Episode 606: The Tragedy of the Batavia Part II - Batavia's Graveyard

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Speaker 2 There's no place to escape to. This is the last time.

Speaker 2 On the left.

Speaker 2 That's when the cannibalism started.

Speaker 2 I don't drone on.

Speaker 2 I'm pretty succinct. People have said that about my bits.
Yeah. People say, Henry, what a great self-editor.

Speaker 2 Which is why today I'm going to start with, Wan!

Speaker 2 No, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do the big song.

Speaker 2 We're not starting with a sea shanty. Now, Gurney's requested it.
Yeah, of course.

Speaker 2 I'm drawing a line in the water. Yeah, Gurney's a big fan of sea shanties.
Doesn't want to hear us butcher him. Do you want to hear it? Rob, can you give it away?

Speaker 2 I like to go. Show me the way to go home.
Just show me. But that's barely it's

Speaker 2 the way to go home.

Speaker 2 I'm tired and I want to go to bed. Yo, I remember.
And shed me a drink about an hour ago.

Speaker 2 And it went straight to my head.

Speaker 2 Welcome to the last podcast on the left, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Marcus Parks.
I'm here with the self-editing Henry Zabrowski.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 Rick?

Speaker 2 Sure.

Speaker 2 Wow, it's more annoying somehow. Yeah.
Way more annoying. And here with the sick of it all, Ed Larson.
I'm so sick of Henry's bullshit, man. I'm fucking so fucking sick, man.
I puked out my penis.

Speaker 2 Yes. And I hope you die.

Speaker 2 And I hope it fucking kills you. I hope it's scurvy.
I hope my content kills you.

Speaker 2 It will.

Speaker 2 And we're here for the Batavia. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Part two. Yeah, now we're really going to fucking get into it.
Yeah, I really like Batavia because it makes it a good artificial sweetener.

Speaker 2 God damn it.

Speaker 2 At the very top.

Speaker 2 Now, to really make sure we're all on the same page here, we're going to back up the story just a little to really examine the mood on the Batavia and the relationships between the crew that resulted in a mutiny plan by two VOC employees, Captain Ariana Jakobs and undermerchant Euronymus Cornelis.

Speaker 2 See, I know that it's Ariana or Ariane, but then I just think of Ariana Grande. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. So just don't imagine Ariana Grande as the ship captain of the ship.

Speaker 2 Well, she fucking took over and mutinied Wicked.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's right. And she mutinied and took over that SpongeBob's dicken ball.
That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 She better made her throat slimmer so that she could make his penis feel bigger than her mouth.

Speaker 2 That's pretty slim throat. Yeah.
Well, mutinies. God.

Speaker 2 Is that a good way to start?

Speaker 2 Mutinies were actually quite rare on VOC ships.

Speaker 2 And in fact, it was entirely unheard of for a mutiny to be led by a VOC officer like Euronymus Cornelis, as most undermerchants in his position were vetted to ensure they had no mutinous qualities.

Speaker 2 We talked about this in the very beginning when we were talking about how they assembled the team for this.

Speaker 2 Normally they hire from within.

Speaker 2 Normally it's a guy who works his way up a certain amount.

Speaker 2 And normally these trips out to the Indies were reserved for people that either were, I guess, the best of the best of the best or the worst of the worst of the worst.

Speaker 2 There seemed to be no in between he went in and said like he just got in remember because he was educated well a captain vouched for him yes so he got in but the rest of them were like scared to death of their bosses yeah because he knew what they would do what's a mutinous quality like bestiality or well if you

Speaker 2 only if you're on a ship of dust

Speaker 2 well if you'll remember the conditions for being an undermerchant required that they not be bankrupt because while the VOC did need an air of desperation in an employee in order for them to risk their life for a trip to the Indies, a reek of desperation could lead to them getting ideas about the 500-pound chest full of treasure down in the hole.

Speaker 2 The trip has to be worth more than what's in the boat. Yeah.
Yeah, it very much does.

Speaker 2 Because at this point, Henry was telling me the other day, a tenth of the VOC's entire earnings were on board the Batavia. Yes.

Speaker 2 So a tenth of their entire corp was sitting underneath their feet as they were floating out into the middle of the Indian Ocean. And they're the most successful corporation of all time.

Speaker 2 Well, technically.

Speaker 2 I mean, not compared to what businesses today do. They're not even close, but they were the first successful corporation and definitely the most successful corporation of their day.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Now, I wouldn't say that Euronymus Cornelis necessarily had the desperation reek.

Speaker 2 Rather, Euronymus was simply greedy and amoral with nothing to lose, as the only things waiting for him back in the Netherlands were a failed apothecary business, a sick wife, and his dead baby's grave.

Speaker 2 And I'll tell you what, my sick wife just will not have sex with me on that grave, no matter what poison I bring home.

Speaker 2 I try to be with my haunted wife, and I wish I could see my dead child, but instead, I'll be a king. of an island.
Also, you can just say baby grave.

Speaker 2 A dead baby's grave is true.

Speaker 2 Well, it's better than just a baby's grave because it just sounded like you just put an infant in a hole. That's true.

Speaker 2 You know, I had a lot of, I actually debated a lot about that, about whether or not I should say just baby's grave or a dead baby's grave.

Speaker 2 And I thought, like, well, you know, sometimes people buy graves in advance, but you don't normally buy graves in advance for children.

Speaker 2 I'm a super not confident person.

Speaker 2 And that's how you know if your parents think, hey, I don't know. Like, it would be so nice if first thing you get somebody for their child's christening.

Speaker 2 And just in case, I bought a little plot

Speaker 2 right over here. As you can see, it's right by the restrooms.
so you can go and throw up out of grave first and then go look at the grave and this casket look how small small it is

Speaker 2 spider-man theme just like what he loves

Speaker 2 but concerning the morality of fomenting a mutiny on a ship with women and children aboard Euronymus had no qualms with the consequences of his actions for he was a so-called heretic yes I care about nothing and I like it

Speaker 2 his personal philosophy influenced by the famous Dutch Gnostic Johannes Torintius, held that he was incapable of sin, that no thought or deed, not even murder, could be described as evil or even wrong.

Speaker 2 And then I got deep into the fucking up to the balls with Dan Carlin's Prophets of Doom, like all of the story about the Anabaptist rise and Munster and all this shit.

Speaker 2 And I found out that like essentially the same crew of Anabaptists, which we brought up last episode, were like kind of what Euronimus grew up in.

Speaker 2 And it was a very specific sect of guys that were essentially the Protestant version of ISIS that decided to just start attacking a bunch of after the Lutheran breakup, all the Protestant Reformation of the church.

Speaker 2 Basically, Martin Luther put a little tenant in there that says, you're allowed. to go interpret the Bible as you want and it caused all this fucking chaos.

Speaker 2 And so the Anabaptist one sect went so far that they were like, oh, we're now destroying churches and reliquaries and doing all this shit. Aren't you happy, Martin Luther?

Speaker 2 Martin Luther says, no, please stop emailing me because he doesn't want anything to do with it. But then this Anabaptist crew took over Munster and did this whole fucking calling of all these people.

Speaker 2 And so it's from

Speaker 2 those guys comes Euronymous. Yeah, I'm glad we have this show for you to talk to me about this stuff because if you do it outside of here, gonna have to beat you up.
Hey!

Speaker 2 Hey!

Speaker 2 My deep, long info dumps on the stir historical slash horror movie thing.

Speaker 2 It's a feature, not a bug. People like it.

Speaker 2 Well, that's all to say that Euronymus felt no guilt over what he was about to do, and his only thought concerned the life of luxury and freedom that all the treasure on the Batavia would give him once it was in his grubby little hands.

Speaker 2 Euronymus, however, was in essence an apothecary who'd never been on a ship like the Batavia before this journey, so he didn't really have the cred necessary to organize a mutiny without someone who could speak the language of the sailors.

Speaker 2 But Euronymus found a way around his lack of cred when he became friends with the Batavius captain, Ariana Jakobs.

Speaker 2 Yes,

Speaker 2 we can be friends. Can't we, Mr.
Grande?

Speaker 2 This guy's an old, salty dog, dude. You remember when we came on Captain Jacobs? Yeah, Captain Jakobs is a salty ass dog and he's getting too old for this ship.
Yeah, it's the truth.

Speaker 2 And we checked the pronunciation. We actually did.
That is the proper way to say the proper 16th, 17th century Dutch way to say Jacobs. Jacobs.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's lots of yakups and Euronymouses, and like all the names are like so close to the other one's name. You're doing a wonderful job, Mark.
We're doing our best.

Speaker 2 I went through hardcore history in that podcast, and there's four different Bernards, there's two different Jans,

Speaker 2 and you're just, there's nothing you could do. They just were lazy with the names.
I don't know why the Dutch people were lazy with the names.

Speaker 2 They were complaining about how the splinters in their feet from the wooden shoes.

Speaker 2 Also, whenever I hear Euronymous, I feel like it should be yelled like, Euronimus!

Speaker 2 Now, it was almost as rare for a captain to mutiny on a VOC ship as it was for an undermerchant to do the same. But Jacobs had a few reasons of his own for getting a mutiny together.

Speaker 2 Firstly, Jakobs was a man in his mid-40s and therefore one of the ship's elders. He was the very definition of I'm getting too old for this ship.
Yeah, god damn it.

Speaker 2 It's just always him with the fucking cool hanging out of his mouth. He's got one of those like heavy welt baby weight belts on all times.
It's been like, God damn, what now? God fucking damn it.

Speaker 2 Can I do one real?

Speaker 2 I'm getting too old for this shit. Yeah, it's even more.
It's old to say it. It's getting old.
I hurt my back too yesterday at the gym. So I'm actually kind of, I'm feeling Jacob's.

Speaker 2 I hurt my back writing this script. Wow.

Speaker 2 From chortling and our imagined responses.

Speaker 2 No?

Speaker 2 So what were you doing?

Speaker 2 I was crouching for nine hours straight. Why were you crouching?

Speaker 2 I hunch when I write. I hunch.
It seems like a little gargoyle in there. Yeah, I try to stand up straight.
I even tried using one of those

Speaker 2 back things.

Speaker 2 It doesn't work. Doesn't work.
You know what Natalie does sometimes? Tries to touch my butthole.

Speaker 2 While you're working? Sometimes you come up 60 straight up.

Speaker 2 I'll see if Carolina can add that to her schedule. Hey, tell her to pencil it in.
Yeah, you pay me. I'll do it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, noted. Noted, noted.
Kelsey.

Speaker 2 well to give you an idea of who captain jakobs was he'd been working at sea for two decades and had taken several trips back and forth to the indies on behalf of the voc which is like you're 195 in sailor years yeah to survive not be alive no no to survive that many trips you got to be a hardy motherfucker but by the time the batavia reached the cape of good hope six months into their journey jakobs was absolutely exhausted with the lifestyle god damn it i'm sick of going these capes of good hopes.

Speaker 2 How about fucking one of these cape of good asses or something? We need some kind of something else. I'm sick of this.
Fucking shit. I'm sick of waves.

Speaker 2 In fact, Captain Jakobson, talking about his lot, was known to repeat one phrase over and over. If only I was younger, I'd do something different.

Speaker 2 Yeah. That was it.
That was just, he would say that to Euronymus over and over and over again. If I just got one shot,

Speaker 2 I'd dance.

Speaker 2 Such a sad catchphrase.

Speaker 2 If only I was younger, I've been saying this since I was four.

Speaker 2 Oh, you suddenly turned to Tom Waits. Yeah, I talked into teacups and I had a relationship with an elevator.

Speaker 2 Tom Waits.

Speaker 2 Jason.

Speaker 2 But the thing that really spurred Captain Jakobs into mutiny was good old-fashioned hatred, which was directed at upper merchant Francisco Pelsart. Hello.

Speaker 2 our, and I realized before, he's not Paul Rudd, he's Mel Gibson. He's very much a Mel Gibson type in this story.

Speaker 2 So let's get a little recap on Upper Merchant Pelsart, who, if you'll remember, was the man in charge of the entire journey and basically the only guy above Captain Jakobs.

Speaker 2 He was the captain's supervisor. Yeah.
See, Upper Merchant Pelsart had done some good turns for the VOC during his career.

Speaker 2 He'd established the route for the Dutch indigo trade, and he was a skilled diplomat who'd opened up a lot of profit lines in India.

Speaker 2 But in the time leading up to the launch of the Batavia, Pelsart was going through a rough patch professionally. His last diplomatic mission to India had been an utter failure.

Speaker 2 So he had convinced the VOC's big bosses, the gentleman 17, to let him take $7.8 million in silver on the Batavia so he could transport it to India, where he would bribe a second Indian court to make up for his losses at the first.

Speaker 2 Got it? Yes. Yes.
So legitimately, again, this whole trip for Pelsart is to get him back to zero. It's not even to get him, like to make him money.

Speaker 2 This is just so that he can start showing his face around town again. Yeah.
And was there silver on the other ships in the fleet or just the Batavia?

Speaker 2 So the way it seems is that the Batavia held all of the treasure. The reason why, part of the safety,

Speaker 2 the safety measuring things that they did was by going in large groups because what we said is it helps you immediately, you are not immediately alone in the water.

Speaker 2 You are surrounded by all these essentially messenger ships and various things that help the main boat do other things.

Speaker 2 And certain other, like you have the main Pelsarts on the main ship, but there are captains on the other smaller ships that all kind of run various aspects, but mostly secure the Batavia.

Speaker 2 So it's all there. To keep the Portuguese away.
Yes. Yeah.
But partly. Yeah.

Speaker 2 The Portuguese, the Spanish, the English, and also to protect against mutinies and regular ass pirates yeah regular exactly regular pirates and then the the end and then when you arrive at the place and then those people it's say you are trying to bridge a new trading gap with a new crew people you don't know who they are either yeah like when the batavia left like the batavia was supposed to be in a fleet of 14 ships

Speaker 2 but it had a lot of problems getting off it left late and so it was now at this point in the story it's in a flotilla of seven ships but the maiden voyage of the batavia that had to go well for Upper Merchant Pelsart if he was going to get taken seriously in the VOC ever again.

Speaker 2 Did you know the flotilla's back at Taco Bell?

Speaker 2 First ever

Speaker 2 Taco that also hydrates.

Speaker 2 But unbeknownst to the gentleman 17, they had introduced an X factor into the Batavia's journey when they assigned Ariana Jakobs as the captain.

Speaker 2 See, just after Upper Merchant Pelsard had fucked up his last deal in India, he'd clashed badly with the captain of the boat that had taken him home, to the point where that captain and Pelsart had gotten into a physical altercation.

Speaker 2 The captain that Upper Merchant Pelsart had fought with was none other than Ariana Jakobs, the very same man who was now in charge of the crew and navigation on the Batavia.

Speaker 2 Hey, how you doing, Pelfart?

Speaker 2 Good to see you. Remember the last time you fucked up in India?

Speaker 2 You should really just treat me a little more respect. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, Pelfart.

Speaker 2 Okay, well, the crew's watching.

Speaker 2 I don't know what happened because I'm a funny guy.

Speaker 2 I can't argue there. Pelfart, dumb shit.
I wish I could kick your ass again and I'll do it. I mean, I think I won the fight.
I'm going to beat the fucking shit out of your buddy.

Speaker 2 The Captain Jakobs had nursed a grudge against Upper Merchant Pelsart after their tussle on the boat out of India.

Speaker 2 But while he had resolved to put that aside for Patavia's maiden voyage, the resentment was still bubbling under the surface, just waiting for someone to come along and stir it up.

Speaker 2 Because you got this guy, all Pelsard is is a reminder that they really don't care if any of you die. No, they don't want you to die, but they don't mind if you die.
Who care less?

Speaker 2 Pelsart's the only one that matters, and Pelsart doesn't even matter. He just needs to bring the stuff.
As long as he has the stuff and he gets it safely and sells it, then he's fine.

Speaker 2 Or if he brings the money back safely, he's fine. But otherwise, all Palsard is a reminder of like, oh, I'm an expendable piece of shit and he has no skills and he depends on me, but he's my boss.

Speaker 2 He's the ultimate company man. Yeah.
And as you may have already guessed, the man who was about to stir up Captain Jakobs resentment real fucking nicely was Euronymus Cornelis.

Speaker 2 Together, Jakobs and Cornelis would create the conditions that turned the maiden voyage of the Batavia into a blood-soaked, murderous nightmare for almost all who survived the ship's eventual destruction.

Speaker 2 Now, as I said earlier, we're going to back up the story a bit from where we left it last episode.

Speaker 2 Thank you, Edward. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2 So, let's begin today's tale right before the crew put in at the Cape of Good Hope, prior to the conversation that would lead Euronymus and Captain Jakobs into mutiny.

Speaker 2 Now, by April of 1628, the Batavia was still in a flotilla of six other VOC ships and had been at sea for six months.

Speaker 2 In truth, things were going about average for a VOC ship of this size, which is to say that it was a horror show by modern standards. Yeah, it sucked on there, man.

Speaker 2 I even don't like boats now. Yeah.
You know, cruise ships aren't really nice now, except for you want to join.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. Side stories.

Speaker 2 On our true crime cruise, which is true. The crime wave, November 3rd to 7th.
Yep, we are going to be hosting our own mutiny. Yes.
I'm boarding for a ship, and we cannot wait to be there.

Speaker 2 Yeah, all right, you got your tickets next week. All right, we'll keep moving.

Speaker 2 Well, by this point in the Batavia's journey, almost a dozen men had died from that most particular, horrific, and stereotypical of all sea deaths, scurvy.

Speaker 2 Now, when a sailor has an extreme deficiency of vitamin C and scurvy sets in, a sailor's legs would swell and his breath would become rancid.

Speaker 2 Soon after, his gums would begin to bleed and his mouth would become so swollen and rotten with gangrene that his teeth would fall out one by one before he mercifully died. Thank you.

Speaker 2 Why is as soon as I see it for some reason, maybe I'm just, I should have jerked off or something, but the idea of like a sailor's legs and butt getting all swollen and big and then looking at them and the first thing you think of is like he puts the curvy and scurvy.

Speaker 2 I didn't say anything about his butt getting big. I just assumed.

Speaker 2 Just imagining his butt slowly expanding, and you're just looking at it. And, you know, all of a sudden his pock-marked, rotten face is slowly but surely turning to Alexander Dadario.

Speaker 2 You just don't know, you know, because you're out in the water in any port in a storm. That literally is the story of the first time a guy ever had sex with another guy's butt on a boat.
Is it?

Speaker 2 It's where that term came from. Which term? Any port in a storm.

Speaker 2 Because the guy's name was Port.

Speaker 2 So once the scurvy sets in,

Speaker 2 Port Johnson.

Speaker 2 What do we know about scurvy? Like, once it sets in, like, can you get better from it? Are you fucked? Like, rabies? You know, I'm not sure. I think you can get better from scurvy.

Speaker 2 I'd imagine there's a point of no return, but I think you can.

Speaker 2 Yeah, if I remember from a medical drama that I watched where a homeless man showed up to the hospital with scurvy, I think they said, he's got scurvy. Just give him some vitamin C and he'll be fine.

Speaker 2 People still get scurvy. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
It's actually a very bad problem with homeless people. Oh, man.
Got to get the vitamin C pills for everybody. Honestly, this is why.

Speaker 2 I mean, a lot of people have really been angry with me, but a part of my big reach out that I've been doing in Los Angeles is just throwing oranges at them. Yeah.
And people get really upset with me.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, I'm fighting scurvy.

Speaker 2 But while nearly a dozen men dead of scurvy in six months, sounds like things were going exceptionally badly, this actually put the Batavia ahead of the curve.

Speaker 2 You're like, that's pretty good.

Speaker 2 A dozen. Wow.
We needed some good news.

Speaker 2 On an average eight-month journey, the VOC expected to lose 30 men to scurvy. Damn.
And in extreme cases, half the crew might die, resulting in triple-digit body counts.

Speaker 2 Think about being one of the anonymous men on this boat who are all like, you know, I don't, my name, I don't know my name. Me neither.
I don't care. Neither do I.

Speaker 2 But these guys on this boat, they know that it's packed to pey on capacity for the planned murder, for their planned death.

Speaker 2 They know that this ship is overly filled because by the time we get to where we're supposed to be, it will be at just the right amount of people.

Speaker 2 In like a weird way, like it's almost good if people die because then they don't have to pay them. I mean, buddy.
I think that might be a little bit of part of it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, but that's also, I think what it is, I mean, it's kind of a checks and balances type thing.

Speaker 2 I mean, they're looking at the balance sheet where, you know, we're paying a lot of guys less than living wage. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So I think in the end, it just kind of all balances out for them. And the Brits, they would like bring citrus with them, but for some reason, the Dutch didn't.

Speaker 2 Sometimes, like, every once in a while, they might have like lemons. Like, they might be able to squeeze a lemon or something like that.

Speaker 2 Like, they didn't know that vitamin C was what, you know, cured it. They didn't know that fruit was what you kind of needed, what you could eat to get like a big, like, boost of it.

Speaker 2 But they did kind of happen upon it by accident.

Speaker 2 Every once in a while, I'd be like, oh, yeah, I remember the last time I had scurvy, I squeezed a lemon in it and I drank some, you know, wine, and it was fine. Cool.
Yeah, you just got to.

Speaker 2 Hopefully, you're on the right boat. I mean, this is very much the era of trial and error.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
And not really. You're really all of humankind.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And not really knowing why things work, just knowing that they work. Yeah.
And like the surgeons were like poor. Yeah.
The surgeons. No, a surgeon was like a tradesman.

Speaker 2 He's like a carpenter, you know, like they're so bizarre to me. And they were at this point, they were called barbers.

Speaker 2 You know, you can get your hair cut, set a bone, pull out a couple of teeth, good to go. All the same guy.
Good with scissors. Yeah, very good with scissors.

Speaker 2 I just can't wait to go to my Amazon dentist surgeon gun store.

Speaker 2 It is going to be so much fun to have it all happen again because that's what it's going to be. Yeah, it is.
All one place, one-stop shop. Yep.
Live from North Way.

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Speaker 2 And so now we get to the point where the Batavia is six months into its journey and they're putting in at the Cape of Good Hope.

Speaker 2 But when I say that the Batavia put in at the Cape of Good Hope, I don't mean that they stopped off at a rough and tumble port town for two weeks of booze and women.

Speaker 2 Instead, VOC policy called for camping in tents on the beach so the sick could be given a chance to recover and so the upper merchant could trade with the local South African tribes to beef up their food supplies.

Speaker 2 You've got to put it in the VOC's terminology, Marcus. It's like each one of our incredible, intrepid members of our VOC family get to an experience, a luxurious beachside accommodation

Speaker 2 in the beautiful, beautiful skies of southern Africa.

Speaker 2 That's South Africa, southern Africa. Southern Africa.

Speaker 2 Because the whole thing was to cut, it was cheap, right? Yeah. And they wanted to make sure that they didn't stop for long.
Yeah. They had to go.
And so everybody else had to stay on the boat.

Speaker 2 All the captains got to stay on the boat. Yeah.
And you also don't want to have to spend a lot of time gathering up all your guys from all the bars and taverns around the, around the port town.

Speaker 2 Like, you don't want to give them a whole lot to do. Yeah, they disappear, I imagine.
Yeah, it's wild, you know, just sitting in that beach. The whole thing, it's very dangerous.

Speaker 2 It's in fact, it's intense.

Speaker 2 I give you that one.

Speaker 2 That one's good. I really like that one.
That I really enjoyed.

Speaker 2 Now, even though Upper Merchant Pelsart was talented with languages, he had a difficult time communicating with the local tribe when they put in at the Cape of Good Hope.

Speaker 2 And since it took him a while to negotiate, mischief began to brew back on the water in the Batavia seven-ship flotilla.

Speaker 2 See, Captain Jakobs and Euronymus Cornelis had become friendly during their six months at sea. And while Upper Merchant Pelsart was on land bartering for sheep, I need two sheep!

Speaker 2 Look at my mouth! Fluffy! White, white, white!

Speaker 2 White sheep, Louis, I need a sheep. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 2 That is actually how they ended up having to communicate with Miming and yelling. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, Captain Jakobs and Euronymus had commandeered one of the Batavia's rowboats, and they started hopping from ship to ship to enjoy the hospitality of every ship in the flotilla.

Speaker 2 Hey, let's go over there. That one guy's got a feet that smells like oranges.

Speaker 2 Hey, let's go check out the other fucking boat, Duder. They got a thing called a tortilla gym.

Speaker 2 But much like a man who hits half a dozen holiday parties in one night and goes hard at each and every one, Captain Jakobs soon became drunk and belligerent, starting fights, talking shit, and acting in a manner, quote, most beastly, as Upper Merchant Pelsar put it in his journals.

Speaker 2 Well, and I and I was joking about this with Marcus about how beastly do you have to be to be kicked out of a party on a boat that's tied up, waiting to go to the Indies.

Speaker 2 Like, like, imagining how rough that party must already be because they all go into the wine stores because they bring wine and booze with them.

Speaker 2 So they allow them to have extra rations like during this time period.

Speaker 2 Only the upper class, though.

Speaker 2 The soldiers and the sailors get nothing they get nothing so like that party was crazy to begin with you know it's that whole lesson where it's like never get too drunk at an open bar you're not paying for yeah that's actually a really good that's a very good rule well i'll never nothing will always remind me used to do that one show at a place called sound fix and they and the producers of that show thought it was such a good idea to have a six to seven p.m.

Speaker 2 open bar yes before the show and it was impossible yes it was it literally an impossible show to play. Yeah, we were performers/slash bouncers.
Yes.

Speaker 2 Well, as such, by the time Upper Merchant Pelsart was back on the Batavia with supplies after securing a deal with the locals, the other six ships had already lodged several complaints about the behavior of Captain Jakobs and his little pleasure crews.

Speaker 2 Now, the actions of Captain Jakobs were bad for Upper Merchant Pelsart on a couple of levels.

Speaker 2 Yes, having a drunk and violent captain in charge of the flagship was not a good look, but the more serious offense here was taking a boat without Pelsart's permission.

Speaker 2 Stealing the boat broke the chain of command set up by the VOC that ensured nothing happened on a ship without the say-so of a representative. So Captain Jakobs had to be punished.
Borrowing the boat.

Speaker 2 Borrowing, sure.

Speaker 2 But the more I get into this story, the more I'm realizing that Pelsart was kind of running the Batavia in a candy-ass fashion by VOC standards.

Speaker 2 We talked a little about this, and I think it's because he

Speaker 2 leadership revolves around social contracts that quickly dissolve when you move away from the center of powers that hold those

Speaker 2 contracts in their hands, right? So when you go out in the middle of the ocean, if you can't rule with an iron fist, you better be well-liked. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But a lot of times you'll find that fear is a lot more effective out on the open water. Oh, yeah.
If you're too nice,

Speaker 2 people will try and kill you. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, for the crime of stealing a boat and physically fighting crews on other ships, Jakobs got away with just getting chewed out thoroughly in Upper Merchant Pelsart's cabins, where Jakobs was basically told that he was getting too big for his britches.

Speaker 2 Do I have to make your britches bigger?

Speaker 2 Do I have to go and get bigger britches for you, sir? All right, because right now it seems that your belly button is extending past your britches so far that I'm going to have to spank your belly.

Speaker 2 Oh, you spank me, you big fucking bitch. I feel like I'm just using, I'm using metaphors and I shouldn't.

Speaker 2 You're in trouble, is what I'm saying. Okay, just looking at me.
You need to listen to me. Cartoon mouse stuck in a whiskey bottle.

Speaker 2 I need you to focus.

Speaker 2 Focus?

Speaker 2 I mean, he basically gave him a listen here, mister.

Speaker 2 He just, I mean, he chewed him out. very thoroughly, but in these sorts of situations, a verbal reprimand was actually far less than what VOC policy called for.

Speaker 2 While swearing, blasphemy, and drunkenness earned an employee a fine, insubordination, violent threats, or violent acts were met with more violence or on-ship imprisonment.

Speaker 2 For a simple fight, a sailor on a VOC ship could be shackled by the hands and feet, then thrown into a cell too small to stand or lie down.

Speaker 2 This cell was on the bow of the gun deck, and the constant sound of the wind whistling through the cell slats for weeks on end was known to drive men to the brink of insanity.

Speaker 2 Meanwhile, during the Santa Ana winds, I'm sleeping like a babe. Yeah.
The winds like knock me out. I don't know what happened.
I was just, I was so relaxed.

Speaker 2 But if a sailor took his fight to the next level and pulled out a knife, the VOC policy escalated as well.

Speaker 2 Their written guidelines said that a knife-happy sailor should be nailed to the mast with his knife stabbed through his hand, and the sailor could only leave once he pulled his own hand off without removing the knife first.

Speaker 2 See, it's stern, but fair. So he can't like wiggle the knife off? Well, yeah, that's actually what he's expected to do.
Yeah, you have to go, yeah,

Speaker 2 yeah, it hurts. With his other hand tied behind his back, the sailor had the choice to either wiggle the knife.
I mean, that's the thing. The knife is in so deep that you can't wiggle the knife off.

Speaker 2 You have to wiggle your hand to make the wound bigger so you can fit the knife through the wound. Handle an all? Handle and all that's big hole yeah it's a very very large hole and also

Speaker 2 or you could also just rip your hand down in one swift motion and basically cut it in half oh

Speaker 2 either way you're never working as a sailor ever again yeah it seems like counterintuitive yeah but he could be a pirate yeah i mean he could be a pirate but that's the thing to be a pirate you still got to be a pretty good seaman yeah but they're missing limbs

Speaker 2 but that's actually more in uh pop culture representation oh really that wasn't reality a lot of them were pretty like well it was a career. Like, it's funny.

Speaker 2 Like, you think about it in terms of, we always think about it kind of Pirates of the Caribbean style, but it was also like weirdly like a job, too.

Speaker 2 I watched Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead Man's Chest, to like get ready for this episode, and it had nothing to do with it. No, it was across the other side of the world.

Speaker 2 It's kind of in the name. Yeah.
Pirates of the.

Speaker 2 I know, but I googled what movies have the Dutch.

Speaker 2 They're like, Pirates of of the Caribbean, Dead Man's Chest. I was like, all right, I'll watch that.
That seems like fun. I like Johnny Depp.
And then I put it on. It's fucking British.

Speaker 2 It's pretty bad. It's the British.
It's a bad movie. Yeah, Google's broken.
Yeah, but the Kraken's fucking rock and roll. It's very cool.
Yeah, I love the Kraken.

Speaker 2 We should do an episode on the Kraken. Should we stop? Yeah.

Speaker 2 But that's all to say that when you consider what Pelsart was given permission to do, Captain Jakobs should have been thankful for getting off with just a verbal warning.

Speaker 2 Because from what it seems like to me, Pelsart probably didn't want to deal with the logistical pain in the ass of punishing the captain because punishing him would naturally slow down the journey.

Speaker 2 And Pelsart's trying to get his fucking nut in. He's trying to fucking make it.
This has to get done. And it needs to be done efficiently and quickly.
Yes, and it needs to be by the book.

Speaker 2 He is like, he is under a lot of fucking pressure. They're going to put him in a horrible place if he doesn't get this right.
So I feel like it's also, you're in the middle of the ocean.

Speaker 2 You just got fought. You just fought with this guy the last time.
Like at this point, you're like, I just don't want to, I don't want to fight with you, bro.

Speaker 2 I just need to get your shit together so we can get this done with.

Speaker 2 Also, this might be a stupid question, but who takes over if he has to kill the captain? Probably the boat swain. Okay, yes.
We'll get to him in a bit. All right, great.

Speaker 2 But word soon spread amongst the crew that Upper Merchant Palsart had ripped Captain Jakobs a new asshole in the upper merchant's quarters, which may have been more humiliating for Captain Jakobs than if he'd just taken his lumps physically.

Speaker 2 I had bent in front of him and I told him, You be a man and you spank the hell out of me.

Speaker 2 You take me, you master me.

Speaker 2 I say in there, you treat me like a dog. I'll be my father.

Speaker 2 And he didn't have the guts. Did that usually happen on ships you've been on? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Treated like a little boy. Yeah.
Being trained to be a man.

Speaker 2 The opposite way. You ever been canoeed on a canoe?

Speaker 2 You ever been pegged by a peg leg?

Speaker 2 Well, because Jakobs was humiliated, he naturally started talking shit about his supervisor.

Speaker 2 And who else would be there with a sympathetic ear but the captain's new buddy, Under Merchant Euronymus Cornelis? These Zoomers think they know everything launching that random highway.

Speaker 2 Well, we used to fight boats ourselves. I used to just hit a boat with my hands if I wanted to.

Speaker 2 Now, without the influence of Euronymus, Captain Jakobs would have probably just grumbled a bit before putting on his big boy pants to finish out his last voyage at sea. God damn it, all right.

Speaker 2 This boat ain't gonna sail itself. Let's go, boys.

Speaker 2 Somebody else to spring me.

Speaker 2 But when Jacobs told Euronymus during a conversation on the upper deck that he had half a mind to kill Upper Merchant Pelsart and make himself master of Batavia, Euronimus paused for a long while, then asked how one would go about doing such a thing.

Speaker 2 It's such a cinematic moment in history. Because it's real.
It's right. This is lifted right from the witness recollection.
It's great. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And so Euronymus and Captain Jakobs began selling each other a fantasy where they would take the Batavia and its riches for themselves. Yeah, I'll get.
I'm going to be doing the spanking.

Speaker 2 I'm going to be doing the bridge building. Britch buying.

Speaker 2 Tell people how big they should be, and how big the bridges are, and how they fit, and what legs they go in first.

Speaker 2 Yeah, the plan is just to get bridges that are a lot larger, so then you can grow into them. The idea is to create room for growth Liebenstrammen within the bridges.

Speaker 2 Well, before long, Euronymus and Captain Jakobs had sketched out a plan where they'd use the might and riches of the Batavia to become pirates operating out of Madagascar.

Speaker 2 This is like two guys on Coke talking about opening a restroom. Yeah.

Speaker 2 This whole thing is like, because it's such a far-flung idea, it's just like, I have an idea. We'll take all the money and then we're pirates.

Speaker 2 It's like a couple of kids. Yeah.
You know?

Speaker 2 But the plan was about after a year or two of plundering and such, they, along with their mutinous crew, would all retire as wealthy men somewhere out of the VOC's reach.

Speaker 2 You heard every single, you remember when you used to deal weed?

Speaker 2 You heard all those guys' fantasies about they're going to get out and they're going to go and they're going to turn into a DJ or going to turn into a mandala designer. They were all DJs.

Speaker 2 Yes, they're going to take that weed money and they're going to flip it to a sword store.

Speaker 2 As far as everyone else on the ship went, Euronymus and Captain Jakobs figured, fuck them, we'll figure it out.

Speaker 2 Now, it's hard to tell if Euronymus was plotting a mutiny all along or if it was an idle thought that was given opportunity.

Speaker 2 But it's clear that once a mutiny became a real possibility, Euronymus was going to do everything in his power to stoke the fires of Jacob's resentment.

Speaker 2 There's a little part of me that man wonders if, in the back of his head, that if he remembered where he came from in a way, and he's like, Euronymous? Yes, like my

Speaker 2 people, the legacy of my people and my religion. The Anabaptists.
Yes, is to go and to form our own home. Make Zion where we stand, right? Like, bring people to us.
Create a home for Anabaptists.

Speaker 2 I think he's got a little l ron maybe he's a little lrh in his head of like you just say that because he likes boats he don't want to expose it that way but he doesn't like boats lrh doesn't like boats that much he was forced to live on a boat

Speaker 2 he chose the boat lifestyle the lifestyle the boat lifestyle chose euronymus where it's like i think that this guy like there's a little part of me that wonders he's like out here

Speaker 2 I can be the Pope. Sure.
And Euronimus is, just to remind me, is a merchant, right? Yeah, he's an undermerchant. Undermerchant.
Yes. On the boat, but in real life, he was a pharmacist, but bad one.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah. A drug dealer.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, basically, he's going to the Indies so he can make some deals with somebody to, you know, get, put, set up some trade to, you know, bring money back to, like, set up like profit lines

Speaker 2 for the VOC. But as far as his mutiny went, getting a high-ranking sailor on your side was the hard part.

Speaker 2 The lower-ranking sailors and the soldiers on a VOC ship, they were always primed for mutiny, especially near the end of the journey.

Speaker 2 Because as bad as conditions were at the outset, they only got worse the longer the ship was at sea.

Speaker 2 See, even though the Batavia was one of the largest and most advanced ships of its age, it still only had four latrines for its 341 passengers and crew.

Speaker 2 But, as it usually goes, two of those latrines were reserved for the relatively small number of upper-class passengers and higher-ranking officials, maybe a few dozen people.

Speaker 2 The rest of the ship, numbering in the hundreds, had to share the other two latrines, which latrines in this case were pretty much holes in the deck that had to be used in full view of everyone.

Speaker 2 Hey, hey, sometimes we close our eyes

Speaker 2 because when it's a big fat guy,

Speaker 2 sometimes I close my eyes and I imagine my father.

Speaker 2 Sometimes when it's a skinny lady,

Speaker 2 sometimes I close my eyes and I think of my mother.

Speaker 2 Whose name was also Latrine.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it used to be shit out.

Speaker 2 Good change.

Speaker 2 Good change.

Speaker 2 Now,

Speaker 2 they also, the thing about the Latrines were they couldn't use them whenever they wanted. No.
So they only had like a half hour a day to go fucking shit and piss. The soldiers, at least.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they were kept underneath in the orelop until they were brought up twice a day for, you know, a long line of men shitting and pissing in the same hole.

Speaker 2 Speaking of that, you got to go to the bathroom? I have to go to the bathroom.

Speaker 2 And it's your hole. And just, we'll be back after a word from our sponsors.
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Speaker 2 Can I go on the ship, Marcus? No, get out of here, please. No, get out of here, Lemon.
We're going to get to the rack.

Speaker 2 No!

Speaker 2 No, in the house. No, stay home.
Get a cookie.

Speaker 2 Okay, so now that you shit, let's get back to the shit. Thank you.
Each latrine had one long rope, supposedly sanitized by the ocean, dangling from the hole. That's what we do.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 The ocean rope. Yeah, you're at LPN.
Yeah, the salt rope. I just, we just have one wet rope I run between our cheeks, and then we all check each other.

Speaker 2 You guys do that with, yeah, I talk, I check Gurney, Ed checks Rob to make sure we're clean. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And Rob is fucking spotless.

Speaker 2 That's what he's our producer.

Speaker 2 Well, hundreds of people would use this salt rope to floss their butts before handing it to the next guy. Ooh, thanks.

Speaker 2 Well, you can't, well, I guess you dip it down into like kind of swish it a little bit. Yeah, hey, hey, I washed it for you.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 things got a little messy. Who didn't wash the rope?

Speaker 2 Who didn't wash the rope? I'm just going to say I might have had a legume too many last night.

Speaker 2 Anyways, better go deal with the sails.

Speaker 2 I hate that guy.

Speaker 2 I hate loose stool Tim.

Speaker 2 But when it was too dangerous to use the latrines during bad weather, the soldiers and seamen relieved themselves in corners, or even worse, crouched crouched over ladders that led down to the holds where they lived.

Speaker 2 That I didn't get.

Speaker 2 I read that passage over and over again in Batavia's graveyard, trying to figure out like what the function of perching on a ladder so the Duke could splat down harder, what the logic was in that.

Speaker 2 There's a little thing about being human

Speaker 2 and just like

Speaker 2 taking the little pleasures where you can get them. Yeah, it's missing them.
You got to see it plop. Yeah.
Also, if you're a sailor, I imagine you're shitting on the soldiers.

Speaker 2 No, the soldiers are in their own hold.

Speaker 2 The soldiers are down in the Oralop, the sailors are up in the gun deck. That's what I'm saying.
They probably made a hole from the gun deck to the Orlop.

Speaker 2 I wouldn't be shitting on the guys with the guns. No.

Speaker 2 Well, this was particularly a problem, you know, shitting off of the ladders and going in corners. This became a big problem when the Batavia's pumps got going during the same bad weather.

Speaker 2 The pumps would bring all the urine, liquid shits, and rainwater that had leaked down into the bilges.

Speaker 2 But instead of pushing all that directly out to sea, the men who designed the Batavia had the disgusting mixture slosh through the sailors' sleeping quarters first until it found an open port or sluice.

Speaker 2 Now, I can only sluice

Speaker 2 the term sluice.

Speaker 2 Almost every word in this episode, including Euronymous, is hard to deal with. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Now, I can only imagine what sort of horrible shits these sailors and soldiers were taking because their diet was not what you'd call balance.

Speaker 2 Tell me, do you guys have a sai?

Speaker 2 Anybody, where's the motherfucker supposed to get a poke bowl?

Speaker 2 While the highest rank ate only the best food, sailors and soldiers ate cask meat, legumes, and hardtack.

Speaker 2 But I do feel like even the good food that the guys, the officers got to eat, couldn't have been that good by the end.

Speaker 2 It's like, but they had to bring them like, these bake them turkeys and do all this like big extravagant meals. Yeah, for the first week.
Yes. Yeah.
And then it's just whatever fish you can catch.

Speaker 2 Probably. Yeah, but the fish never made it to the men.
You know, the fish never made it to like the men down at the bottom. The fish were all reserved for the people up top.

Speaker 2 The used fish made it down to the men. Yes.
That's what I call my shit as well.

Speaker 2 Used fish.

Speaker 2 Well, as far as what the sailors and soldiers ate, cask meat was heavily cured and dried meat pickled by boiling it in brine or vinegar.

Speaker 2 While hardtack, a cracker-like food used by armies and sailors throughout history, that had to be soaked in seawater before eating. Otherwise, it could crack a sailor's already fragile teeth.

Speaker 2 Wouldn't that just make them crazy? What? Having all that seawater? It wasn't good for them. No, it's not good for you, and it kills you.
Yeah. It's very bad for you.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, the hardtack on the Batavia was also teeming with insects.

Speaker 2 And while some sailors would tap the rations on the side of the ship to dislodge bugs before eating, some came to like the added ingredient and could even tell which bug was which by taste and texture.

Speaker 2 Hey, man, you gotta do something on that boat. Yeah.
Yeah, and the scurvy made them blind, so that's the only way they couldn't tell the difference between the bugs.

Speaker 2 All right, I think I got a good one. It's a ladybug.

Speaker 2 Ah, taste

Speaker 2 bad ladybug. Oh, I got, hold on, don't clean that.

Speaker 2 What's up, yeah? Here, take away, take it, wait,

Speaker 2 ah, yes, it's good. It's my used ladybug.

Speaker 2 Oh, yes. Whatever we don't eat, we'll use this lube.
Yes, further fucking. That's what you mean.

Speaker 2 For when we're having sex.

Speaker 2 I didn't realize that lube is such a pirate word. Yeah, lube.

Speaker 2 Y'all, make sure before we set out to fill up the lube cask.

Speaker 2 We've got to keep it a full.

Speaker 2 The very brim. Fifteen barrels of lube on this ship.

Speaker 2 My favorite flavor. Strawberry kiwi.

Speaker 2 It really helps me take the oar.

Speaker 2 Well, concerning the tastes and textures of bugs, weevils were bitter, while maggots were spongy and cold.

Speaker 2 But big, juicy cockroaches were considered a treat because they were described as vaguely resembling sausage.

Speaker 2 Vaguely. Vaguely.

Speaker 2 It's doing a lot of work on that thing.

Speaker 2 Yay! Because you're just crazy and you haven't seen a sausage for months. It's kind of dark.
Yeah, sausage.

Speaker 2 And it's full of juice. Yeah, yeah, little poppers.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 But while this sounds awful, the Batavia was actually considered pretty high class by 17th century standards, but only because the crew always ate something three times a day.

Speaker 2 Now, besides meals at 8, noon, and 6, the only thing that broke up the mind-numbing boredom for the sailors on board was the entertainment they created themselves.

Speaker 2 While they did engage in stereotypically manly pursuits like fist fights for sport, they were also vicious gossips and even put on theatrical performances if they were so inclined.

Speaker 2 That's the only thing I like about Loose Stool Tim. He knows a lot of songs that make me cry.

Speaker 2 Get angry, he's being sad.

Speaker 2 Then I get happy, thinking I had the ability to be angry in the first place. And that means I'm alive.
Thank you, Luke Stool Tim.

Speaker 2 Oh, he's dead.

Speaker 2 It was a lot of fun, but the late show guests just kept repeating. Oh, yes.
Very. Oh, God.
You think Joe Rogan has the same four guys?

Speaker 2 The sailors also played games, the most interesting of which being the execution game.

Speaker 2 Now, from what we can tell, this was a sailored-up version of an innocent 17th-century parlor game called Forfeits.

Speaker 2 In Forfeits, all participants began the game by putting a personal object in a box, and once the objects are collected, one person is selected as a judge.

Speaker 2 Once the judge sits down, an object is taken out of the box and held above the judge's head, so the judge can't see what it is.

Speaker 2 The person who owns the object is then told to come forward, where they would basically be engaged in a game of truth or dare with the judge so they could get their object back.

Speaker 2 Like the judge would say, Yo, if you want your thing back, you're gonna need to do dance me a jig. Come on, Loose Stool Tim, dance the jig.
This is our new Twitch show.

Speaker 2 This is our new we have to use forfeits! Forfeits!

Speaker 2 Yeah, because you could see Loose Stool Tim being like, finally,

Speaker 2 I knew I'd be able to perform on this boat.

Speaker 2 He's having too much fun. Let's run him through.

Speaker 2 And so, after the player has done or not done what the judge has asked, the judge decides whether the person deserves to reobtain what they'd put in the box in the first place.

Speaker 2 But to make it more interesting, sailors gave the judge the option to also tar the player if he wasn't satisfied.

Speaker 2 Well, as such, forfeits became so dangerous in the hands of sailors that it could only be played with the express permission of the captain.

Speaker 2 I suppose if the voyage was going so well that he felt the men all deserved a little treat. Yeah, I guess you guys can all beat the shit out of each other.
I don't like it.

Speaker 2 I love to see it. Oh, good quail.

Speaker 2 Oh, I'm so glad I could eat this six-month-old quail.

Speaker 2 A truth or dare on a fucking, on a between sailors on this horrible ship. What secrets could they possibly have? Okay.
They're all like raping each other in front of each other.

Speaker 2 Truth or dare?

Speaker 2 Truth. Okay.

Speaker 2 Do you have a crush on Stephen?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 Just shed, stab his hands into the past.

Speaker 2 Cut off his butt. He's forfeited.

Speaker 2 No, I don't. No, Stephen, it's true.

Speaker 2 Now, obviously, the sailors on the Batavia played fast and loose with their own lives, but that was partly because they all knew they could die any day in dozens of equally horrible ways.

Speaker 2 Most, however, died by disease, brought on board by rats and insects.

Speaker 2 Author Mike Dash described the hold of the Batavia as an empire of rats, hundreds, if not thousands of them, that only multiplied as the voyage went on.

Speaker 2 Knowing that food could sometimes be found on the other side of the wall, rats would chew through the hull not knowing there was only water waiting, and the leaks the rats caused had to constantly constantly be filled by the ship's caulkers.

Speaker 2 Dude, rats can chew through anything. Anything.

Speaker 2 When I was working at the poorhouse in a restaurant in New York City, they would literally chew through the brick walls and through like, you know, like kitchens are lined with metal. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, they would chew through that. And then we would have to like fill it with like those like metal like

Speaker 2 scrubbies. Yeah.
We used to call them space pussies because you open them up and it's like a metal little vagina. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's fun. That's fun.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And yeah,

Speaker 2 we'd stick those in the wall and then we'd caulk that up and then eat through that fucking shit. Yeah, dude.

Speaker 2 No, rats are incredible because it's just like if one rat breaks all his teeth, the next rat comes up and takes the job. Yes, I love to eat your teeth.

Speaker 2 True. So much.
Meanwhile, like, I was just thinking of shipcockers. You know, yeah, just thinking about a guy, fucking a bunch of guys on a boat.
Calkers. Caulkers.

Speaker 2 I fill the hole with me.

Speaker 2 It's not helping. You're just fucking old Davies locker.

Speaker 2 I can't do it while you talk.

Speaker 2 But with rats, come lice, and with lice, especially in the 17th century, one had to contend with the Black Plague, which could kill dozens on one of these ships, if not hundreds.

Speaker 2 To make matters just that much worse, the sleeping quarters were also infested with bed bugs. And that was just the vermin that the Batavia had left the Netherlands with.
That was baseline.

Speaker 2 Ships could also pick up native insects anytime they stopped in a port. Within days, those insects would rapidly multiply and spread typhus.

Speaker 2 Sometimes captains would offer brandy as a reward to the best bug killers. So an endless army of several tens of thousands of insects would be crushed every few days.
Oh, that's nice. That works.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, someone's got to do it. Yeah.
But that's all to say that this was the life a sailor or soldier had to look forward to for less than a living wage.

Speaker 2 So the men of the Batavia had little to lose by participating in a mutiny. All they needed was someone to give them permission.
It's important to remember that there's more of you than them.

Speaker 2 You can win. The biggest moral quandary of a mutiny, however, was presented by the other people on board the ship, the passengers.

Speaker 2 The Batavia had plenty of civilians aboard who were just trying to make their way to the Indies, including numerous children and 22 women.

Speaker 2 These women and children were either the families of men aboard or they were traveling to meet their husbands in the Indies.

Speaker 2 Now, for a while, wife delivery was a pretty good side business for the VOC, who usually capped the number of women at 20 because they only sprung for one single company chaperone per ship to look after them.

Speaker 2 It's bad luck to have ladies on a boat. Well, it's not really bad luck as much as you can't trust the men.
Is it because of the menstruations? Yeah. No, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 Because the men's just a shark home monster. No, because that's what happened.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 But after the repeated rape of many women by hundreds of sailors during these types of voyages, the company ended the service with few exceptions, like the Batavia. Can't they just put them on?

Speaker 2 They should put little penis locks on them. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know? Or give an old lady, an all-lady fleet. That wouldn't happen.

Speaker 2 Honestly, sisters are selling it for heaven's hands.

Speaker 2 I can see that. Okay.

Speaker 2 Oh, lady, VOC trap.

Speaker 2 All right. I spell Kristen Wig vehicle.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you're fucking laughing until next year you're going to see Lady Pirates on HBO Max. I'm fine with it at least it's not IP.

Speaker 2 We're going to make the Batavia the labia. Whoa, yeah.

Speaker 2 Yas.

Speaker 2 Yashias.

Speaker 2 Now prevent rape on the Batavia. The women were kept segregated.
I don't know. There's no way to fucking come out of that.
There's no way to come back into that.

Speaker 2 I know it's really hard like it's like joking, joking, joking.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's like, there's just no way.

Speaker 2 That's why I put it in the middle of a paragraph instead of in the beginning of it. You want to start over with it.
Yeah, no, well, to prevent. Do you want me to say it?

Speaker 2 Well, the women were kept segregated from the majority of the sailors and soldiers, but that segregation did not extend to VOC officers.

Speaker 2 As such, one woman in particular on this voyage, a woman who would play an involuntary role in the mutiny to come, she caught the eye of the famously horny upper merchant Francisco Pelsart.

Speaker 2 Because you remember, his Achilles heel was in his balls. Yes.
That woman was the unusually beautiful Cracia Jansdoctor, 27 years old when the Batavia set sail. Yeah, I know I shouldn't.

Speaker 2 I am too pretty to be on this boat. Honestly, it is like the worst place to be hot.

Speaker 2 Honestly,

Speaker 2 I blame myself

Speaker 2 for

Speaker 2 just being here. I should not be here.
I am too hot.

Speaker 2 Now, it's thought that Cracia had stayed behind in the Netherlands to raise her three children when her husband joined the VOC.

Speaker 2 But after all her kids died before the age of six, she decided to roll the dice and join her husband in the Indies. It's sort of like kind of like

Speaker 2 the angel of death gave me my groove back.

Speaker 2 He's just allowed me to go live my best life in the Indies. She's too hot to be a mom.
I just, yeah, that's what he was saying. My father has killed all of my kids.
Oh my God.

Speaker 2 Oh God, he was just telling me you're ruining your body with all of this. So I'm just going to go out there and I guess get railed in Indies.

Speaker 2 Now, Captain Jacobs had repeatedly tried to seduce Cracia, even though he was a married man. You're prettier than the last whore I had sex with.

Speaker 2 I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 I'm just

Speaker 2 angry.

Speaker 2 I'm an awful man.

Speaker 2 I'm a bad. I'm bad at this.
You would have been great. The guy, the coach from Major League.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Or even better than Nick Nolte. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But when Cracia rebuffed Captain Jakob's advances, the captain turned his attentions to Cracia's servant. As it turned out, the servant was fully game to be the captain's on-ship girlfriend.

Speaker 2 And in private, they gossiped about how much they both hated the high-born Cracia Jan's doctor. And it got even worse after Cracia started gravitating towards upper merchant Francisco Pelsart.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, dude, because, well, she also definitely needed protection because something was going on. Like, when she started watching her nursemaid fall in, like,

Speaker 2 so I couldn't. But there wasn't a nursemaid because she didn't have any kids.
It's whatever she was.

Speaker 2 She was a servant. Yeah, they called her the nurse.
That was like one of those Shakespearean titles that they have or whatever. But there's just something to like, there's boat mances.

Speaker 2 Sure. Boatmances happen.
Yeah. Sea wife.
Yeah. People have sea wife.
But the thing about this one is that it kind of gets out of control.

Speaker 2 And they hear for some reason this lady, she was doing something, something. Well, they said she was unusually beautiful for the time.
Whoa, no, I'm talking about the nurse. Oh,

Speaker 2 the servant. See, let's not get the names mixed up.

Speaker 2 I'm sorry, the servant, she essentially, you remember I said during the Fred and Rosemary West series that sometimes you're only as hot as what you're willing to do? Mm-hmm. That's this lady.

Speaker 2 This lady knows, oh, I've got, oh, if I want to get a special cut, I've got to goggle the balls. You know what I mean? Like, this is a lady doing it, a special.

Speaker 2 Now, the relationship between the servant and Captain Jakobs only fueled the fires when it came to the captain getting more comfortable with the idea of a mutiny.

Speaker 2 But if he and Euronymous were to fail, the punishments were the most severe the VOC had to offer.

Speaker 2 See, despite the VOC's harsh treatment of their employees, full mutinies were incredibly rare in company history.

Speaker 2 Between 1602 and 1628, there had been just six serious mutinies, none of which were successful. Usually, general unrest amongst the crew resulted in small protests met with brief compromise.

Speaker 2 But once the VOC regained control, they would execute the leaders or punish them in a variety of increasingly brutal ways that would discourage further complaint.

Speaker 2 They really tried to stop any thought of mutinies.

Speaker 2 Or any thought of organization in any way whatsoever.

Speaker 2 Like, if anyone, if they started complaining and they started getting together, it's like, you know, like unions weren't even, we're hundreds of years away. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But this is like the beginning of that. And also a time when, you know, the companies, these corporations, like when you tried to organize, you'd be murdered.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, they're just straight up killing people and stabbing their hands to the mast. Like, what could the torture for this be? That everyone's scared of it.
Aha.

Speaker 2 The most common punishment for a mutineer was 200 lashes, punctuated by splashes of seawater that would both disinfect the wound and burn like hell.

Speaker 2 For many sailors, having their backs turned into a bleeding, gummy mush was eventually fatal. The VOC wanted to get more dramatic, though.

Speaker 2 Mutineers, while still at sea, were sometimes dropped from the yard arm, which is the crossbar on the mast that holds up the ship's sails.

Speaker 2 After lead weights were tied to the mutineer's feet, he was taken up the yard arm where his arms would be tied with the rope, and the other end of the rope would be tied to the post.

Speaker 2 He would then be dropped 40 feet, and when the rope reached its end, the weights would dislocate the mutineer's shoulders and usually break his arms and wrists wrists in the process.

Speaker 2 Bit of a crick in the back. Like, I could see it feeling really good for half a second.
Maybe. Yeah, but then you just become useless.
Why not kill him?

Speaker 2 Well, because you want to see, you want to show everyone else what sort of horrible death you're going to die if you do this. And that's the thing.

Speaker 2 It's like it, or not even what sort of horrible death, because that guy would be left there to scream and scream and scream for a very long time. For months.
Yeah. Yep.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 But that's what it was really about showing everyone else, making an example of you.

Speaker 2 Man, I bet, like, in afterwards, like, you know, if some guy's screaming for days, I imagine they just beat the shit out of him at some point.

Speaker 2 They probably just do the old thing where they

Speaker 2 put the hand over the mouth and they pinch the nose and just slowly suffocate them to death. Yeah, kill them in the night.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 But being thrown off the yard arm was not the worst punishment.

Speaker 2 Above them all was keel hauling. Yay, keel hauling.
Yay, my favorite. Which, not surprisingly, was a Dutch invention.

Speaker 2 When a man was keel hauled, his arms were first tied together above his head and his legs were bound.

Speaker 2 One end of a very long rope was passed under the keel, while the other end of the rope was tied to the mutineer's arms.

Speaker 2 The mutineer was then tossed overboard, and by using the rope tied to his arms, he was pulled from one side of the ship to the other over and over again as the ship continued its forward momentum.

Speaker 2 Under the boat?

Speaker 2 Under the boat. Yes.
Now, in theory, keel hauling was supposed to just be a terrifying and deeply unpleasant experience.

Speaker 2 Because at this point in history, only one man in seven on a VOC ship actually knew how to swim. Think about that for a second.
You're on the ship, all these sailors, one in seven knows how to swim.

Speaker 2 Six out of seven of them have, if they fall in the water, they're fucking dead. It's because the waters work.

Speaker 2 When I'm not working, I'm walking. Yeah.
And if I'm not rolling on the waves, I'm sitting. I hate the water.
It's my enemy, but it's also my love.

Speaker 2 But I'm afraid of it, but but it's also given me everything I've ever got. I'm too poor to learn how to swim.

Speaker 2 But in practice, once the mutineer was dragged from side to side underneath the ship, he would either be cut to pieces by barnacles on the ship's hull, or his head would actually fall off after being smashed into the side of the ship over and over again.

Speaker 2 You know, they're like, now I hope you have learned your lesson. Oh,

Speaker 2 no.

Speaker 2 Oh, is his head supposed to collapse? And he again to become sort of inflatable. Is that inflatable to fix this man's head? Because we take off 45 minutes from now.

Speaker 2 Also, like, barnacle are fucking crazy sharp. Yeah.
I remember one time, like, I saw a guy fall off like a pier type of thing. Everyone was out there fishing and shit.

Speaker 2 And then when he tried to get back on, he scraped his hand on barnacle and it fucking sliced it open. And like, fucking, you could see the bone and shit.
Yeah. It was fucking wild.
Yeah, man.

Speaker 2 No, fucking, it'll kill you. Oh, yeah.
Now, the VOC didn't necessarily want their employees dead.

Speaker 2 So to prevent death by keel hauling, VOC ships were equipped with special leather harnesses, actual company torture devices, that were designed to keep the mutineer alive for three full rounds of keel hauling before the punishment was deemed complete.

Speaker 2 Now this time, don't die. Yes.
All right. All right, here's your leather strap, and don't forget to snorkel.
Okay.

Speaker 2 And remember, this is unpleasant, but we don't want it to be entirely so. Alright? So enjoy.
Yeah, actually, they would do that.

Speaker 2 They'd give him a little sponge that he could bite down on for the pain. This will help you.
Okay? Now, just remember, this hurts us more than it hurts you. Alright?

Speaker 2 Kill him, please.

Speaker 2 Now, these punishments would have been well known to Captain Jakobs and the entire crew. So Jakobs and Euronymus had to be very careful about who they brought into this plot.

Speaker 2 But one by one, they began collecting all the right men to pull it off, and their plan was put in emotion motion the moment they set sail for the final leg of their journey to the Indies.

Speaker 2 Now, before they did anything, they first had to separate the Batavia from the rest of the VOC flotilla, because if ship went down on the Batavia, the other six ships would quickly come to its aid.

Speaker 2 So, as soon as the Batavia left the Cape of Good Hope in Africa, Captain Jakobs very simply allowed the ship to drift away from the rest of the convoy.

Speaker 2 Now, nobody really paid any attention to this because ships got separated all the time due to to differences in quality and sailing speed.

Speaker 2 So, once the Batavia was out of the rest of the fleet's range, Euronymus and Captain Jakobs began gathering men for the mutiny to come.

Speaker 2 So, at this point, the Batavia has started with 14 ships, like it's 13, it and 13 others. Then it gets taken down to the Batavia and six other ships.

Speaker 2 And now, after leaving the Cape of Good Hope, the Batavia is all alone. Yeah, and the Batavia, it's easy for it to become alone because it's fast as hell, right? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 And it's just, and what they say is because it's so common for them to drift in and out, like for a while, they probably don't even think about it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, amongst the first mutineers recruited was the ship's boat swain, who was in charge of the ship's sails, rigging, and anchors.

Speaker 2 The boatswain was more or less the second highest-ranking sailor on the ship, a master seaman who'd worked his way from the bottom and had, in the progress, become one of the toughest customers on board.

Speaker 2 In his normal day-to-day, the boatswain would lash at his men with a tarred rope called a starter, so the men were conditioned to follow his orders.

Speaker 2 Once the boatswain was recruited, Euronymus now had the two most senior seamen on the Batavia on his side, and the numbers grew exponentially from there.

Speaker 2 But while the boatswain and the captain were good at recruiting the sailors, Euronymus was able to expand their numbers to include the other classes on the ship.

Speaker 2 Most important, however, were the soldiers, easily the most dangerous men aboard the ship.

Speaker 2 I say when I was listening to the Dan Carlin hardcore history episode about the Monster Revolution, there was a thing that he said that I thought was fascinating. That this is kind of how it works.

Speaker 2 Where you had to remember, before mass information, things and people getting new ideas was so like

Speaker 2 it was kind of an amazing new thing at the time for an idea to spread virally, right? Because of the printing press, all this stuff coming up, like it's spread ideas.

Speaker 2 So the way like Dan Carlin puts it is that you can watch

Speaker 2 sermon by sermon how Anabaptism got spread by like two people at a time. So Euronym is using the same exact ability,

Speaker 2 slowly but surely

Speaker 2 preaching at people one at a time to slowly like, and so he'll be talking to six people. One of them will get it.
No, he's not talking to six people at a time at all. No, they're talking about

Speaker 2 going by one by one. There's no talking about in public at all.

Speaker 2 Not the mutiny aspect, the ideas aspect. Because then you see

Speaker 2 who picks up on the, there's no such thing as sin. Yeah.
There's no such thing as the, he starts saying these things, seeing who says like, yeah, I'm with you. Yeah.
Yeah. And then it's next level.

Speaker 2 It's cult leadership. Yeah.
It's months that they really get to like dissect each other's psyche. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But starting with a couple of easily influenced cadets, Euronymus worked his way to the corporal who was in charge of disciplining the soldiers, a man who played much the same role as the boat swain.

Speaker 2 Later, Euronymus would be called a seducer of men, who used his uncanny powers of persuasion to draw men to his cause.

Speaker 2 And indeed, his silver tongue would eventually convince the men of the Batavia to commit all manner of evil.

Speaker 2 Now, once the recruitment reached the soldiers, the mutineers had a team of somewhere between eight and eighteen men on their side.

Speaker 2 We're not really sure exactly how many people were on board with this, but you know, that's the estimate. Honestly, I'm surprised we know what we know.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's because of how much witness testimony came from the survivors and Pelsart's journal. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But that's the thing, eight to 18, that was more than enough to put them in a position where they could overthrow Upper Merchant Pelsart once and for all. Because they just needed choke points.

Speaker 2 Mm-hmm. But unexpectedly, Upper Merchant Pelsart got seriously ill, quite possibly from malaria contracted in Africa.
Was it bitch disease? Yes.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 Unfortunately, yes.

Speaker 2 With the recent rollbacks in our health departments, bitch disease is on the rise.

Speaker 2 It's really not much. We have to fight it.

Speaker 2 And because he was so sick, he was confined to his bunk for weeks on end.

Speaker 2 Captain Jakobs was therefore put in total control of the ship, but instead of taking advantage immediately, he wasted the opportunity on piddling things, like when he proudly announced to everyone that he had officially taken Cracia's servant as his girlfriend.

Speaker 2 She's my girlfriend.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 2 We are going steady.

Speaker 2 I am in way like with her.

Speaker 2 I sent her a note saying, would she go steady with me? And she checked yes. And if I find one herpie that did not come from me, I know mine.
I know mine.

Speaker 2 Because they all got names.

Speaker 2 Here's Herpie one, herpie two, herpie three, here's Ted.

Speaker 2 Now the plan for some reason was to wait until Upper Merchant Pelsart died before taking over the ship. Sure.

Speaker 2 And Eronymus was so confident in Pelsart's impending death that he'd stopped stopped recruiting people for a violent mutiny i don't think he was wrong he was he was dying they were going in there and pelsart's like you fucking piece of shit he's sitting there dying mean like yeah i'm gonna fuck it i'm gonna feel better and i'm gonna take over this little fucking ship and they're all like just

Speaker 2 all they had to do was wait yeah but why not do the suffocate thing that we were talking about earlier that's what i'm saying

Speaker 2 that's what i'm saying

Speaker 2 no one would have thought any different yeah

Speaker 2 they weren't ready they were pussies and because there still was a bunch of soldiers in the way.

Speaker 2 There were still, if open war happened, if open war on the water happened, that would also be really bad for them because the soldiers would outnumber them.

Speaker 2 And right now, yes, they have some of the sailors on, but they did not get to get to the soldiers because you didn't really know who they were going to be loyal to.

Speaker 2 Now, the reason why there wasn't much hope for Palsart, the reason why Euronymus thought, like, sure, we can just wait around for him to die.

Speaker 2 You get sick on a ship, you're fucked, that was because he was in the hands of the ship's surgeon and the surgeon's assistant the under barber

Speaker 2 barber sounds like the guy from pupic care barbershop

Speaker 2 see the voc had a hard time getting surgeons for their voyages because of the surgeon's extremely high at-sea mortality rate which had been earned by being constantly stuck in small cabins with sick men most likely if you were treating a guy with a plague you were going to get the plague if you were treating a guy with malaria you were going to get malaria yeah and there would only be one surgeon one surgeon well and the under undersurgeon.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so yeah, him and his

Speaker 2 boy. Yeah, because you could barely get like one guy to say yes.
And even then, you were scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Speaker 2 You were getting the guy who had fucked up enough over in his town where he was looking to leave real fast.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he's the one with the big, like, thick glasses where you can see his eyes and his hair sticking up him going, oh boy, I'm sure. Hope I don't have to do surgery today.

Speaker 2 Yahoo Sirius, he's fucking the surgeon.

Speaker 2 Tommy! Yeah, you mix Yahoo Siri with Goofy, and that's the ship's surgeon. Yeah,

Speaker 2 I just wanted to see what Papo looked like in its natural state! All right, get ready for the keel, Holly.

Speaker 2 Well, mostly, surgeons were there to set bones and treat burns, dislocations, concussions, gunshot wounds, gangrene, or any other physical malady that might befall a man on a 17th century ship.

Speaker 2 A broken heart.

Speaker 2 Really, though, the primary requirement for being a ship surgeon was not knowledge, but stamina, because they had to be strong enough to hold down a conscious, screaming man while amputating a limb without anesthetic.

Speaker 2 And the waves! Yes!

Speaker 2 Can't you just borrow a soldier for that shit? Nah, you got to do it yourself.

Speaker 2 Well, concerning the treatment of disease, though, the ship's surgeon was also equipped with an apothecary's chest.

Speaker 2 And after the surgeon used every treatment he could think of to treat the ailing upper merchant, Pelsart miraculously recovered.

Speaker 2 Now, once Upper Merchant Pelsart was back on his feet, Euronymus and Captain Jakobs resumed planning a violent mutiny, but decided that the small crew they'd gathered wasn't enough.

Speaker 2 So they put together a convoluted plan to turn all the ship's crew members against Pelsart by using the object of his affection, Kracia Jansdochter.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it is very interesting they decided to play some weird esoteric political game instead of just killing him.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because I also love the scene that they set by how like it really was this like long night and they were kind of like pretty certain that he was gonna be dead you know and then all of a sudden they looked up and they saw him standing at the railing yeah like and he was like

Speaker 2 sucking in air like literally like i'm not dead yet i'm gonna get this to jakarta if it kills me or not it's crazy because like we all know that pelsart's a bitch But like these guys are like scared to kill him somehow so much that even when he gets better, they attack the woman.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 Now, Pelsart and Cracia weren't together like Captain Jakobs and Cracia's servant were, but Palsart did have enough affection towards his high-born crush where an attack on her might provoke an overreaction in Pelsart.

Speaker 2 So an assault was planned where the attackers would be disguised. It was hoped that Pelsart would punish every member of the crew.
I don't know who did it, so you're all getting a bit of this.

Speaker 2 Because it seems to be common way amongst captains and upper merchants. Yeah, that would sow discord, and it would make it far easier when Captain Jakob stood up and said, this is a bunch of bullshit.

Speaker 2 Let's kill Pelsart and become pirates. And so, in the middle of the night, a team of eight men, led by the boat swain, invaded Cracia's cabin.

Speaker 2 And bizarrely, in a move that almost sounds like a prank if it wasn't so fucking aggressive, they smeared Cracia's face and genitals with tar and feces in an attack that lasted seconds.

Speaker 2 All right, so what should we do here? There's the Plingwarit. I think what we do is we take her down.
We'll cut off her head. We'll cut off her face.
And show the whole world her stupid little skull.

Speaker 2 Yeah! What I say we do, we can lift her up. We could we could chuck up her arms.

Speaker 2 We could cut off her feet. We could play with her titties on her.
We could

Speaker 2 do all sorts of crazy stuff with it. And that's what'll get him.
Yeah. Can I put doo-doo on her?

Speaker 2 My God.

Speaker 2 Party Fred?

Speaker 2 That's the best idea I've heard all night.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 2 That's amazing. wow yeah doo-doo yeah our weapon of choice of course

Speaker 2 word of the attack spread quickly but it seems like upper merchant pelsart was either again reluctant to mete out punishment or he was one step ahead of the mutineers see even after craziest said she recognized the boat swain as one of her attackers i know who did it pelsart took no action it's because he knew yeah as soon as she said who it was he was like oh fuck yeah yeah

Speaker 2 Oh, no, this has gotten real out of hand already, hasn't it? Yeah, that's like the one dude he's supposed to trust.

Speaker 2 Yeah, one of them. He's the guy that's in charge of disciplining everybody else.
If the boatswain's involved, you're fucked.

Speaker 2 Shrewdly, it seems like Pelsart saw through the mutineers' plot and was simply waiting until the Batavia reached Java before he made his move.

Speaker 2 Or at least, that's what Euronymus and Captain Jakobs believed.

Speaker 2 So they decided, since they're already fucked, to take a more direct mute to mutiny before they reach Java, because if they reach Java, they would likely both be tried and executed.

Speaker 2 The next plan was far more straightforward than the first. Basically, it's fucking grab Pelsar while he's asleep and toss him over the boat.
Yeah, like this is a plan. You should have just done that!

Speaker 2 Just not to go!

Speaker 2 Yeah, you grab him, throw him off the boat. That's it.

Speaker 2 Meanwhile, the rest of the mutineers would grab weapons and nail the hatches of the Orlop deck shut so the soldiers not involved in the mutiny couldn't interfere.

Speaker 2 But just as the plan was about to go into effect, the ship entered a wind current called the Roaring 40s.

Speaker 2 And no one aboard the Batavia had any idea just how incredibly dangerous this part of the sea could be. It seems that the wind's picking up.

Speaker 2 Why was it called the Roaring 40s? Because of the latitude? Yep, yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Good job.

Speaker 2 Way to go.

Speaker 2 I know, maps.

Speaker 2 Because remember, the whole thing with the very special, highly proprietary Dutch way of getting to the to Jakarta and the Indies was that they are to go towards Australia and make a left.

Speaker 2 Because if not, you ain't gonna make it. Mm-hmm.
Now, the Roaring 40s were part of a relatively new route to the Indies discovered by the Dutch.

Speaker 2 Partly, the Roaring 40s were a boon because it avoided lanes patrolled by the Portuguese and any subsequent sea battle that might spring from such an encounter.

Speaker 2 The Roaring 40s also cut 2,000 miles off the journey to Java, but only if you turned north before you hit the western coast of Australia. Left if you're going west.
Yeah, I mean, if you

Speaker 2 really the ship from like the trail from the Netherlands to Indonesia to Java, the island of Java where they're going, it was like three lefts. Yep.
You know, it's like you, you left at Great Britain.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you left at Great Britain. Left at Cape Town.
Yeah, left at Africa. Left.
Middle of the ocean. Yeah.
You're at Jakarta. It is wild how like close did we get to Brazil.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 No, no, they're just fucking dink, dink, dink. And that's it.
Well, if the ship missed the turn, a low-lying chain of 122 coral reefs and barren islands lay directly in their path.

Speaker 2 This chain, called Hauptmann's Abrolos. Sure.
Yeah. Was discovered by a Dutch upper merchant named Hauptmann, who'd sketched them from apar.

Speaker 2 I always want to call it like Hitman's Abrilos. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It should be like Hautman's grand fuck-up.

Speaker 2 It's him being like, no, I've created an incredible route. That's what I've done.
And they're like, no, it's just him standing on a barren reef, drawing pictures of it. Well, I mean, he'd say.

Speaker 2 Remember this place.

Speaker 2 He'd sketched them from afar and noted their location on the navigational chart. Because there really wasn't much in the sea that could rip a ship apart like a coral reef.

Speaker 2 But Hauptmann had only discovered the chain a few years before the Batavia set sail. Remember, information travels very slowly.

Speaker 2 So, this very important information about what was in your path if you missed the turn to the Indies, this had not yet made it into the VOC's latest navigational charts.

Speaker 2 As a result, the Batavia had no idea that these incredibly dangerous reefs existed. Now, the Roaring 40s were the home stretch for VOC ships headed to Java.

Speaker 2 By the time the Batavia reached this point, the turn left up north, they'd been at sea for seven months and had only 2,000 more miles to go in their 15,000-mile journey.

Speaker 2 But perhaps because Captain Jacobs was wrapped up in a mutiny plot and the possibility of execution if it failed, not to mention a new girlfriend. She's my fun new girlfriend.

Speaker 2 And we talk about all sorts of things about our favorite colors. We talk about what we'd name our dogs when we get them.

Speaker 2 All right, well, let's just. Oh, please, I've got something cute on for you.
Honestly, I do prefer it when you're silent. Do you have my tennis? Yes, I do.

Speaker 2 they're like two seagulls with no feathers

Speaker 2 well captain jakobs missed the turn north that's the thing he also was partying on the boat when he was sick when pelsart was sick they were all acting like he was going to die anyway so they were all like partying and hanging out they just blew right past him yeah we know jakobs loves getting hammered he does yeah no he really does and he soon found himself arriving at the reefs of houtman's abrolos in the dead of night.

Speaker 2 A little after 3 a.m. on June 4th, the ship's lookout saw white water and a mass of spray, surefire signs of a reef.

Speaker 2 He called out his sightings to Captain Jakobs, but Jakobs brushed him off, saying that the white spray was just moonbeams dancing on the waves. Yeah, you're full of shit, buddy, all right?

Speaker 2 Fuck you, man. I'm trying to watch Great British Bacon Show with my girlfriend.

Speaker 2 Doing this on this.

Speaker 2 They only got 15 minutes left. Yeah, I know.
I know.

Speaker 2 When we find out how emotional they are after winning the best bakery. Their heart attack sucks.

Speaker 2 Within moments, though, Captain Jakobs discovered just how wrong he was when the Batavia slammed into the reef at full speed.

Speaker 2 Immediately, the ship became impaled on an outcropping 15 feet below the surface, which tore the rudder away.

Speaker 2 Seconds later, the ship's bow hit the body of the massive reef itself, which threw everyone on the deck against the railings of the ship.

Speaker 2 Being the middle of the night, most people were in bed and were jolted out of sleep when they were thrown forward by the force of the impact.

Speaker 2 Upon waking, the first thing they heard was the coral gouging its way into the ship's first hull, which cracked with the sound of a forest falling.

Speaker 2 Now, Upper Merchant Pelsart awoke with everyone else and found his ship in total chaos. It was a pitch black night, and passengers and crew alike were panicking on the deck.

Speaker 2 Immediately, Pelsart ran to Captain Jakobs and shouted, What have you done? That through your reckless carelessness you have run this noose around our necks!

Speaker 2 Undeterred by Pelsart's reproach, Captain Jakobs shouted orders to pull down the Batavia's 8,900 square foot sails, because the continued wind was pinning the ship further into the reef like a man pulling a knife deeper into his own stomach.

Speaker 2 For the time being, however, there were no serious leaks, because ships like the Batavia were built built with double hulls to keep something like a reef from being immediately fatal.

Speaker 2 So at this point, there's still a chance. Yeah, you're like, we can maybe do this because remember, they already had landed on a bank once and got off of it.
So they're like, this can happen.

Speaker 2 Maybe we could figure out. But the main issue is they have no idea where the fuck they are.
Yes, they have no idea where they are because hitting a reef meant they were reasonably close to a shore.

Speaker 2 But the Batavia was not supposed to be close to any shore prior to reaching the island of Java. So they have no fucking clue where in the ocean they actually are.
They didn't hang that loosey.

Speaker 2 No, they didn't, man. And at that point, like, Australia wasn't even really on maps.
Like, it was just called, like, Australis. Like, like, no man's land of Australis.

Speaker 2 Like, basically, don't go past this point. There's nothing there.
And then when they do go there, sometimes they get killed by the people that live there. Yes.

Speaker 2 Now, once the sun came up a few hours later, Upper Merchant Pelsar called for a sounding league to test the depths of the water around them and to see how badly they were fucked.

Speaker 2 If they crashed at low tide, the rising waters, once the tide came in, would lift the ship off the reef enough to make repairs and limp to Java.

Speaker 2 If they'd crashed in high tide, though, they were fucked. And sure enough, at 6 a.m., the tide slowly began to fall.

Speaker 2 As the water around the ship lowered, the passengers and crew saw the jagged tips of the reef emerging from the waves.

Speaker 2 Before long, the Batavia was surrounded on three sides by coral, and the ocean's waves violently bumped the ship against its tool of of demise making walking or standing on the deck all but impossible it has to be so surreal to be stuck like that when there's thousands of miles of water around you in all places when you're looking and then all of a sudden it all flowed slides away because there's like just kind of these little islands kind of around them soaring well they can't really at this point they can't see any of them yeah

Speaker 2 Now, it was clear when the tide fell that the ship wouldn't be able to support its 15-ton mainmast once the water dropped dropped to a certain level.

Speaker 2 Sure enough, when the water receded, the mainmast began grinding itself through the bottom of the ship.

Speaker 2 So, in a last-ditch attempt at saving the Batavia, Captain Jakobs ordered his men to cut down the mainmast, but he did not give them instructions on how to do it safely.

Speaker 2 Because you can save the mainmast. You can actually take it.
That's what they do. You can literally chop it off, and then if you fall it off correctly, these are things you learn that are crazy.

Speaker 2 They can save it and reattach it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But they couldn't. No.
When the mainmast fell, it crushed gear and railings before becoming completely entangled on the deck. It fell forward instead of felling the way it was supposed to fall.

Speaker 2 Not to mention all the coral that damaged. Yeah.
And that to me is

Speaker 2 the most where's Nemo in this?

Speaker 2 And with that, the Batavia was dead in the water. And the only course the passengers and crew had was to flee on the ship's two lifeboats and hope there was land nearby.

Speaker 2 But before loading people onto the boats, Upper Merchant Pelsart got as high as he could and he used his spyglass to spot some islands about six miles away.

Speaker 2 He sent a crew out through the dangerous maze of reefs, a maze that could sink a rowboat as easily as the ship.

Speaker 2 And two hours later, they returned with news that all passengers and crew could reach the island safely.

Speaker 2 Now, Upper Merchant Pelsart's first duty as a VOC representative was to his company and the property on board the Batavia, especially the 500-pound chest full of treasure.

Speaker 2 Imagine them glowing and beating like giant evil hearts. Like that's all he can think about, is that the bottom of the

Speaker 2 whole ship has his whole life in it. But in a rare moment of humanity for a VOC company man.
This is where he had a heart.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Pelsart put the people ahead of the loot and ordered that they be taken to land first. This is, of course, a temporary change.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 But while this is admirable, Pelsart probably should have assigned a few of his men to rescue supplies at the same time, because at 10 a.m., the hull burst.

Speaker 2 The cargo holds were flooded and the majority of the supplies they could have used to survive were lost well definitely the first layer which y was in his journals are really interesting because he really he started writing the journals right after the shipwreck because what he had to do was create a chain of events and a timeline for his bosses back home for every single thing that happened because that's the only way he was going to get out of it and the way he was talking about it is interesting because even in the that's kind of why i got to like him almost because i'm reading his journals.

Speaker 2 And it's the way he's talking about the fact that, like, he rushed to get the people off. Pelsard.
Yes. He rushed to get all the people off.

Speaker 2 And he knew, he did know that the supplies were going to be fucked. But he chose human life.
But then it's like, well, what's really the point? If you're going to starve to death anyway. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then the whole thing where he like loaded the whole boat full of rats before the

Speaker 2 rats. I like that.
I love them. Just one big boat filled with rats being like,

Speaker 2 Now the bursting of the hull made the evacuation of the ship a little more urgent, but the Batavia's crew did not subscribe to the women and children first principle. Good.
Once

Speaker 2 once shit got real, the sailors and soldiers pushed their way past the more vulnerable passengers and made the women and children wait for the second shuttle to the islands.

Speaker 2 Now, incredibly, no one had died when the ship crashed or in the the chaos that followed, but when the hull burst, about a dozen men panicked and jumped into the sea, where they quickly drowned.

Speaker 2 I'm an anonymous man. No one will remember me.

Speaker 2 No one once at sea and then jumped up.

Speaker 2 It happens sometimes.

Speaker 2 In a moment of panic, you just everything that you've done in your life up until that point.

Speaker 2 point means jack shit exactly because you because you just panic and make the wrong decision well these dozen men were the first of well over a hundred people set to die on the islands of Hautman's Abrolos.

Speaker 2 And you might even say that considering the fresh hell Georgus Corneles was about to create, the men who drowned were the lucky ones.

Speaker 2 Now, the nearest landmass was a mushroom-shaped island that was only 525 feet across from one end to the other.

Speaker 2 By that afternoon, 180 survivors were dumped there on land that was hard, flat, and sterile with no food or water and nothing to use as shelter. And I truly do mean it's just flat.

Speaker 2 It is a piece of dirt. Just sticking out of the ocean.
Yeah. Hard, flat, sterile, like Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Speaker 2 Eddie.

Speaker 2 Whoa! Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
That's what I'm talking about. All right.

Speaker 2 Nothing new.

Speaker 2 She actually has a fairly large bosom. Does she? I never looked at it because I hate her so much.
Yeah. I always check them out.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And even on men. You might be thinking of Lauren Boebert.
Lauren Bobert, though, she has my heart. No, does she? She's the real firecracker.
Yeah. She just needs somebody to treat her right.

Speaker 2 Is it because she got finger blasted in Betelgeuse?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 The musical approachable politician. Children around

Speaker 2 with the juice in Betelgeuse.

Speaker 2 She wasn't wrong.

Speaker 2 Now, for reference as to... I wish I could be knuckle deep in a House of Representatives.

Speaker 2 You know, I wish I could.

Speaker 2 Now, for reference as to how small this island was and how many people were on it, take a football field where a mid-sized marching band is in the middle of a routine.

Speaker 2 Then, suddenly, for whatever reason, transport that field with the band still on it to the middle of the ocean.

Speaker 2 Add a couple of end zones, remove all the grass, shape the field into a mushroom, and you get some idea of the situation. It was that too far to go.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you got some idea of the situation in which the survivors of the Batavia found themselves immediately after the shipwreck. Yeah, but we're in Australia, though, so it could be a footy field.

Speaker 2 Yes, that's right.

Speaker 2 It is a circle, so it kind of works. Yeah, that's nice.
Yeah, well, I'll don't really know the dimensions of that, but that's cool. Now, fuck.

Speaker 2 Now, fuck. Now you've made me into an idiot.
Thank you. I just went, when we went to Australia, I went to a footy field.
I know you're trying to absorb

Speaker 2 gross culture.

Speaker 2 Well, the only supplies they've been able to save were 150 pints of drinking water and a dozen barrels of hardtack.

Speaker 2 But that that had been against the orders of Upper Merchant Pelsart, who quickly seemed to be settling back into his role as a VOC company man.

Speaker 2 He had insisted that his men save a chest of valuable trading goods, that silver that was worth $7.8 million.

Speaker 2 Pelsart made sure they got that off the ship. Oh, that's his fucking job.
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
And he had ordered Captain Jakobs to immediately start shuttling 12 chests to the islands.

Speaker 2 Jakobs, however, took the food and water instead, with a plan to institute rationing immediately. But also, he had a little plan in the back of his head.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 But isn't the captain supposed to be the last one on the ship? Not this time. Not in a VOC ship.
I believe if it's going down, but his job is to get that stuff.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and I guess it wasn't necessarily going down yet. It was like perched like Noah's Ark.
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 Now, at this point, there were still 120 men on the Batavia, and some of the sailors had decided to break into storage. For the alcohol.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 See, most of the seamen hadn't had a proper drink for the entire ship, and on empty stomachs, they became very drunk very quickly.

Speaker 2 Fueled with alcohol, the men on the Batavia began looting for all the good it would do them on the open sea. Dude, it's crazy, right? Humans are weird.
Humans are crazy.

Speaker 2 We covered the USS Indianapolis. It's that thing of like, because what good would it do? Like, you're going to sit in an island filled with jewels and all this shit.
Like, it doesn't matter. Yeah.

Speaker 2 One group smashed open the VOC chest, which caused thousands of gilders to burst onto the deck. So many gilders that the men began playfully throwing handfuls of the treasure at one another.

Speaker 2 I mean, that is fun. It's really fun.
No,

Speaker 2 it's a fun, you know, it's a very fun image. It's a fun, nihilistic afternoon.
Yeah. Many fights.

Speaker 2 One man, however, went for the knives and built a small arsenal hidden about his person, perhaps knowing that if things went south on the islands as they were likely to do, weapons would be far more valuable than gold.

Speaker 2 The Danny Trejo of the group. Oh, he's correct.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Now, by the next evening, day two, the priority had become the movement of the majority of the survivors to a bigger island, but not for the good of the survivors at large.

Speaker 2 See, the crew had discovered a womb-shaped island about a thousand feet across, just a mile from the Batavia. What's a womb-shaped?

Speaker 2 In China? No, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 No, like a womb. Like a womb-ish-shaped.
Like a woman's womb-ish-shaped. Womb?

Speaker 2 I thought a womb was just like a circle. It's like a uterus? It's like a oval-ish.
You're talking about a uterus? I'm talking about a womb.

Speaker 2 All these guys that are on this womb-shaped island. There's going to be, you know, too many wombmates.
That's what I'm saying. There's gonna be no womb for them to hang out.

Speaker 2 It's pear-shaped.

Speaker 2 Why didn't you say pear-shaped? Because that was the descriptor that the people on the Batavia used. Oh, yeah.
They didn't know what a fucking pear was.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they never saw a pear, but they have torn the womb out of a woman.

Speaker 2 That is true. That is true.
They do have that.

Speaker 2 Three white men. Yeah.

Speaker 2 My last three wives' wombs fell out of their butts. Yeah, and I'll never forget it.
Some of my favorite days. Well, this womb-shaped island was a barren strip of.

Speaker 2 Pear-shaped, for those of you that don't know what that is. Yeah.

Speaker 2 With a few. It was a barren strip of coral rubble with no shelter or fresh water.
Soon, the survivors would come to know this island as Batavia's graveyard.

Speaker 2 But to save himself and those of his class, Palsart sent 180 survivors to Batavia's graveyard by boat, while he and 40 of the better seamen and favored passengers stayed on the mushroom-shaped island with most of the food and water.

Speaker 2 The Batavia, meanwhile, still hadn't gone under, and 70 men remained hanging out on the top deck, still drinking and tacitly following Pelsart's orders to salvage as much company property as possible.

Speaker 2 Now, Pelsart ordered the men on the shipwreck to construct rafts and save themselves the day after the shipwrecked.

Speaker 2 But perhaps because the Batavia promised the only shelter around as long as it stayed together, they refused to leave. Which makes total sense.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because it's actually way more coverage than the island, and we got all the shit in here, and there's beds and stuff and whatever. There's zero coverage in the island.
And they're drunk.

Speaker 2 You get lazy when you're drunk. That's true.
It's easier to sleep on a boat when you're drunk. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, amongst the men who stayed behind on the Batavia, perhaps directing the rescue of company property, was Euronymus Cornelis, who was no doubt trying to figure out how he could turn this disaster to his advantage.

Speaker 2 His day, however, would not come just yet, although it would very soon. Yeah, Euronymus hid on the boat, essentially.
It's like he hid back because he was like, because at first,

Speaker 2 I do feel like it was like he was in a cocoon of evil, where he's sitting there being like, I don't know, because he's very weak. Yeah.
You know, like, this isn't some rugged guy.

Speaker 2 No, he's a pharmacist. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Now, after four days on the islands, trying to find fresh water and coming up empty, Upper Merchant Pelsart decided that it would probably be best if he left on one of the boats to go get help in Java.

Speaker 2 Listen, I'll be right back.

Speaker 2 I promise. Yeah, I'm just going to interview you real quick.

Speaker 2 Someone's got to go. You got to tell me me.
Put

Speaker 2 right here.

Speaker 2 And I'm going to be right back. And we get some smokes.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 But perhaps going off the principle of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer, Pelsart ordered Captain Jakobs to come with him. Because he was certain he was in charge of the mutiny.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Like, that's what Pelsart thought it was Jacobs. Yeah.
Not Euronymus. Yeah, it was both of them.
Yeah. But he did not.
Pelsart assumed that it was Captain Jacobs who was doing it.

Speaker 2 So he was like, you're coming with me, super friendly, like, but then in the journal, he's watching his every move and writing all this stuff, basically building evidence against Jakobs while they're traveling around.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Now, most likely, Jakobs knew at this point that he was utterly fucked because Pelsart had, of course, pegged him as a mutineer.

Speaker 2 But with Jacob's compatriots scattered across islands, shipwrecks, and what have you, he had no choice but to go along.

Speaker 2 So on on June 8th, Pelsart, Captain Jacobs, and 46 other survivors from the Batavia's crew and passenger list loaded up onto one of their two boats for an extended ocean voyage to Java.

Speaker 2 It was their long boat. They had a big one and a small one.
They took the big one. Just keep the graveyard warm for me.

Speaker 2 As for the survivors, they were told that if all went well and the rescue party didn't die on the open sea, Upper Merchant Pelsart would return within a month or two with the full support of the VOC behind him.

Speaker 2 Don't worry,

Speaker 2 company's coming to save you. But there is like a, apparently, there is like a, there's a,

Speaker 2 what's it called? There's a precedent for this. They've had this happen.
This has happened before.

Speaker 2 Not here, but there have been shipwrecks and the VOC and survivors have gotten to where they're supposed to go and the VOC has come and gotten it because the thing is, they got all their stuff.

Speaker 2 So the VIC, the VOCs will come and get their property. Yeah.
Yeah. And it is in their best interest to not kill passengers either.
Yeah, it's the passengers they care about.

Speaker 2 They don't care about the sailors. Yeah, y'all play it cool.
I'll be back in a month. And if I'm not back by then, we're all raping eating each other.
You roll that anyway. So I don't know.

Speaker 2 Well, in all, Pelsart was leaving behind 270 survivors, including his supposed sweetheart, Cracia Jan's doctor.

Speaker 2 He did take two women and some children, but he still left several of both behind to an almost certain death by starvation or dehydration.

Speaker 2 Because the freshwater salvage from from the Batavia was nearly gone by the time he left. No one had any idea when it was going to rain again.

Speaker 2 That water wasn't great to begin with. No.
It's all algae and fucking

Speaker 2 at this point, I think it said that the water was full of worms. Yeah.
Yeah. Which you could eat.
Yeah, you can eat worms. Yeah, you can eat the worms.
That's nice, actually.

Speaker 2 But I could just see Pelsart with the little boy that he might have met somewhere on the thing just like getting, he's like, all right. All right there, little Steve and I.

Speaker 2 You just stay right here and you just have fun.

Speaker 2 Can you do that for me? Can you do that for me, okay? Sandcastle's right.

Speaker 2 All right, I'm right back. All right?

Speaker 2 All right, see ya. Bye-bye.
Have fun. Hold on, one more kiss.

Speaker 2 We'll stay for like five more minutes.

Speaker 2 How have I never kissed a boy before today? How have I let such unknown pleasures go unknown? Ah, truly the rarer fragrances.

Speaker 2 These conditions, however, would not be how the majority of the people on Batavia's graveyard met their doom.

Speaker 2 Rather, many would die at the hands of, quote, several dozen of the worst cutthroats and drunkards who had sailed for Amsterdam. That was how author Mike Dash put it.

Speaker 2 And one man would set it all into motion.

Speaker 2 See, most of the senior VOC officers had lit out on the longboat with Palsart and Jakobs, but someone from the VOC had to be left in charge while they were all gone.

Speaker 2 At this point, Palsart didn't know every person who was involved in planning the mutiny, because in a grave mistake, he chose Euronymus Cornelis as leader in his stead, effectively giving the amoral undermerchant permission to turn the islands into his own dictatorial syphilitic nightmare.

Speaker 2 Cool! And that's where we'll pick back up for part three of the Batavia, where the murders and mayhem will officially begin, disguised as murderous mayhem often is, as law and order.

Speaker 2 Marcus, when do I get my own dictatorial

Speaker 2 nightmare?

Speaker 2 I want one. Henry, here's a secret.
You can have one anytime. Oh, the secret's in me.
But you got to get syphilis first. Oh, okay.
We'll do.

Speaker 2 And the longboat, I want to ask a question about the longboat before we, it's just like a giant, like, there's no like shelter. As far as

Speaker 2 you're out in the elements, I don't know. I actually don't know, but I do believe it might just be a really big rowboat.
Yeah, that's what I, that's what I'm picturing. Yeah, like a Viking longboat.

Speaker 2 Yes, I'm pretty certain. And the rest of the it.
There's definitely no like cabins or anything like that. Yeah, I mean as you read the journal, it does kind of talk about that.

Speaker 2 I'm pretty certain it is just a giant robot, and they just you it gets real boring real fast. Yeah, I could only imagine frightening.

Speaker 2 You know what else I find to be very cool about this whole story is that the Batavia itself crashes into the coral and then you know, inevitably will sink into the coral and then become coral itself.

Speaker 2 Whoa, it's a sad coral of life.

Speaker 2 Actually, they did save a lot of it. And actually, the Batavia is currently in a museum.
I forget where it's oh really it's in Australia. I think it's in a maritime museum in Australia

Speaker 2 of it. So I basically is it the maritime museum in Sydney? No, no

Speaker 2 I almost went and I didn't I would have been mad. Yeah, I think it's somewhere like really obscure and weird.
Yeah, I saw it though, but I looked but they there's a YouTube video.

Speaker 2 You walk through the whole ship. It's cool.
So I'm looking at the map the whole time Marco says thank you for the map Rob

Speaker 2 I'm looking at the map the whole time you're telling the story and so like it looks like the reef is like around Perth, right? Like, close.

Speaker 2 Yes, it is on the western side of Australia. Yeah, on the western side.
So it's not the Great Barrier Reef because that's on the other side. No, it's on the shit fuck Barrier Reef.
Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's on the barren side of Australia. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, there's nothing there but Perth. Well, guys.
And Perthlings. And Perthlings are enough.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Also, I want to give a quick congratulations to Henry and I for not making one semen joke, not one tarred rope. Not one.

Speaker 2 Not one.

Speaker 2 Not one. Yeah.
I've actually been kind of wondering when you guys were going to jump on that. It was too easy.
Yeah. You know what it was? Is that I know.

Speaker 2 I mean, I didn't set you really, really set you up for anything. There weren't like, you know, any obvious ends.
But you just, you know what it is? You were too proud of your use of the word seamen.

Speaker 2 Because I knew what you were doing. I mean, it's.
And I knew you were trying to goad me. I wasn't trying to do anything.
But I knew what you were trying to do.

Speaker 2 It's the word that is used for men at sea. I do believe that seamen in this case is more appropriate than sailors.
Yeah. Yeah.
Because I just feel that the seamen,

Speaker 2 well, they're bunching up. Yeah, and if they would have studied harder, they would have been beaten.
Yeah, it's the cream of the blood. It's the cream of the goddamn blood.

Speaker 2 Check out our patreon.com slash last podcast on the left, and you will see the cream of our blood, which is our podcast. Dallas, baby.
We're coming to Dallas February 22nd.

Speaker 2 That's going to be amazing at the CU Theater. I can't wait to see.
Especially in Grand Prairie, Texas. But yeah, we're going to do that.

Speaker 2 And then we've got a whole other bunch of shows coming down the pipe. We're going to be Nashville, Toronto.
We're doing Detroit. on.
There are going to be some other announcements coming soon.

Speaker 2 We're about to release a bunch of other shows. We cannot wait.
Go to lastpodcastoneft.com to buy those tickets for us. We are good at it.
Come see.

Speaker 2 Yes, and if you watch us on Patreon, you can see the wonderful map that's behind Marcus when you watch the show that you're listening to.

Speaker 2 And you can also follow us on all the socials at TikTok and Instagram. TikTok's still around, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
At LP on the left. And don't forget to go watch all of our wonderful streams over at twitch.tv/slash lpntv and everything vod on our YouTube channel afterwards.
Thank you all so much.

Speaker 2 Thank you. Have satan.
Oh, and hell gain.

Speaker 2 God, all these guys suck. Uh, hail the reef.
You know what? The reef. Hail Joel and Shaw for fucking working overtime on this motherfucker.
They're killing it really hard.

Speaker 2 Yeah, our researchers are really killing it and really helping out on this one. Yeah, so this is unbelievable.
So hail them. Hail them.
Hail them. And make sure.
Turn left.

Speaker 2 Don't miss that left. Turn left.

Speaker 2 Now.

Speaker 2 Now. Now.
Now, now. Now.
Now. Now, it's just moonlight.

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