Leendert Hasenbosch

[1] Around the year 1709 his father, a widower, moved himself and his three daughters to Batavia in the Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia) while Leendert stayed in Holland.

On 17 January 1714,[2] Hasenbosch became a soldier of the VOC and boarded the flute-ship Korssloot in Enkhuizen bound for Batavia where he served for about a year.

He began with a tent, a month's worth of water, some seeds, instruments, prayer books, clothing, and writing materials.

[5] A similar punishment was meted out two years later to two boys from the Dutch East India Company ship the Zeewijk, shipwrecked off the west coast of Australia.

Found guilty of sodomy, the boys were marooned on separate islands of the Mangrove Group of Houtman Abrolhos, and left to die.

One of these two water sources allowed some sixty men from HMS Roebuck to survive a shipwreck on Ascension for two months starting in February 1701.

[7] In January 1725, British sailors from the ship James and Mary[8] discovered the castaway's tent and belongings, including the diary in Dutch.

Koolbergen's book also contained the relevant texts in the logs of the two British ships whose crews had found the diary in January 1726.

Port View With Two Flute Ships , copper engraving by Reinier Nooms , late 17th century.
Title page of ' Sodomy punish'd : Being a true and exact relation of what befel to one Leondert Hussenlosch, a Dutch man, who by command of the Dutch fleet, was put on shore on the desolate island of Ascention.' John Loveday, London 1726.