Reading Batavia by Peter FitzSimons: Makes Lord Of The Flies seem tame

With a pro­longed peri­od of bed-rest and bore­dom forced upon me, I’ve been read­ing a lot more. This is one of the pos­i­tive con­se­quences of my sit­u­a­tion: more time for intro­vert­ed activ­i­ties like read­ing. In my youth I couldn’t read enough books. I always had my nose in a book and my imag­i­na­tion on some far-off exot­ic adven­ture. As an adult I’ve tend­ed towards non­fic­tion, and par­tic­u­lar­ly his­to­ry, on the rare occa­sion I do get time to read.

I am for­tu­nate enough to be present­ly enjoy­ing all of these things con­cur­rent­ly; I have passed the last few rainy Bal­larat days curled up in bed with Batavia, by Peter FitzSi­mons. Hav­ing thor­ough­ly enjoyed FitzSi­mons’ Burke and Wills, of which I was lucky enough to have a hard­cov­er copy signed by him when I met him at a func­tion in Bal­larat; fol­low­ing his jour­nal­ism in the Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald; inter­act­ing with him occa­sion­al­ly on Twit­ter; and being keen­ly sup­port­ive of the Aus­tralian Repub­li­can Move­ment, which Peter chairs, I guess you could say I’m a big fan of his work.

So stand­ing in Collins Book­shop in Bal­larat, I was faced with the choice of either Batavia or Eure­ka, the his­to­ry of the Eure­ka Stock­ade rebel­lion dur­ing the 19^th-Cen­tu­ry Vic­to­ri­an gold rush, which held some inter­est for me liv­ing here in Bal­larat where it all hap­pened. In the end though, Batavia’s promise of a bloody tale of his­tor­i­cal tragedy, mur­der, treach­ery, mutiny and dra­ma on the high seas, near­ly four cen­turies ago, won me over. And boy was I not let down!

Batavia is the amaz­ing true sto­ry of a trea­­sure-laden flag­ship named Batavia of a fleet owned by the Dutch East Indies Com­pa­ny (Vereenigde Oost­indis­che Com­pag­nie or VOC). The Batavia and its accom­pa­ny­ing ships embarked on a nine month jour­ney to Batavia (known today as Jakar­ta, in Indone­sia) in 1628–29, on a mis­sion to trade in the lucra­tive exot­ic spices that shaped that era of explo­ration and ulti­mate­ly changed the world. Tragedy befalls the ship and its crew before they reach their port of des­ti­na­tion, and may­hem quick­ly ensues amongst a crew of des­per­ate mis­fits and mal­con­tents. The events unfold dur­ing a fas­ci­nat­ing his­tor­i­cal peri­od, full of sea­far­ing adven­tur­ers, pirates, vast empires, colo­nial bru­tal­i­ty, the birth of multi­na­tion­al cor­po­rate greed, you name it…

As I fol­lowed the Batavia’s jour­ney from Ams­ter­dam to the Indi­an Ocean I was equal­ly appalled and enthralled by the char­ac­ters that FitzSi­mons por­trays very skil­ful­ly, remain­ing as his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate as pos­si­ble whilst allow­ing him­self the req­ui­site artis­tic license to bring the char­ac­ters to life after 400 years. One must remem­ber these peo­ple — pro­tag­o­nists, antag­o­nists, major and minor char­ac­ters alike — real­ly exist­ed. The epoch itself was one of bru­tal and harsh real­i­ty, a world of strict social struc­tures where dis­obe­di­ence could result in death. Where for­get­ting one’s sta­tion and rank was unthink­able and seri­ous­ly pun­ished. This makes the reck­less actions tak­en by the crew that much more incred­u­lous, but it happened!

With­out spoil­ing the sto­ry for those like me who until read­ing this book had nev­er heard it before, it’s actu­al­ly quite dif­fi­cult to read. The bru­tal­i­ty, the dis­re­gard not only for human life but all shreds of decen­cy, is stark. In the first chap­ters I was a bit uneasy about the way FitzSi­mons sets up the cen­tral char­ac­ters, feel­ing per­haps he was being unfair to paint his­tor­i­cal fig­ures — peo­ple who actu­al­ly exist­ed, who had moth­ers — as evil incar­nate; by the end of the book I was in total agree­ment and just stag­gered at the emo­tion­al toll I endured read­ing about events four cen­turies ago.

In the pref­ace FitzSi­mons dis­cuss­es the strug­gle of breath­ing life into a 400-year-old sto­ry and humbly hopes he is up to the task. I couldn’t put it down. I was total­ly trans­port­ed back in time and could almost smell the salt air. A won­der­ful­ly writ­ten and researched book, appro­pri­ate­ly embell­ished for readability’s sake with­out sac­ri­fic­ing his­tor­i­cal accu­ra­cy, this is the best work of FitzSi­mons I’ve ever read.

I also found the details of the fate­ful island where the tragedy unfurled inter­est­ing from a per­son­al point of view, as I have sailed those waters myself and gazed with the same won­der and awe at the for­bid­ding coast­line of West­ern Aus­tralia, or as the Dutch of the time called it, het Zuid­land, the South­land. I also have sea­far­ing ances­tors from Ger­ald­ton, and in fact one of the small lit­tle islands that form part of the Abrol­hos Islands chain is named Aker­strom Island, and I intend to find out if this island is named for a rela­tion of my great-grand­­fa­ther, Erik Albun Åkerstrom.