Everyone Survived the Shipwreck. Then It Got Worse. | 1629

On 4 June 1629, the flagship of the Dutch East India Company struck a coral reef off the coast of Western Australia in the dark. Around two hundred people got ashore alive. Four months later, roughly a hundred and twenty-five of them had been murdered — not by the sea, and not by thirst, but by each other. This is the story of the Batavia. It is usually told as a shipwreck. It isn't one. It is the story of what happens to a group of ordinary people when the water runs short, the officers sail away, and a confident man with no rank explains that the rules have been suspended. And it is the story of the person who stopped it: a common soldier from Friesland named Wiebbe Hayes, who found water, told the truth, and built a wall out of rocks. CHAPTERS 0:00 The sea was not the danger 1:53 Chapter One — A Ship Too New to Sink 6:57 Chapter Two — The Reef in the Dark 10:16 Chapter Three — The Boat That Left 12:08 Chapter Four — The Bookkeeper 17:57 Chapter Five — The Soldier Nobody Wrote Down 27:18 Next episode A NOTE ON THE SOURCES The engravings in this episode come from Ongeluckige Voyagie, published in 1647 — eighteen years after the events, and the earliest illustrated account of them. Photographs of the wreck site, the excavated timbers and Wiebbe Hayes's stone fort are of the real locations. The sources disagree on how many people sailed, how many drowned and how many were killed; where they disagree, the narration says so rather than picking the number that sounds best. THE WITNESS SEAT History from the inside. One person, one day, one moment the world remembers. New episode every week. #history #documentary #batavia