Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating Historical Account
Review:
Want to read about what happens when a group of people find themselves stranded on a desert atoll away from civilization, away from any known law and at the mercy of a psychopath and his band of killers? That's what happened to the unfortunate survivors of the shipwrecked Dutch trading vessel Batavia in 1629. But this is no grisly blood-n-guts accounting. Nothing that would appall the squeamish. Instead, author Mike Dash gives a fascinating insight as to the behavior of people who are suddenly thrust into a desperate life-and-death situation. Interesting that psychopathic leader Jeronimus Cornelisz begins with a twisted rationale for initiating the slaughter of innocent survivors. On a desert atoll with limited provisions, the deaths are meant to cull the users of these provisions. However, as time passes the killings continue out of boredom and bloodlust. Just an amazing account of survival, courage and rescue. Batavia's Graveyard is an absolutely gripping read.
Rating:
Summary: A Truly Grisly Story, Told with Skill
Review: Batavia's Graveyard (The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History's Bloodiest Mutiny) by Mike Dash is a fascinating book of history that is hard to read at times and even harder to turn away from. I am not sure if the subtitle is true concerning this being the bloodiest mutiny ever but I would not want to learn about one more bloody. The author does a good job of presenting the details of the actual mutiny in an exciting and readable manner, and even a better job of giving an historical context for the events without swamping the tale. It illuminates as it reaches into darkness. The story of the ship Batavia in 1628 and the psychotically cruel and mad plans of Jeronimus Corneliszoon will shock even jaded twenty-first century readers. This book is not for the faint at heart but will be gripping for readers not afraid to look at history's darker moments.
Rating:
Summary: True life horror story, well told
Review: Batavia's Graveyard is both a page turner and an excellent history book. There's so much here: 17th century European life, medicines of the time, religious movements, the machinations of the rich and powerful, and the vagaries of sea travel.Indeed much of the horror in this tale comes from the depiction of life aboard ship. The cramped living quarters, the poor quality of food and the horrendous sanitary conditions were suffered by all, but particulary the common seamen and soldiers. Dash relates all the detail while skillfully setting readers up for the mutiny and shipwreck and the mad rule of the leading mutineer. Jeronimous is clearly a pyschopath, one capable of rallying men to do his evil bidding. Those not taken in by him faced a near certain death. But as if a Disney movie there are the good guys, a band of "loyalists" who escape to another island to fight on. Batavia's Graveyard reads like a novel while teaching history and raising questions about the human condition.
My only quarrel is that while Dash does an admirable job of discussing the ringleader, he fails to address why so many were so willing to follow him and butcher their fellow man.
Rating: 
Summary: Gruesome history - superb research.
Review: Dash does a magnificent job in taking us into detailed (and very interesting) 17th century life on the high seas. The massacre that follows the Batavia's wrecking makes for some gruesome reading - all too much so because it is a true story. Excellent and highly recommended read.
Rating: 
Summary: A thorough discourse of morbid events
Review: I bought this book based on the other reviews of it on Amazon, but was somewhat disappointed. This is a true story of shipwreck, deceit, mutiny, murder and rape centered on a 17th-century Dutch merchant vessel off the western coast of Australia. The reader is treated to a tremendous volume of background information about the main players (including their lives before and after the voyage), the ships, the spice trade, Dutch colonies in Indonesia, and anything else that may bear on the subject. Some background facts are related two or three times during the course of the book. This thoroughness makes the book seem longer than it's 332 pages of text. If this is not enough, the text is supplemented by an additional 150 pages of notes, bibliography, acknowledgments and abbreviations. I learned a lot about Dutch colonization of Indonesia, the 17th century spice trade and the early exploration of western Australia by Europeans. If you are a student of these topics or of seafaring in general, then you may enjoy this book. For the general reader who is looking for a window into human nature through a notorious true story, it's a bit much.
Rating:
Summary: Bloody Batavia
Review: I recommend this to those with a yen for adventure, a mind to history accurately portrayed, and the stomach to digest said history. Cruelty is not a novel trait, it carries a long and storied history. Here, within these pages, is detailed a history of such enormous cruelty that it shocks deeply, even in this 21st century wherein lies cruelty and unfairness of such prevalence as to dull many to its varieties and vagaries. In autumn of 1628, the Dutch East India's flagship, the Batavia, loaded with gold, jewels and gems, plus 300 crewmen and passengers, foundered upon her maiden voyage on a reef off the west coast of Australia. The captain, Francisco Pelsaert, abandoned on the island the passengers and his crewmen, then departed with a his skipper to rally help almost 2,000 miles hence on the isle of Java. Second man, Jeronimus Cornelisz, was charged with those left behind. A dangerous fanatic and a deluded religionist, Cornelisz wielded a brutal, deranged control which included the murder of anyone who appeared a threat to his rule or to his religion, or to the limited resources all were forced to share, and then later on, for no reason other than for blood sport. The scenes in which entire families are butchered, men, women, and children, are certainly chilling, but no less so than the scenes detailing what happened once help arrived, and those responsible were brought to trial. (One cannot imagine how awful is the death 'being broken on the wheel'. St. Catherine is said to have died this way. ) Justice can be as cruel as injustice, so do not expect a satisfying denouement. As this was real life, all is not well-wrapped up come the end, and bad things happen in the name of Good.
Rating:
Summary: Bloody Batavia
Review: I recommend this to those with a yen for adventure, a mind to history accurately portrayed, and the stomach to digest said history. Cruelty is not a novel trait, it carries a long and storied history. Here, within these pages, is detailed a history of such enormous cruelty that it shocks deeply, even in this 21st century wherein lies cruelty and unfairness of such prevalence as to dull many to its varieties and vagaries. In autumn of 1628, the Dutch East India's flagship, the Batavia, loaded with gold, jewels and gems, plus 300 crewmen and passengers, foundered upon her maiden voyage on a reef off the west coast of Australia. The captain, Francisco Pelsaert, abandoned on the island the passengers and his crewmen, then departed with a his skipper to rally help almost 2,000 miles hence on the isle of Java. Second man, Jeronimus Cornelisz, was charged with those left behind. A dangerous fanatic and a deluded religionist, Cornelisz wielded a brutal, deranged control which included the murder of anyone who appeared a threat to his rule or to his religion, or to the limited resources all were forced to share, and then later on, for no reason other than for blood sport. The scenes in which entire families are butchered, men, women, and children, are certainly chilling, but no less so than the scenes detailing what happened once help arrived, and those responsible were brought to trial. (One cannot imagine how awful is the death 'being broken on the wheel'. St. Catherine is said to have died this way. ) Justice can be as cruel as injustice, so do not expect a satisfying denouement. As this was real life, all is not well-wrapped up come the end, and bad things happen in the name of Good.
Rating:
Summary: Lord of the Flies meets Master and Commander.
Review: It was of no surprise to me when I heard that the film rights to this book had already been snapped up. Batavia's Graveyard has all the hallmarks of a blockbuster, starting small with a simple tale of shipboard life, before hitting its characters with tension and adversity. The twist comes not at the end, but at the middle of the story, when the ship is wrecked in a parched alien land, and a surly faction within the crew seize control of the limited supplies. With complex patronymics, variant spellings and inconsistent pronunciation, Dutch names can be a major stumbling block in an English-language account, but Dash cunningly trims and edits his character roster, making the cast easy to remember, and humanising a collection of tough consonants. It's all too easy to forget that he is often working from source material that is not available outside the Dutch language, and bringing the details of a fascinating story to the English-speaking world for the first time.
Rating:
Summary: Ghosts From a Godless Island
Review: The setting for this book is an obscure chain of coral reefs in the 1620s. I would've never thought that incidents from so long ago and far away could inspire nightmares. But this book is every bit as chilling as "In Cold Blood" or "Helter Skelter." We'll never understand how people can commit barbarities against innocent women and children, as Jeronimus Cornelisz and his sycophants did. But eyewitness accounts and archaeological evidence, which were utilized by Mike Dash for this book, offer a testament to the grim reality of such atrocities.
The story of the "Batavia" has been related before: in the year 1628, the flagship vessel of a fleet of Dutch East Indian traders smashed into a previously unknown group of jagged coral islands off the west coast of Australia in the dead of night. While the captain and over-merchant sailed to Indonesia for help, the charismatic under-merchant set himself up as caretaker/dictator of the desperate survivors of the wreck. He turned out to be a 17th-century version of Charles Manson. He not only convinced enough naïve, under-educated, and cowardly sailors to follow him into mutinying against the East India Company, but he managed to order them into gleefully murdering over 100 of their fellow castaways.
Mike Dash's book is undoubtedly the most complete account of the "Batavia" incident written thus far. The bibliographical notes he provides comprise a book in itself. For the first time, he examines the culture and background that produced a monster like Cornelisz, digging into ancient town records in Friesland, Amsterdam, and Haarlem. It's riveting to think that Cornelisz may have been acquainted with the infamous bacchanalian painter Torrentius, who was a neighbor of his in Haarlem. Dash tries to make this claim, but he is unable to provide any proof. Similarly, there is no evidence that Cornelisz' behavior was inspired by a radical Anabaptist religious philosophy, although Dash makes a number of such implications early in the book. He contradicts himself at the end when he (more convincingly) argues that Cornelisz was a classic example of a sociopathic personality, who possessed an exaggerated egocentrism while lacking the human emotions of empathy and remorse.
This is an engrossing, albeit disturbing book. I would not recommend it for anyone who's sensitive to graphic and detailed descriptions of ways to exterminate humans. Also, be aware that the "mad heretic" claim under the main title is very misleading. Heresy was a popular word bandied during the days of the Roman Catholic Inquisition, but it has nothing to do with Cornelisz. From the evidence available, his actions don't seem to be informed by any obsessive religious creed. And as far as being "mad," there is no evidence of his being insane under our modern definitions. He was very much in control of himself. Which is the most chilling reality of all.
Rating:
Summary: The First Australian Massacre
Review: This book concerns a bizarre 1628 shipwreck of a Dutch East India Company ship off Western Australia in a set of reef and islands known as the Houtman's Albrolhos. It both begins there (where the somewhat mediocre captain his a reef) and ends there (when the bodies of the subsequent massacre are discovered in the 1960s). For the men, women and children stuck there, being marooned on a sparsely vegetated island in the Indian Ocean was unfortunate; what turned collective misfortune into tragedy was that the castaways included one Jeronimus Corneliuszoon, a religious extremist and probable psychopath who promptly seized power and governed via his own personal death squads. His murders (over 100) still rank as the worst massacre in European-Australian history, and reading the accounts of the various killings is harrowing. Where Dash excels himself yet further is his successful efforts to trace Jeronimus's roots back to 17th century Holland, where he was an apothecary. Dash explains the strange underworld of rogue Anabaptists (who even the relatively tolerant Dutch had to suppres, so extreme were they) and also relates the tragic story of how Jeronimus's family breakdown led to his being on an East India vessel in the first place. Also astounding is the sheer miracle of the ultimate rescue - for all his failings the captain managed to get from Western Australia to modern day Indonesia in the flimsiest of craft. For sheer endurance alone, this must rival the later Bligh, Wager and Shackleton voyages. History, travel adventure, sex, violence, crime and punishment - all in less than 400 pages.
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