Jeronimus Cornelisz
After the ship was wrecked in the Houtman Abrolhos, a chain of coral islands off the west coast of Australia, on 4 June 1629, Francisco Pelsaert, the expedition's commander, went to get help from the settlements in the Dutch East Indies, returning several months later.
The cause of death was established as syphilis, considered a scandal, and Cornelisz became embroiled in a legal action against the nurse, seeking to prove that his child had contracted the disease from her and not from his wife.
[1] Whether or not Cornelisz actually was acquainted with van der Beeck, he left Haarlem within a few weeks after the painter's trial and the ruin of his own prospects.
Sea voyages in this era were often marked by deaths from shipboard epidemics of infectious and nutritional deficiency disease, scurvy being particularly common.
Cornelisz, whose main motive in signing on such a venture seems to have been to escape his degraded social and economic position, allegedly became friendly with the Batavia's skipper, Ariaen Jacobsz, in the course of the ship's long voyage.
He and Jacobsz supposedly became discontented with the leadership of the commander of the ship, the VOC commodore, Francisco Pelsaert, and according to the book later written by Pelsaert, almost immediately plotted a mutiny – although this would have been an extremely difficult undertaking given it was a major VOC ship with a paid crew and armed soldiers guarding valuables.
As deaths from dehydration began, Pelsaert, Jacobsz, and all the officers left in a sailboat, leaving one smaller row boat behind, and although telling the others they were taking a trip looking for water, they eventually embarked on a month-long voyage to Java.
[citation needed] Cornelisz's rule in the Abrolhos became criminal when he aimed at removing those who the very limited food and water would have to be shared with.
They set up a hilltop stonework defense against the Cornelisz faction, which now faced a forewarned and reinforced group in good health.
Pelsaert's journals were published in 1647 and became highly popular, leading to an inherent fear of the West Australian coast to Dutch sailors.
[3] In the historical work, Batavia's Graveyard, which analyzes the incident based on research in Dutch archives, among other sources, author Mike Dash theorizes that Cornelisz was almost certainly psychopathic and probably suffered from neurosyphillis.
Dash argues that this is connected to heretical ideas that he had picked up during his supposed acquaintance with the controversial painter Johannes van der Beeck.
