Voyage to Disaster

Book excerpt: "Jan Hendrycks confesses that one day he had been called by Jeronimus into his tent and that he gave him to know that at night time he must help him with the murder of the Predikant's family. At night, Zeevonk has called outside Wiebrecht Clausen, a young girl, whom Jan Hendrycks stabbed with a dagger, and inside, all people-the mother with her six children-had their heads battered in with axes . . .He said, certainly, I have a knife. So without any objection, Andreas has gone to Myken Soers who was heavily pregnant and threw her underfoot and cut her throat . . ."-Extracts from Francisco Pelsaert's The Disastrous Voyage of the Ship Batavia, first published in 1647 --- Mutiny, murder, rape, torture; a priceless treasure fuelling the basest human greed; a courageous journey in search of rescue-the story of the Batavia, wrecked off the coast of Western Australia in 1629, has been part of the myth and legend of Australian history. Ten years of meticulous research resulted in Voyage to Disaster, a historical tour de force comprising the complete journals of Francisco Pelsaert translated from the Old Dutch by E. D. Drok, together with a revealing biography of Pelsaert, a man of many dimensions-writer, historian, administrator. Following the success of previous paperback editions, Voyage to Disaster is now available in hardback.