Bontekoe Journal/ Diary (Part 1)

On the twenty-eighth of December of the year 1618, William Ysbrantsz Bontekoe, with a ship of 550 ton and 206 men, left the roads of Texel for India. The name of the vessel was the Nieuw Hoorn, and it was loaded with gun-powder. Kindly remember that gunpowder. There were the usual storms, the usual broken masts; the customary number of sick sailors either died or recovered; the customary route along the coast of Africa was followed. The weather, once the cape was left behind, was fine, and a short stay on the island of Reunion allowed the sick to regain their health and the dead to be buried. The natives were well disposed and traded with Bontekoe. They entertained him and danced for the amusement of his men, and everything was as happy as could be. At last the voyage across the Indian Ocean was started under the best of auspices, and the Nieuw Hoorn had almost reached the Strait of Sunda when the great calamity occurred.

On the nineteenth of November, almost a year, therefore, after the ship had left Holland, one of the pantrymen went into the hold to get himself some brandy. It was very dark in the hold, and therefore he had taken a candle with him. This candle, in a short iron holder, with a sharp point to it, he stuck into a barrel which was on top of the one out of which he filled his bottle. When he got through with his job he jerked the iron candlestick out of the wood of the barrel. In doing so a small piece of burning tallow fell into the brandy. That caused an explosion, and the next moment the brandy inside the barrel had caught fire. Fortunately there were two pails of water standing near by, and the fire was easily extinguished. A lot more water was pumped upon the dangerous barrels, and the fire, as far as anybody could see or smell, had been put out. But half an hour later the dreadful cry of "Fire!" was heard once more all through the ship. This time the coals which were in the hold near the brandy, and which were used for the kitchen stove and the black-smith shop, had caught fire. They filled the hold with poisonous gas and a thick and yellowish smoke.

For the second time the pumps were set to work to fill the hold with water. But the air inside the hold was so bad that the firemen had a difficult task. As the hours went by the fire grew worse. Bontekoe proposed to throw his cargo of gunpowder overboard. But as I have related in my first chapters, there always was a civilian commander on board such Indian vessels. It was his duty to look after the cargo and to represent the commercial interest of the company. Bontekoe's civilian master did not wish to lose his valuable gunpowder. He told the captain to leave it where it was and try to put out the fire. Bontekoe obeyed, but soon his men could no longer stand the smoke in the hold. Large holes were then hacked through the deck and through these water was poured upon the cargo. Now Bontekoe was a pious man, but he was neither very strong of character nor very resourceful of mind. He spent his time in running about the ship giving many orders, the majority of which were to no great purpose.

Meanwhile he did not notice that part of the crew, from fear of being blown up, had lowered the boats and were getting ready to leave the ship. The civilian director, who had just told the captain to save the gunpowder, had been the first to join in the flight. He was soon safely riding the waves in a small boat far away from the doomed ship. For those who had been deserted on board there was only one way to salvation; they must try to put out the fire or be killed. Under per- sonal command of their captain they set to work and pumped and pumped and pumped. But the fire had reached several barrels of oil, and there was a dense smoke.

It was impossible to throw 310 barrels of powder overboard in the suffocating atmosphere of the hold, yet the men tried to do it. They worhed with desperate speed, but before the sixth part of the dangerous cargo was in the waters of the ocean the fire reached the forward part, where the powder was stored. A few moments later one hundred and ninety men were blown skyward, together with pieces of the masts and pieces of the ship and heavy iron bars and pieces of sail and everything that belongs to a well-equipped vessel. "And I, Captain Willem Ysbrantsz Bontekoe, commander of the ship, also flew through the sky, and I thought that my end had come. So I stretched my hands and arms toward heaven and said : 'O dear Lord, there I go ! Please have pity upon this miserable sinner!' because I thought that now the next moment I must be dead; but all the time I was flying through the air I kept my mind clear, and I found that there was happiness in my heart; yes, I even found that I was quite gay, and so came down again, and landed in the water between pieces of the ship which had been blown into little scraps." This is the captain's own minute account of the psychology of being blown up.

He continues : "And when I was now once in the water of the sea, I felt my courage return in such a way that it was as if I had become a new man. And when I looked around I found a piece of the mainmast floating at my side, and so I climbed on top of it, and looking over the scene around me, I said, 'O Lord, so hath this fine ship been destroyed even as Sodom and Gomorrah.' For a short while the skipper floated and con- templated upon his mast, and then he noticed that he was no longer alone.

A young German who had been on board as a common sailor came swimming to the wreckage. He climbed on the only piece of the ship's stern that was afloat, and pulling the captain's mast nearer to him with a long stick which he had fished out of the water, he helped our good Bontekoe to pull himself on board his wreckage. There they were together on the lonely ocean on a few boards and with no prospect of rescue.