She was built in Amsterdam in 1628 as the flagship of one of the three annual fleets of company ships[4] and sailed that year on her maiden voyage for Batavia, capital of the Dutch East Indies.

Her commander, Francisco Pelsaert, sailed to Batavia to get help, leaving in charge senior VOC official Jeronimus Cornelisz, unaware he had been plotting a mutiny prior to the wreck.

Cornelisz tricked about twenty men under soldier Wiebbe Hayes into searching for fresh water on nearby islands, leaving them to die.

Two other mutineers, convicted of comparatively minor crimes, were marooned on mainland Australia, thus becoming the first Europeans to permanently inhabit the Australian continent, although nothing more was heard of them.

Due to its unique place in the history of European contact with Australia, the story of Batavia is sometimes offered as an alternative founding narrative to the landing of the First Fleet in Sydney.

Of the forty-seven or so VOC wrecks which have been located and identified, Batavia is the only early 17th century example from which the remaining hull components have been retrieved, conserved and subject to detailed study.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Dutch were the major ship-builders of northern Europe, innovating both designs (e.g. the Fluyt) and technology (the windmill driven sawmill).

[b][11] Batavia may have been one of two ships specified in the VOC shipbuilding charter of 29 March 1626 – normally it took 18 months to build one of these vessels, so a small delay would fit the dates.

[12] On 29 October 1628, the newly built Batavia, commissioned by the VOC, sailed from Texel in the Netherlands for the Dutch East Indies, to obtain spices.

[15] Also on board was the junior merchant Jeronimus Cornelisz (30), a bankrupt apothecary from Haarlem who was fleeing the Netherlands, in fear of arrest because of his heretical beliefs associated with the painter Johannes van der Beeck.

According to Pelsaert's account, Jacobsz and Cornelisz conceived a plan to take the ship during the voyage, which would allow them to start a new life elsewhere, using the huge supply of trade gold and silver on board.

[16] After leaving the Cape of Good Hope, where they had stopped for supplies, Jacobsz is alleged by Pelsaert to have deliberately steered the ship off course, and away from the rest of the fleet.

This involved sexually assaulting a prominent young female passenger, Lucretia Jans, in order to provoke Pelsaert into disciplining the crew.

[17][18] On 4 June 1629, Batavia struck Morning Reef near Beacon Island, part of the Houtman Abrolhos off the western coast of Australia.

A group consisting of Jacobsz, Pelsaert, senior officers, a few crew members, and some passengers left the wreck site in a nine-metre (30 ft) longboat in search of drinking water.

After an unsuccessful search for water on the mainland, they left the other survivors and headed north in a danger-fraught voyage to the city of Batavia, Dutch East Indies, the ship's namesake, to seek rescue.

In his journal, Pelsaert stated that on 15 June 1629, they sailed through a channel between a reef and the coast, finding an opening around midday at a latitude guessed to be about 23 degrees south where they were able to land, and water was found.

Pelsaert stated that they continued north with the intention of finding the "river of Jacob Remmessens", identified first in 1622, but owing to the wind were unable to land.

After their arrival in Batavia, the boatswain, Jan Evertsz, was arrested and executed for negligence and "outrageous behavior" before the loss of the ship (he was suspected to have been involved).

[23] Governor-General Jan Pieterszoon Coen immediately gave Pelsaert command of Sardam to rescue the other survivors, as well as to attempt to salvage riches from Batavia's wreck.

Though neither sailor nor soldier, Cornelisz was elected to be in charge of the survivors due to his senior rank in the Dutch East India Company.

He then moved a group of soldiers, led by Wiebbe Hayes, to nearby West Wallabi Island (located roughly 8.7 kilometres or 5.4 miles to the northwest), under the pretense of having them search for water.

[5] Although Cornelisz had left the soldiers, led by Hayes, to die, they had in fact found good sources of water and food on West Wallabi Island.

[34] Loos and a cabin boy, Jan Pelgrom de Bye, who were considered only minor offenders, were marooned on mainland Australia, and were never heard of again.

[35] Surveying the north-west coast of the Abrolhos Islands for the British Admiralty in April 1840, Captain John Lort Stokes reported that "the beams of a large vessel were discovered", assumed to be Zeewijk, "on the south west point of an island", reminding them that since Zeewijk's crew "reported having seen a wreck of a ship on this part, there is little doubt that the remains were those of the Batavia".

[34] In the 1950s, historian Henrietta Drake-Brockman argued, from extensive archival research, that the Batavia wreck must lie in the Wallabi group of islands.

[45] Batavia's cargo also included special items being carried by Pelsaert for sale to the Mughal Court in India where he had intended to travel on to.

There were four jewel bags, stated to be worth about 60,000 guilders, and an early-fourth-century Roman cameo, as well as numerous other items either now displayed in Fremantle and Geraldton, Western Australia, or recovered by Pelsaert.

[52] The voyage, shipwreck and subsequent events are the subject of David Mark's 2022 novel Anatomy of a Heretic as well as Jess Kidd's 2022 novel The Night Ship.

The Dutch music ensemble Flairck processed the unfortunate voyage of the Batavia on their 1996 album De Gouden Eeuw and on a subsequent tour with stage performances.