The cargo shipBataviaset out from the Netherlands in October 1628 , bound for the Dutch settlement at present - day Jakarta , Indonesia , with more than 300 bunch and rider . For some still - unknown reason , the ship veered off course to the Confederate States and crush into a coral atoll about 50 mile west of the Australian coast .
What happened over the next few months — culminating in a mystifying and barbarous massacre that left at least 125 people drained — is Australia ’s Old cold slip .
In astorythat air out on60 Minutes Australia , newspaperwoman Liam Bartlett travel to this " island of repugnance " where a team of Australian and Dutch scientists is uncover the well-nigh 400 - year - former skeletons , well preserve in the Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin of what is now Beacon Island . They go for to discover what direct to the sudden quite a little butchery of adults and children .
" We ’re dealing with a psychopath and some jolly frightful events,“Alistair Paterson , an archaeologist at the University of Western Australia and the leader of the research squad , tells Bartlett . " There ’s nothing like it in Dutch history or Australian history . "
TheBatavia , theflagshipof the Dutch East India Company , was on its maiden voyage . The commanding officer , Francisco Pelsaert , and the captain , Ariaen Jacobsz , detested each other . Jacobsz conjure with Pelsaert ’s surrogate , Jeronimus Cornelisz , to take ascendency of the ship and its load of silver and valuable paintings . But before the mutiny could unfold , the ship crash into the reef in the early morning of June 4 , 1629 .
About 100 people died in the wreck , while almost 200 made it to a cluster of islands in the Abrolhos chain of mountains — treeless , desert - like stretches of backbone without water system or food for thought . Pelsaert and Jacobsz sailed for helper , hoping to reach their original destination nearly 2000 mile away by gravy boat .
The event of the next three months continue to beat and horrify forward-looking research worker . ab initio , Jeronimus Cornelisz organized food rations and tax shelter for the subsister on Beacon Island as a way to cement his leadership . But then , he stash the weapons and boats for his own use . He ordered his follower to execute the strong , able - bodied man who could posture a terror to his command over the group . Most of the women and tyke who would be a drain on supply were also killed , though some women were maintain awake as sexual slave , Bartlett reports .
" TotallyLord of the Flies , " Paterson say .
Cornelisz marooned several mankind on a nearby island to get them out of the way as the killing violent disorder stay . But those valet , led by a sailor identify Wiebbe Hayes , managed to determine water and solid food , and made a primitive protective fort of stone slab — which still subsist as the first European - made bodily structure on Australian soil . In former August , two months after the shipwreck , Cornelisz and his world seek to storm Hayes ' fastness and winnow out his band of survivors .
At the last second , a rescue ship helm by Pelsaert and Jacobsz appeared on the horizon . Both Hayes and Cornelisz sent out boat to wiretap the ship , hoping to found their version of event as fact and save themselves from penalisation . Fortunately , Hayes ’s men hit the ship first .
Only 80 to 90 survivors out of the Batavia ’s 300 - plus rider eventually arrived in present - twenty-four hours Jakarta . Cornelisz , whonever showeda hint of compunction or offered an explanation for his brutality , was flow along with his co - conspirator . The bones of his victim , preserve in the island ’s alkali coral sand for almost four centuries , are now revealing clue to the historical mystery .
" Horrible things find to these person . They clearly were victims , " Paterson narrate Bartlett . " But the archaeology allows us to get their story told . "
