Batavias Graveyard by Mike Dash

I hit my goal of reading 12 books for the year with this one that was recommended to me by a fellow Hiver @riverflows.

Its called Batavia's Graveyard by author Mike Dash. Actually I'm quite a ways past that goal of 12 books for the year, but I'm way behind in posting my book reviews. I've actually now read 16 books in total. But I'll get to those others at some point in the future. For now I'll tell you about Batavias Graveyard.

It's about a Dutch ship named Batavia that was sailing to the Indies to trade spices and other riches that were popular at the time. Along the way the ship crashes into a reef near Australia and the sailors get stranded on a small, mostly desolate archipelago called Houtman Abrolhos.

Among the stranded sailors was a charismatic and manipulative Apothecary and Heritic by the name of Jeronimus Cornelisz who lead a selection of the crew in a mutiny. What followed was a horrific bloodbath on the islands. The mutineers murdered over 100 men, women and children stranded on the archipelago while waiting to be rescued.

Supplies on the island dwindle, war breaks out between two seperate groups on two of the islands. Connelisz formulates a plan to commandeer the rescue ship that is there to save everyone and then live like outlaw pirates on the open seas.

Do you think that the mutineers succeeded? I guess you'll have to read the book to find out for sure.

It was a very exciting story intertwined with some very interesting history of the Dutch spice trade of the 1600s. It also discussed the monopoly corporations that owned and ran the trade business at that time.

Something else that I found fascinating was the different punishments that existed back then on these ships. For instance Keelhauling is when they throw a sailor into the water tied to a rope and drag him along the bottom of the ships haul. The haul would be lined with barnacles that would cut the sailor potentially to shreds. If a sailor didn't drown in the process or Crack his skull on the keel he might be keelhauled three times or more. Its a bit morbid but definitely a creative punishement. I found it interesting to learn about. I'm not sure what that says about me?

Overall this was a really interesting book that I enjoyed thoroughly. It was similar to The Wager by David Grann which I also liked a lot. This was a great recommendation for my taste in books and I would pass the recommendation on to anyone who likes these sorts of medieval sailing stories of survival and mutiny.

Does this book sound interesting to you? Have you read anything similar? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.