Batavia's Graveyard

In 1628 a fleet of ships owned by the Dutch East India Company set sail for Java. Among their number was the Batavia, a large new ship laden with gold, silver and gems. Ostensibly she was under the command of an experienced merchant named Francisco Pelsaert; she also carried an under-merchant, the untried, untested Jeronimus Cornelisz. Unfortunately this man was not only a disgraced bankrupt - he was a heretic and troublemaker. Cornelisz was already fermenting mutiny within a group of discontented sailors when disaster struck the Batavia. In the early hours of June 4 - after 211 days at sea - the ship impaled itself on a barely submerged coral reef at the edge of an unexplored archipelago off the west coast of Australia. Amidst appalling storms, over 200 survivors were transferred to the relative safety of the islands and there they remained, while Pelsaert took the only boat and headed for Java. Left alone, with little chance of rescue, dwindling food sources and almost no water supplies, the survivors were in chaos. It was a situation that Cornelisz was happy to take advantage of and, with the help of an elite group of loyal supporters, he seized control. So began a killing spree that led to the bloody murder of most of the Batavia survivors. Painstakingly researched and told in compelling detail, this is the true story of what happened. Mike Dash is convinced that, aside from being a heretic and a mutineer, Cornelisz was also a psychopath. Away from the moral and legal constraints of an organized society he allowed his bloodlust to take control. This is a truly horrifying and gripping account that grabs the reader's attention from the very first sentence and keeps it right to the end. (Kirkus UK)