Mutiny on the Nijenburg
The mutiny on the Nijenburg took place in 1763 on the ship of the East India Company (VOC) Nijenburg on the voyage from Texel to Batavia . Most of the seafarers who were recruited under false promises or drunk, many of whom came from Germany, took over the ship and traveled with it to Brazil, another part to Cayenne . But in the end they were extradited by the Portuguese to the Dutch and 24 of them were executed in Texel.
The ship and the living conditions on board
The Nijenburg, named after an estate between Alkmaar and Heiloo , was launched in Hoorn in 1757 , was a medium-sized return ship with three masts, 140 feet in length and a tonnage of 880 tons. Originally it was designed for a crew of around 230 men, but this was clearly exceeded on their travels. She made her first trip to Batavia from April to October 1759 to Batavia, was deployed in the Java area and made her return trip in 1762. In May 1763 she set sail on her second voyage from Texel. On board were gold and ducats worth 100,000 guilders. The captain was Jacob Ketel from Husum and the officers also included the chief helmsman Epke Elders, submasters Reinier Peterson, helmsman Teunis Jacobsz de Kok, who, as he was also a professional and carried out the sentences, was particularly hated by the crew.
The crew often consisted of Germans uprooted in the course of the Seven Years' War, who had come to Holland to find work, but were recruited by soul sellers as cheap labor on the VOC ships, often by getting them drunk beforehand or by making them drunk with flowery promises or even force to sign and then strictly supervised until they got on the ships. The soul sellers, who were often innkeepers, were given a promissory note , which was paid for through the labor of the recruited sailors (from whom the amount was deducted from their wages). However, since the sailors did not have a long life expectancy (even with merchants in East India, it was only a further two to three years on average, plus the harsh living conditions of the sailors), the notes were often resold as speculative objects. Due to the high losses, there was a constant need for recruiting at VOC. Besides Germans, there were also many other nationalities on board, only a few of whom had experience as seamen. According to some information, up to 130 more people are said to have joined the official permanent crew of 236 men.
The mutiny
The ship passed the Canary Islands in mid-June and soon after it was discovered that the water supplies had been secretly tapped and that the officers' wine bottles were missing. At that time the captain was in bed with gout, and since an examination was foreseeable the following day, the mutineers struck when the guard changed at midnight. Understeer Peterson was killed and around a dozen others were wounded. The mutineers took firearms and took control of the ship. They called themselves "sulfur gangs" and organized themselves militarily into two "battalions" . The first battalion was led by Johann Gottfried Wolnar, who called himself “General”, with his “officers” Franz Cramer and Dominicus Vorster, who acted as “judges” . The second was headed by "Grand Major" Johannes Gross and "Lieutenant Colonel" Anthony Fouquet. On board they forced the captain and the crew, still loyal to the VOC, to steer the ship to Brazil, which was under Portuguese rule. Since they suspected that the captain was trying to cheat them and head for Suriname in the Netherlands, the mutineers almost killed him and his top officers, but then gave him a grace period. On August 2, the ship ran aground at Cabo de São Roque on the north-eastern tip of Brazil ( Rio Grande do Norte ).
Most of the ringleaders of the mutineers (Wolnar, Gross, Cramer, Fouquet) crossed ashore with their share of the booty, whereby among the 64 men there were also a number of VOC loyal sailors with the officers Elders and de Kok. They misinterpreted and ignored a cannon signal from the Nijenburg that asked them to return since the ship was free again. The paths of the two groups of mutineers then parted. The group on land managed to get through to Riogrande and was initially able to deceive the authorities there as shipwrecked. They were well received, but were also forwarded to higher-level authorities in Pernambuco . There the VOC-loyal sailors were able to contact a Dutch doctor who informed the authorities about the mutiny. As a result, the entire group was arrested, interrogated, and their property confiscated in early September. Wolnar committed suicide, the rest were transferred to Lisbon (including Gross, Cramer, Fouquet, Vorster). VOC loyal sailors like Elders and de Kok only managed to achieve better prison conditions there after contact with the Dutch envoy. On February 10th, the arrested arrived in Texel on a Dutch ship and were tried by a maritime court (including Elders and de Kok, who were acquitted).
The remaining mutineers on the Nijenburg, which had run free again, were initially able to maintain command and sailed to Cayenne (later French Guiana ), which belonged to France. On the way, some mutineers set off with dinghies built for reconnaissance trips, but were picked up by the French, who had been warned with this. They left the Nijenburg at anchor until a large part of the suspicious German crew, cannons and ammunition were on board (the ship was already prepared for the demolition). Some of the mutineers were able to withdraw, but most of them, like their comrades in Pernambuco, were extradited to the VOC and went to court in Texel in 1764. Captain Ketel died of kidney failure in Cayenne in November 1763.
Aftermath
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A total of 24 men were executed in Texel, most of them by hanging, others were whacked (including Gross) and beheaded. Others were whipped, keeled, or expelled from the country. The bodies were displayed in cages on the beach in Texel as a warning to the seafarers, but this did not last long as the residents felt disturbed and secretly removed the remains.
The Nijenburg made only a few voyages and sank in January 1769 in a storm in the Indian Ocean.
literature
- Joachim Wahl, Susanne Wahl: Brutale See, Hey, Munich 2015.
- Nienke de Jonge, Leonoor Kuijk, Liesbeth Oskamp (eds.): Echt relaas van de muiterij op het Oostindisch Compagnieschip Nijenburg: Voor het eerst schchenen in 1764, Amsterdam: Terra Incognita, 1992
- G. de Bruin, AJJ van der Wal: "Allons duytsche broeders": de muiterijen op de Nijenburg in 1763, in JR de Bruijn, ES van Eyck van Heslinga, Muiterij-Oproer en authorization op schepen van de VOC, Haarlem, De Boer Maritem, 1980
Web links
References and comments
- ↑ Written in contemporary sources also Neyenburg
- ↑ Erected in 1705 by Jan van Egmond van de Nijenburgh. It was later owned by the Van Foreest family. It still exists today and is owned by a nature conservation foundation.