people this whole time? I don't know.

Speaker 1 Now many other mutineers did confess their sins to the minister, and many pled for mercy, but only one mutineer was successful that day.

Speaker 1 The half-mad cabin boy, Jan Pelgram, wept and wailed and begged for grace. So Pelsart took pity and spared the boy's life because he technically didn't kill anyone despite his best efforts.

Speaker 1 I wanted to kill and I wished I could kill and god damn it, you won't take the chance from me. I will grow and I will kill as an adult no matter what I do, Mr.
Palsart, because that's my dream.

Speaker 1 That's my passion.

Speaker 1 Instead of execution, Palsart exiled Jan Pelgrim to Western Australia, making Jan the ineffectually murderous cabin boy. And this is absolutely true.

Speaker 1 One of the first two white men to settle Australia. That explains it.

Speaker 1 It just makes so much sense. I could totally, absolutely be like,

Speaker 1 oh my god, this place is fucking amazing.

Speaker 1 Fucking, the birds will kill you here.

Speaker 1 Wow, I'm a fucking, holy shit.

Speaker 1 Am I surfing?

Speaker 1 I call this a billaball.

Speaker 1 That's a jazz wazer! That's a pinball!

Speaker 1 All my god! Stop making stupid noises and naming birds at me!

Speaker 1 The other man, cursed to survive the wilds of Australia with Jan was the same guy who took over for Euronymous after his capture by the Defenders, Vooderloosh. Jan, smile our voices together

Speaker 1 are going to cut this monster's off this marriage. I am a boy, Marbura.

Speaker 1 Despite the fact that he'd been the one who bashed in the minister's wife's head during the massacre of her family, Vowder also earned exile.

Speaker 1 This put Yan and Vowder 160 years ahead of the first British convicts who eventually settled Australia.

Speaker 1 Unfortunately, though, we have absolutely no idea what happened after this odd couple was dropped off on the coast with nothing more than supplies and a couple barrels of water.

Speaker 1 I just see this like cut to them like 20 years later. She comes out, you know, like you got the Jan, he comes out with his oven made out of seashells and he's baked a cake for his birthday.

Speaker 1 Comes out and vouder is sitting there, like, and they're married now. You know what I mean? Like, she's dressed, he's dressed in a full dress and wig made out of seaweed.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Like, I'm so glad we got married 20 years ago, but I was frozen in the form of this boy.

Speaker 1 I'm so glad we've had the time to take care of each other and enjoy ourselves here in the wonderful island of Olsri.

Speaker 1 Quick, another Cherkov contest.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, you betcha.
Oh, ow, ow, ow. I didn't know this magical land arrested everyone in boyhood.

Speaker 1 I mean, that is the movie that should be made about this. Oh, yeah.
No, the Batavia movie begins with these two getting dropped off with them on the beach.

Speaker 1 Now, no records exist as to what was done with the bodies of the executed men, but the tradition in the Netherlands was to leave the bodies of executed prisoners on display as a warning to others.

Speaker 1 So it was likely that these nine men were left on the gallows as food for the mutton birds.

Speaker 1 It's actually almost certain that the bodies were just left there, because subsequent voyages to the islands, even 10, 20, 30 years later, noted a sudden spurt in plant growth, which was likely due to the fertilizer the corpses provided.

Speaker 1 That's the fucking most metal gardening corpse ever existing corpse we

Speaker 1 so it finally became like a fruitful island yeah a little bit and it just took the bodies of colonizers yeah that's really nice

Speaker 1 at your heels yeah

Speaker 1 but those men would not be the last to die because of the batavia see pelsart was eventually able to recover almost everything of value from the shipwreck including six out of the seven voc money chests most of pelsart's personal valuables, and all but two of the treasure chests.

Speaker 1 But as we said, Pelsart was trying to make the best impression he possibly could on the VOC, so he was dead set on recovering every possible piece of merchandise so he could bring it back to his bosses to show what a good boy he was.

Speaker 1 So he ordered five men to try and recover a barrel of vinegar from the treacherous coral reef. But during the recovery, a storm swept in.
This was expected.

Speaker 1 The weather had been bad for almost the entirety of the recovery operation. But because of Pelsart's need to please his corporate masters, the five men on the recovery boat were swept out to sea.

Speaker 1 They disappeared on the open ocean and likely died terrifying deaths by thirst or drowning, all on the service of recovering a goddamn condiment. Hey, don't you like salads? I do love vinegar.

Speaker 1 Vinegar is one of my favorite things on earth. Exactly.
Not worth the deaths of five men. You're the white men that did this.

Speaker 1 Your people, you're vinegar-loving loving people yeah hey my vinegar loving people but everyone loves vinegar they do it's honestly it's actually a secret ingredient in a lot of restaurants that you don't actually understand many of your favorite sauces especially the five mother sauces of french cuisine are normally finished with a splash of vinegar and other different things vinegar helps quite a bit it adds a needed hit of acid to most foods indian foods full of vinegar oh yeah it's full of vinegar and you can clean the floor with it yeah you could drink it it's a magical liquid yeah you could spit it in your fucking boss's asshole yeah i don't know

Speaker 1 i I don't know if you can. I don't know what that means.
Are you asking? You can spit anything in your boss's asshole. Anything.
But I will. But isn't vinegar.
It's a battery acid.

Speaker 1 I will say, though, vinegar wasn't just a condiment. Vinegar had many purposes.

Speaker 1 That's why it was useful. It's why it went after it, because they would pickle all the stuff.
But it was...

Speaker 1 It wasn't really that useful. Well, in Java, it was.
Well, I mean, but five men dead.

Speaker 1 He just killed a bunch of children.

Speaker 1 Men were expendable back in the day. These are good men.
They're fine guys. They're sailors.
We don't know their whole story, right? God, you guys are heartless.

Speaker 1 No, you never know. This is like the historical equivalent of like not knowing whether or not you should say you really like a video because you haven't checked out the person's Twitter yet.

Speaker 1 The keys always say, I won't vouch for the rest of their content. Yes, but this is good.
Yes.

Speaker 1 Well, finally, after making sure he recovered as much loot as possible, Palsart ordered the Sardom to leave the islands on November 15th, two months after he returned and almost six months after the Batavia shipwrecked.

Speaker 1 Out of the 270 people who'd been left behind by Upper Merchant Pelsart, only 77 remained alive, but most of the survivors were Viva's defenders.

Speaker 1 The rest were a part of the 133 people who'd remained on Batavia's graveyard after Euronymus sent his competition away. Out of those 133,

Speaker 1 only 32 people from Batavia's graveyard were still alive, And that included the 14 mutineers that were taken back to Java for further questioning and torture.

Speaker 1 Worst of all was that out of all the children who'd set sail on the Batavia, only one had survived to their ultimate destination. And that kid, don't even start talking with him.

Speaker 1 He is fucking sad as hell.

Speaker 1 He is

Speaker 1 a bummer.

Speaker 1 It's a big bummer. Biggest bummer-year-old I've ever met in my life.

Speaker 1 He just sits there and goes

Speaker 1 shivering.

Speaker 1 He can't talk yeah fully entirely traumatized why they call him shivering johnny yeah yeah shivering johnny of batavia you ever thought of making your diorama a little happier putting a little sun in there you know maybe some flowers which always just did babies in the tv on the coast like that's all he does and then but you know what is nice about him is that no matter what if you have a drink to mix you just put in his hands

Speaker 1 now i'm sure that upper merchant pelsar was dreading the return to java to fully report on all the atrocities that had occurred on his watch to Governor Jan's Kuhn. Because, man, that's the thing.

Speaker 1 At the end, on top of everything else, he has to come back and be like, oh, yeah, no, I created a full nightmare world. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 They created a rape market.

Speaker 1 I didn't know that they were going to do that. You know, like, I didn't leave them with those instructions.
Yeah. Does Kuhn care about that, though? Well, that's the thing.

Speaker 1 Unbeknownst to Pelsart, he didn't have to worry about Kuhn anymore.

Speaker 1 Just after the Sardom set sail from Java to recover the merchandise on the Batavia, Jan Kuhn collapsed and died at the age of 42 after a history of heart issues and a bout of dysentery.

Speaker 1 And that's the thing. And people say that about the patriarchy and how it's bad for all of us, which is true, you know, like why are men in charge of everything and why do they own everything?

Speaker 1 But on some level, don't you think it's super stressful? Because think about it.

Speaker 1 To be a genocidal maniac, it wears on your heart. He was under so much pressure that it's just like, you know, what are you going to do? Of course he went.

Speaker 1 I wish he had found a way to find some self-care time for himself. Yeah.
So So is the next guy nicer than Kuhn? Never.

Speaker 1 Literally, never.

Speaker 1 They can't physically be. You have to be able to, you have to be able to say to yourself,

Speaker 1 we really need to burn down the entire village in order to keep it.

Speaker 1 And I think Jan-kun,

Speaker 1 he was certainly more concerned with merchandise. He was certainly more concerned with cash.
But there were passengers on that ship, which was a part of the VOC business.

Speaker 1 And very few of those survived. Oh, yes.
Very, very few.

Speaker 1 Was it

Speaker 1 Kracia Jan's doctor? The woman that was the she had one of the saddest stories actually.

Speaker 1 She remember she was the one who was attacked by the feces and target

Speaker 1 super beautiful woman. She was the one who was staying with Euronymus.
No, yes, she was. She was forced to stay with Euronymus.
Yes.

Speaker 1 Once she got to Batavia, she found out that she was there to meet her husband because all of her kids had died back in the Netherlands.

Speaker 1 And when she arrived in Batavia, she found out that her husband had died the previous June. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Everyone just dies so easily. Yeah.
Yeah, dude. But it was very dangerous.

Speaker 1 She remarried, moved back to Amsterdam, and lived until the age of like 70. See, that's what a wonderful third act.
That's what I tell Natalie all the time.

Speaker 1 It's like, listen, I'm going to die while you're in your fucking 60s. You'll go get to go be an incredible lesbian.
You get to have so much fun. Mm-hmm.
It's nice. That's very nice of you.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Women get to have that. Yeah.
Because husbands die early. That is true.
I hope so. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, Jan Cohen's replacement was no less brutal to the mutineers brought back from the shipwreck than Jan Kuhn might have been.

Speaker 1 Out of the 14 brought back, five were hanged, eight were flogged, and Stonecutter Peterez, said to be just as bad as Euronymus Cornelis, he was broken on the wheel. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And you can hear all about that particularly brutal method of execution if you listen to our recent episode on the Saints. Yeah, that's a wild one.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but the difference between Stonecutter's breaking and what occurred in Europe was that while Stonecutter was waiting to die from internal hemorrhaging, as all his limbs were broken and wrapped around the spokes of the wheel until his feet were touching the back of his head, he had to contend with the bugs.

Speaker 1 Who are the bugs?

Speaker 1 Great Garage Rock Group. They work in Minneapolis.

Speaker 1 Bugs are really solid. Honestly, I'm going to write that down.
I'm making it up. Ah, shit.
That was exciting.

Speaker 1 Literally open Spotify.

Speaker 1 Check out the Hangman. You'll love the Hangman.
He didn't tell me about Poison Ruin, which is amazing. Yeah, I'll also say I love Poison Ruin.
Well, as

Speaker 1 back to Stonecutter.

Speaker 1 As Stonecutter baked in the Southeast Asian sun, flies and mosquitoes quickly covered his body, filling his mouth and swarming his eyeballs, until he finally died a deservedly painful death as the last mutineer from the Batavia to be executed.

Speaker 1 Crime don't pay. Yeah.
Now, as far as everyone else in this story went, very few lived a happy ending. Yeah.

Speaker 1 While Viva Hias and all his defenders were promoted with raises, Upper Merchant Pelsart was found to be wanting by the VOC. I could see that.
Who deemed his work unimpressive? Oh, it is.

Speaker 1 The gentleman 17 never gave him another command, although they really didn't have much of a chance to.

Speaker 1 Eleven months after the execution of Euronymus Cornelis, Francisco Pelsart caught a fever and died at the age of 35. Yeah.
He's only 35?

Speaker 1 His whole time. He's 35.
No wonder they all killed each other. They're all young idiots.
Well, we're not that young, but he, you know, 35 at the time was pretty old. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, the oldest man on the ship was Captain Jakobs, and he was in his like early to mid-40s. Like, he was far closer to our age than anybody else.

Speaker 1 Died younger than me right now. He's 42.
Yeah. Again, stress.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But even though the VOC had not given Pelsart a command, his death robbed them of contractually obligated profits. So the gentleman 17 had all of Pelsart's worth confiscated and absorbed into the VOC.

Speaker 1 Well, that's not true. It's not all of it.
They left a small fraction to his mother, but they took, I would say, like 90%

Speaker 1 of his earnings.

Speaker 1 Everything. Yep.
Well, that's what he gets. I mean, fucking it all up.
Yeah, well, that's what he gets for signing on with a fucking VOC. Yeah, it could have gotten his hands chopped off and hung.

Speaker 1 Yep, it could have. He just died of a fever, just like most of the rest of the people on Java.

Speaker 1 Well, concerning Pelsart's nemesis, Captain Ariana Jakobs, records show that he was still in the dungeons of Castle Batavia Batavia in 1631, years after the other mutineers were executed.

Speaker 1 No further records exist, however, so it's likely that Captain Jakobs died in those same dungeons, having thrown his life away for a dandy from a rich family who'd sold him a fantasy of freedom.

Speaker 1 But he got a reality. A four walls.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But there is, of course, the matter of what happened to the VOC, the most powerful corporation in the world for nearly 200 years, and only the second of its kind to exist. Yeah, I missed them.

Speaker 1 What happened happened to them?

Speaker 1 Well, like most organizations built on the brutal exploitation of its workers and the idea of profit at all costs, corruption began to eat the VOC from the inside out by the 18th century.

Speaker 1 See, the company had always had a corruption problem, but when the VOC faced a serious shortage of capital in the 1750s, the gentleman 17 dramatically lowered salaries across the board regardless of rank.

Speaker 1 To compensate, the VOC simply changed their definition of what corruption was to permit agents to trade goods under the VOC's flag. Because it's not corruption if it's laws.

Speaker 1 Yes, it's not corruption if it's laws. And if you just start calling it something else, you don't have to worry about it anymore.

Speaker 1 In other words, they went with full free market capitalism with no rules or regulations, which always 100% of the time results in even more corruption and eventual collapse. But not this time, Marcus.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this time's going to be different. We're going to do it good, Marcus.
I'm going to be buying McDonald's on Saturn.

Speaker 1 But besides the practices of their employees, the VOC was also having a problem hiring and keeping employees. Yeah, you could see the turnover rate would be high.

Speaker 1 Well, throughout its almost 200 years of operation, roughly 4,000 VOC employees died every single year, both directly and indirectly due to VOC policies. That student laughs is fucking a wild number.

Speaker 1 Yes, they had like 4,000. You were like, we lost 4,000 employees this year.
You're like,

Speaker 1 you know, to who? To Microsoft? No, to the angel of death.

Speaker 1 That tended to discourage recruitment as Europe moved more into the modern age and human life became a little less disposable. Yeah, man, because now it's very sacred.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, well, it's a little more sacred now than it was in 1750. That's true.
Yeah. Now, there were half a dozen other reasons that contributed to the VOC's downfall.

Speaker 1 But what finally killed the VOC was was a war between the Dutch and the English, in which the VOC lost tens of millions of dollars in guilders because the British Navy finally caught up.

Speaker 1 The VOC's charter was therefore allowed to expire on December 31st, 1799.

Speaker 1 And with that, the VOC died just as the 19th century was born, having gone down in history as one of the most evil, callous, and exploitative corporations to ever exist.

Speaker 1 But I want to first say thanks for the nutmeg. I also like pepper.
Yeah. And I've really come to enjoy when you a hint of star and ease.
Yeah, I enjoyed the smell of cloves. Yes.

Speaker 1 So yeah, like that's great. We just need to kill a bunch of people so I can enjoy a smell.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's really all I ask for is that I really only like potpourri if it's filled with the blood and guts of children.

Speaker 1 But the clove oil helps with the anal sex. I know, but I just don't use it enough for me to think it.

Speaker 1 Now, I've been thinking a lot about why none of us have ever heard of the Batavia until a listener brought it to our attention. Why such a fantastic story has been all but lost to time.

Speaker 1 In comparing it to other survival and disaster stories, my first thought was that the Batavia hasn't survived because it doesn't have any meaning.

Speaker 1 Unlike, say, the stories behind the Uruguayan rugby team, the Donner Party, or even the Titanic.

Speaker 1 If you look at it simply, the Batavia could be seen as nothing more than a brutal story about a shipwreck that resulted in one man turning the lives of the survivors into a serial killer's playground.

Speaker 1 That's enough meaning for me, but

Speaker 1 as I thought about it a little more, I realized that the reason why the Batavia story hasn't survived is because it has too much meaning.

Speaker 1 As the story of the Batavia is, at its essence, the story of what happens when the ugliest and most uncomfortable parts of humanity are allowed to run wild.

Speaker 1 See, the VOC doesn't just represent simple corporate greed.

Speaker 1 It's a company that knowingly and callously sacrificed the lives of 4,000 employees a year and killed who knows how many of the people it enslaved.

Speaker 1 And it looked at their deaths as not just acceptable losses, but essential parts of their business model. Likewise, the mutineers don't just represent human cruelty.

Speaker 1 Their actions show just how quickly men can turn into monsters willing to crush a child's skull on someone else's say-so with all the emotion of stomping on a cockroach.

Speaker 1 And they show just how easily other men will join in, if only to save themselves.

Speaker 1 Furthermore, the lessons from the Batavia are difficult to absorb considering how companies like the VOC effectively created the modern world.

Speaker 1 It's been proven time and again that unrestrained capitalism inevitably leads to foul exploitation, and it's a system in which every single one of us participates. Hey!

Speaker 1 I'm wearing pants, a meaty, all from Halliburton. I always like a lot of my clothes.
I love packages.

Speaker 1 It's also difficult to accept that men like the gentleman 17 are more in charge now than they've ever been.

Speaker 1 And it's hard to see how that's ever going to change, especially when it feels like we're in the final stage of a plan that was hatched hundreds of years ago, and especially when many of our fellow citizens are welcoming subjugation.

Speaker 1 But we cannot despair, and we cannot lose hope.

Speaker 1 For every Euronymus Cornelis leading a horde of psychopaths, there's a Viva Hayes who sees right through his bullshit and defenders who are willing to back him up.

Speaker 1 Every organization throughout history that's built on backstabbing, exploitation, and profit above all inevitably topples and falls.

Speaker 1 And things happen far faster in today's world than they did in the 17th century.

Speaker 1 And while the corporations of the world seem like impossible monoliths that hold all the power, the one thing they can never take from you is who you are, just so long as you stay fucking strong.

Speaker 1 They can try to manipulate you. They can try to tell you what to think.
They can try to cram AI down your throat and convince you that's what you want, but you don't have to let them.

Speaker 1 As I said, it's not the fucking 17th century anymore. This is 2025.
And I think it's high time we started looking at that as a good thing.

Speaker 1 People are smarter, healthier, and stronger, even though that's hard to see sometimes. And we're also far more numerous than we've ever been.

Speaker 1 For every one of the bastards in charge of this world, there are millions of us.

Speaker 1 And if we all stick together, it is possible, however slim the chance might be, that we can stop the Musks and the Bezoses and the Zuckerbergs from bringing the dark days of the VOC back into our daily lives.

Speaker 1 Even though the meaning of the Batavia is about as ugly as it gets, we can still take inspiration from the horror, absorb it as an example of what the world could look like if we don't fight back, and we can use that inspiration to resist the motherfuckers in charge in whatever way we can until the day we die.

Speaker 1 Yeah, my brother. You want to do this fucking story.
Hell yeah. I was so excited to do this story.
It really, it's true.

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 you hit it right on the fucking money, dude. Because this is the only thing that we can do, truly that will always work is gum up the works.
Yep, yeah. So I'll say that.

Speaker 1 I definitely, as a podcast producer, I'm always in charge of a general strike. So

Speaker 1 I am ready to do it. And you gum up my works all the time.
Oh, that's my job. Yeah, literally with your gum.
That's my job.

Speaker 1 Just know that. A part of what we're going to have to do as we roll through this next couple years is obstruct

Speaker 1 as much as possible, which we can do. Do whatever you can do.
Find out what you can do and fucking do it. And I also, you know, it's a common expression, but I think it rings true more now than ever.

Speaker 1 It's just don't let the fucking bastards get you down.

Speaker 1 That's what they want. They want to take it from you.
They want to take your day-to-day from you. They're trying to break your spirit.
And, you know, every time you let them, they're winning.

Speaker 1 So just fucking ignore it and fight forward. Try to.
Yeah, if you need to fall apart every once in a while, fall apart, but pick yourself up back up. Amen.
Get your fucking shit together.

Speaker 1 So now, but now the Batavia, the comedy of the Batavia has been told. We're so excited because next week we're moving on into another big project that I am personally very excited about.

Speaker 1 It's another multi-parter. It is another multi-parter.

Speaker 1 I'm extremely excited because we're going to modern times. Yeah.
And we're going to see some of these lessons are going to pop up again in this next story.

Speaker 1 But I cannot wait because we're going to meet my favorite, Idaho 10.

Speaker 1 Can't wait to see you.

Speaker 1 Man.

Speaker 1 Also, I just want to say, I'm coming to Florida. All right.
I might as well be on the Batavia with this fucking tour. But Invasive Species, I'm touring Florida.

Speaker 1 I'm going for a week in March and a week in May. In March, from March 20th to the 23rd, I'll be in Jacksonville, Panama City, and Tallahassee, Florida.

Speaker 1 The Tallahassee show I'm doing with Danny Medrosian of Key Funk. He's going to play the keyboards with me.
Did you hear about this too? I did not know.

Speaker 1 Eddie accidentally booked himself in the same venue that Murderfist started. No shit.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 So, like, the first place I ever did comedy, I'm coming back to the 926 Bar and Grill, which formerly brothers in Tallahassee. That's funny.
That's funny.

Speaker 1 And the exact 20-year anniversary of our buddy Danny's first time playing in his band at Evan Brown. That's crazy.
It's the same exact venue. It's going to be a fucking hell of a show.
I can't wait.

Speaker 1 So, if you're in the Tallahassee area, go to that. Also, in May, from May 6th to the 11th, I'm going to be in Naples, Dania Beach, Orlando, and a whole three nights in Key West.

Speaker 1 Dania Beach and Orlando are going to be side story shows, so make sure you guys come out to that. It's going to be a lot of fun.
Tickets at eddietunes.com. Yeah, and I can't wait.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to be with you when we are in Orlando and Fort Lauderdale. We're going to have a fucking blast.
I can't wait. This is going to be great.
It's going to be really fun.

Speaker 1 And then we are going to be... We're coming to Dallas.

Speaker 1 If you're listening to this, it's going to be in one week on February 22nd. We're going to be out there in Grand Prairie.
My brother tells me the venue is built in the middle of a swamp. Awesome.

Speaker 1 I didn't know they had one still in Texas, so that's nice. Oh, yeah, no, no, no.
Dallas is very swampy. Oh, okay.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 You're starting to get into East Texas, and once you start to get into East, Dallas is like the gateway to East Texas, and that's when shape starts getting real swampy and real racist. Fuck.
Yeah,

Speaker 1 that's what we're doing.

Speaker 1 We're going to fix them. We're going out there and we're going to fix y'all.
We're going downtown, Texas, and I'm not leaving a stone unturned. Yeah.
All right.

Speaker 1 We're having fun because Texas Pete Henry DeBrowski is going to be there. Yeah, it'll be cool.
I'm looking forward to coming back to Texas. It's been a while since I've been back.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, looking forward to coming back home. Can't wait to try the pizza.

Speaker 1 That's what's pizza. You know,

Speaker 1 just keep your eggs. If you keep your expectations at the appropriate level, you'll be fine.
I know exactly where we're going. I already know where we're going to eat.
Oh, yeah? Yeah. Hey, barbecue.

Speaker 1 Yeah, buddy. Fuck you.
You're going to get so fucking sick. I really want to get sick and fat.
Yeah. I mean, well, fat.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, if you want to give money directly to us, and if you want to see actual video episodes of Last Podcast on the Left, go join our Patreon, patreon.com slash lastpodcast on the left.

Speaker 1 We've got all kinds of shit there for all the different levels. You know, you can see, you can watch our stream live every Tuesday if you're a Patreon member.

Speaker 1 That is Last Stream on the Left. That's every Tuesday at 6 p.m.
PST. You can also follow us on the socials at TikTok, Instagram, at LP on the Left.

Speaker 1 And don't forget to check out all of our other streams at twitch.tv slash LPN TV. And we've also got a ton of other shows coming up after Dallas.

Speaker 1 You can go to lastpodcastontheleft.com, click on shows to see when we're going to be coming near you. And we cannot fucking wait because it's more fun than ever, is it, boys? Isn't it? Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 Dirty little whores. Oh, yeah.
Come on out to Dallas. It's going to be fun.
I got a shitload of family coming. Oh, that's going to be awesome.
I can't wait to fucking meet the rest of your family.

Speaker 1 Oh, you'll meet them.

Speaker 1 They are a funny bunch. Hail, sweet Satan.
Hail Geek. Hail, Marcus Parks.
We're putting this big fucker together.

Speaker 1 Thank you, and I'll also say, hail um, Joel and Shaw, our research assistants, who absolutely crushed it on this series. And could, of course, I could not have done it without them.

Speaker 1 Um, so thank you, but also hail them. I'm gonna say, this is my favorite series.
Yeah, I've been loving it, yeah, really, truly love this one.

Speaker 1 Wait till next week because it's I'm very excited for this next coming. This coming about

Speaker 1 bang

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