History Trivia Thread Reducks

[Viking]

Cairn built to mark the grave of a member of Abel Tasman's crew who died on or near the mainland.

(if it's not that then I give up..)

[Drakken]

Cairn built to mark the grave of a member of Abel Tasman's crew who died on or near the mainland.

(if it's not that then I give up..)

Sadly, no.

However Yi is right in part, it was a fort. However, it wasn't to defend against savage natives.



However, the question is : Where was it built, and to what event it was linked.

The event is so infamous, even for the time, an opera was made of it in our time and it was even part of the celebrations of the Summer JO in Sydney. So no, it's not an obscure event. It's even because of that event that female passengers on VoC ships were severely restricted when the news reached Amsterdam.

[HisMajestyBOB]

A fort to defend against nagging wives that stowed away on board the ship.

[Malthus]

Is that a fort build as a result of the Batavia mutiny on 'Batavia's Graveyard"?

[Drakken]

Is that a fort build as a result of the Batavia mutiny on 'Batavia's Graveyard"?

We have a winner. It was the fort built by Wiebbe Hayes on West Wallabi Island as a result of the gruesome massacre by the mutineers in vicinity of the shipwrecked Batavia, one of the worst in history.

Wiebbe Hayes and his soldiers were sent by the mutineers, led by Jeronimus Cornelius, to the Wallabi Islands to find water and food, ostensibly to send them to starve to death. But they did find water and food there. 

When they finally learned by survivors who fled the main island by swimming that the mutineers were literally murdering people left and right on the main island (125 people, men, women, and children, were beaten, tortured, raped, and murdered while they were gone) first to cull the population for food ration, and more and more for the lulz as Cornelius and his thugs devolved into savagery for pleasure, they built that fort to hold out until a ship could arrive and protect any survivor that fled the scene.



Twice the mutineers tried to take the fort when they understood that Hayes had indeed found water and food and could hold out forever. The last attempt was nearly successfully, but they were repelled. When the relief ship Sertam arrived, given to Batavia's Commander Pelsaert in Batavia to save his crew and passengers cargo of gold and silver, both raced to reach it (Hayes to alert of the mutiny, Cornelius and the mutineers to seize it, slaughter its crew, and flow away with the Batavia's stock of gold). Hayes won. Amazingly, it's only then that Pelsaert learned that there was a mutiny, as the ship had shipwrecked before it could take place.

Aside from the numerous executions, two mutineers were left marooned on the Australian mainland, never to be heard of again. These are two first European settlers in Australia. Also, Lucretia Jans, now believed to have been Cornelius' power behind the throne in the mutiny plot, and the other surviving women the first women to set foot on Australia.

I expected it to be widely more known than that, though. It's one of the most bloodiest and infamous mutinies in naval history, thus why I was walking on eggshells. It's also why I worded it so the structure wasn't a shipwreck, yet it could be possible it could be to an infamous shipwreck.

Mathus has the floor - again.

[Admiral Yi]

Never heard of it.

[Drakken]

Never heard of it.

The Batavia is one of the two replicas (the other is De Ruyter's admiral ship The Seven Provinces) which have been built in the dockyards in Amsterdam in the 1990s, using the methods and resources of the time. It's the Netherlands' (and Australia's) Mutiny on the Bounty, only grosser, gorier, and sleazier.

She was even brought (towed by a barge) into the Sydney harbor to stay there for the Olympic Games in 2000.

[Malthus]

Never heard of it.

It's sort of like a 16th century Dutch version of Lord of the Flies, only with adults.

[Drakken]

It's sort of like a 16th century Dutch version of Lord of the Flies, only with adults.

It's Lord of the Flies if Jack was an adult, heretical psychopath hell-bent on creating his own little kingdom and turned a bunch of the kids against the others, brutally killing anyone who either was in his path, he didn't like the face of, or just wanted to have fun with. I wouldn't be surprised if William Golding was in part inspired by the story of the aftermath of the Batavia shipwreck for his novel.

Anyway, Malthus has the floor.

[Malthus]

Okay, then - who was the first (and only) person to provide a written, eyewitness account of a Viking ship cremation burial ceremony? And what language was that account written in?

[Maximus]

Written in Arabic? Don't remember the name of the guy, some emmissary of the Caliph of Baghdad iirc.

[Eddie Teach]

The 13th warrior guy?

[The Brain]

ibn Fadlan in Arabic?

[Viking]

ships were expensive, burying one is frickin' ostentatious

[Malthus]

ibn Fadlan in Arabic?

Yup.

Not really a difficult one, for this crowd.