Episode 605: The Tragedy of the Batavia Part I - Spice World

Summary

Summary of "Last Podcast On The Left" Episode 605: The Tragedy of the Batavia Part I - Spice World

Release Date: January 25, 2025
Host/Author: The Last Podcast Network
Description: This episode delves into the harrowing true story of the Batavia shipwreck and the ensuing atrocities committed by its survivors, set against the backdrop of the powerful Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the lucrative spice trade.

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Introduction & Context

The hosts, Ben Kissel, Marcus Parks, and Henry Zebrowski, kick off the episode with their characteristic humor before transitioning into the historical narrative. They draw parallels between the VOC and modern corporations like Amazon, highlighting the relentless pursuit of profit and its dire consequences.

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The Batavia Shipwreck: An Overview

In 1628, the Batavia, a massive merchant ship operated by the VOC, wrecked on a reef off the western coast of Australia. Among the 340 passengers and crew, only 240 survived the initial wreck. Stranded on a barren chain of islands, the survivors faced dire conditions that led to one of the most gruesome survival stories in history.

Notable Quote:

Henry Zebrowski [03:34]: "What occurred in the weeks that followed on those barren islands is quite possibly the most horrific, bloody and downright disturbing survival story in modern history."

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The VOC: Dutch East India Company

The Dutch East India Company (VOC), known as the Vocal in Dutch, was one of the world's first joint-stock corporations. Established in 1602, the VOC wielded immense power, functioning almost as its own state with colonies and a private army. Their monopolistic control over the spice trade, especially nutmeg and cloves from the Banda Islands, was pivotal to their dominance.

Notable Quote:

Henry Zebrowski [07:09]: "The VOC was a shipping company with enough power to be almost a country unto themselves, complete with colonies and a private army."

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The Banda Islands and the Spice Trade

The Banda Islands in Indonesia were the sole natural source of nutmeg and cloves, making them highly coveted. The VOC's relentless pursuit to dominate this trade led to brutal conquests and the near-extermination of the native Bandinese population.

Notable Quote:

Henry Zebrowski [42:05]: "To show you how the VOC and the Dutch came out on top, let's take one spice and see how its introduction into European society changed everything."

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Key Figures: Jan Zoon Kuhn and Euronymous Cornelis

Jan Zoon Kuhn

A ruthless VOC merchant, Jan Zoon Kuhn led the assault on the Banda Islands, orchestrating mass killings to secure the spice monopoly. His actions exemplified the VOC's cold-blooded methods to eliminate competition and control trade.

Notable Quote:

Henry Zebrowski [48:27]: "Kuhn was a humorless and ultimately genocidal VOC company man through and through."

Euronymous Cornelis

An under-merchant aboard the Batavia, Euronymous emerged as the central antagonist following the shipwreck. Charismatic yet psychopathic, he manipulated the stranded survivors into committing heinous acts to maintain control and secure limited resources.

Notable Quote:

Henry Zebrowski [62:17]: "Euronymous Cornelis... was not the same type of psychopath as, say, a Ted Bundy. Rather, Euronymous is more like a Nazi who probably would have gone his entire life without hurting another person, had circumstances not opened the door to savagery."

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Life on the Batavia: Crew and Administration

The Batavia's crew comprised sailors, soldiers, tradesmen, merchants, and their families. The ship was a microcosm of VOC's hierarchical and oppressive corporate structure. Francisco Pelsart, the upper merchant, held significant authority, often overriding the captain's decisions to prioritize the company's profits over the crew's well-being.

Notable Quote:

Henry Zebrowski [62:17]: "Francisco Pelsart had authority to override the captain's orders if the merchant deemed it necessary to protect the VOC's interests."

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Prelude to Tragedy: Early Voyage and Relationships

During the voyage, tensions simmered due to harsh conditions, delays, and interpersonal conflicts. Euronymous Cornelis and Captain Ariana Jacobs formed a toxic alliance, fueled by alcohol and mutual resentment. Their brewing mutiny set the stage for the ensuing chaos following the shipwreck.

Notable Quote:

Henry Zebrowski [102:56]: "They were able to secretly bury her body without the Indian court discovering what had happened."

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Conclusion & Tease for Part II

As the Batavia sets sail towards Java, the stage is set for disaster. The episode concludes with mounting tensions onboard, foreshadowing the brutal mutiny and the tragic events that would unfold in subsequent episodes.

Notable Quote:

Henry Zebrowski [102:56]: "Now, as the Batavia launched its maiden voyage for the island of Java in October of 1628... This naturally led to some resentment amongst the crew... plotting the mutiny that would result in six weeks of bloody mayhem."

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Stay Tuned: The hosts promise to continue the harrowing tale in "The Tragedy of the Batavia Part II," where the full extent of the mutiny and its gruesome aftermath will be explored in detail.

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Additional Resources: The podcast episode is based on "Batavia's Graveyard" by Mike Dash, a comprehensive account of the Batavia shipwreck and its aftermath.

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Note: This summary intentionally omits the comedic asides and non-essential dialogues to focus on the core historical content and key discussions of the episode.

Transcript

[Ben Kissel]

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[Marcus Parks]

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[Ben Kissel]

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[Marcus Parks]

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[Ben Kissel]

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[Marcus Parks]

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[Ben Kissel]

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[Henry Zebrowski]

5G next and credit required. Contact us before canceling entire account. To continue bill credits or credit stop.

[Ben Kissel]

And balance on required finance agreement is due bill credits.

[Marcus Parks]

And if you pay off devices early.

[Henry Zebrowski]

There'S no place to escape to.

[Marcus Parks]

This is the last on the left.

[Ben Kissel]

That's when the cannibalism starts. Started. What was that? You're uning your son's attritiveness.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I do know. I. I don't see why you're here all these years with this woman Darcy, that you're ruining his best years of attractiveness.

[Ben Kissel]

I will tell you, Henry, if you were to lose weight, you might be attractive. That is the. My Dutch. We're trying to really wrap our brains around the Dutch accent.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, trying to wrap our brains around just not just the Dutch accent, but the Dutch language, which is a very difficult language.

[Ben Kissel]

But one thing that Dutch doesn't seem to have words for, which is being completely fucked on an island. They learn that later on though, don't they? Don't they, my friend?

[Marcus Parks]

They do any up on anybody.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. They also don't have any words for compassion or friendliness. Welcome to last podcast on the left. Yes, my name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with Henry Zabirski.

[Ben Kissel]

That's as far as I'm gonna go. Yeah, I'm gonna try. You know what the only problem is with a Dutch accent, specifically Dutch, is the fact that I get into it when I listen to somebody speak with a Dutch accent for long enough and I can do it while the video is playing, but I cannot do it afterwards.

[Marcus Parks]

No, no, no. I don't care anything about it. But I did prepare for the show by farting under the sheets and holding Julie there Thank you.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes, that's of course the Dutch oven at Larson.

[Marcus Parks]

How you doing? What's going on? That's my name, don't wear it out.

[Ben Kissel]

But I'm like, it's been a long time since I've been this excited.

[Marcus Parks]

This really fun episode.

[Ben Kissel]

This is a. I cannot. This whole series is. Comes from a topic. I have no idea, like how I had not heard about this topic before.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I have, I have theories which we'll get to, but my God, this story is massive. I mean this is the. It's almost the story of the birth of the modern world with a lot of murder involved.

[Ben Kissel]

And that's why we begin our 25 episode series now at the dawn of man.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, this today is a naval tale. The story of. Of the Batavia.

[Marcus Parks]

Let's some dudes.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, dude.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So in 1628, a massive merchant ship called the Batavia wrecked on a reef on the western coast of Australia. 340 souls, including a fair amount of women and children were aboard. 240 people survived the initial wreck, but their only escape from the seas was a mostly barren chain of islands that were individually no larger than a mid sized city park. What occurred in the weeks that followed on those barren islands is quite possibly the most horrific, bloody and downright disturbing survival story in modern history. Murder by the dozen. Because if there was ever a tale where the adage hell is other people applies, it's this one.

[Ben Kissel]

What I love about this whole story too is it all starts with somebody sitting in the middle of England going, man, I wish I had an orange. Everything begins. It's just somebody just sitting there.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Wait for an orange.

[Ben Kissel]

Why?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Can I have one right now?

[Ben Kissel]

Hey. Hey. Tell me, Clark, do you like eggnog?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

You know that brown dust. Yeah. On top of it, that nutmeg, right?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. It's all right, right?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, it's all right.

[Ben Kissel]

Let's go kill a bunch of villagers full of babies to get some.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Right? And then we set up the entire civilization around getting nutmegged out.

[Ben Kissel]

Oh my God. Enslavement. And we'll get all the nut. That's amazing. I don't even like it. It doesn't even get you high. Except I did hear that, you know, nutmeg gets you high as dude. Really? So if you smoke it. No, eat it. Dude, you eat like barely. If you eat like half a pound of nutmeg, you get crazy high.

[Marcus Parks]

If you eat half a pound of almost anything you get, you feel differently.

[Ben Kissel]

But not with like with nutmeg, man, you get crazy. Dude. You get knocked out, dude.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The story of the Batavia is not a well known survival tale. As to why I. That's because people usually like survival stories to be inspiring. And the tragedy of the Batavia is quite the opposite.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's the survive part that's missing.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, some do survive, but it's definitely not alive. You know, it's not one of those where it's a tale of, you know, the human spirit persevering over nature and over each other. This is a tale of the human spirit giving into its worst impulses at every turn.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, you don't band together to get out of it. You kill yourself, sister, to get out of it.

[Ben Kissel]

You see, that's what we learned from 9 11. And what we now need to learn from this story, we don't need to be inspired by every story. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

When was 9 11?

[Ben Kissel]

Oh, it was.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, this is a tale of greed, mass murder, manipulation and savagery. An example of how just one man can create a band of demonic brutes with just the slightest nudge. A man with the unlikely name of Euronymous Cornelis.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, you'd be surprised what you could make a bunch of people do when there's nothing but San to eat. It's easy. He's the Paul Dano of our story. We're gonna, we'll get here, you'll see. I'm gonna cast everybody.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I disagree wholeheartedly with the Paul Dano here. Yes. Because Paul Dano is not in any way charismatic. And Euronymous was a very charismatic man.

[Marcus Parks]

I think Paul Dano's incredibly charismatic.

[Ben Kissel]

See, he's Paul Dano from There Will Be Blood. That's what I'm putting him in.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Sure, sure.

[Marcus Parks]

Not Brian Wilson.

[Ben Kissel]

No.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, this story is also highly complex because the conditions that made the tragedy of the Batavia possible were created by one of the most evil corporations in history. The corp that served as the mold for exploitation and profit above all other concerns.

[Marcus Parks]

Cnn.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That corporation was the Dutch East India Company, commonly known as the Vocal.

[Ben Kissel]

It's kind of interesting. It's like make America great again. Really kind of wants to make America Dutch again.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The VOC was a shipping company with enough power to be almost a country unto themselves, complete with colonies and a private army. And from what I can tell, it wasn't until modern times that businesses were able to again wield so much power and influence. Tell me if this sounds familiar, but the VOC were able to get away with a list of atrocities a mile long because they did shipping better and faster than anyone else.

[Ben Kissel]

Else, I kind of want an orange.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And if there's one thing that modern humans value above everything, the sin that we all contribute to in one way or another, it's the concept of convenience at any cost.

[Marcus Parks]

I want my packages.

[Ben Kissel]

That is what it is.

[Marcus Parks]

I want to put, yeah, I want a pair of scissors in one package and I want tape in the other package.

[Ben Kissel]

I never choose Amazon name. I always say, extra plastic, please. Thank you.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And make sure that the box is way too big for what I ordered.

[Ben Kissel]

Oh, yes, but, you know, on one way, see, as the resident capitalist slash Satanist, what I will say is that, see, we're bored. We're burdened with consciousness, and what consciousness forces us to do more.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You start talking like a douchebag when you say that.

[Ben Kissel]

No, listen. No, no, no. You see, we're burdened with consciousness. And what consciousness forces us humans to do is to consider time. You know, dog doesn't know when its kibble will arrive. It knows by a lick in your eye, right? It knows by the setting of the sun, but it doesn't know that it can go to our little, like, squares, we have, go down to Petco and get it at any time that they want, right? Dogs can't understand that. They don't understand time. They don't understand capitalism. They don't get the apps. They don't have thumbs. The rest of us, though, as humans, we're forced to understand time. So, yes, we want to fill time quickly, Marcus, because there's nothing. But because time, Marcus, is the most precious commodity of all.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Let go of me. Now, the obvious analog to the voc, the one that puts convenience and profits over people at every turn, is, of course, Amazon. Through thousands of different chains of exploitation, Amazon has created a world where we can have our heart's desire delivered to our doorstep within just a day or two from any one of Amazon's 185 distribution warehouses. So, before we begin the story of the Batavia, I'd like everyone to take a little trip with me to one of those 185Amazon distribution centers.

[Ben Kissel]

I've always wanted to.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I love trips.

[Ben Kissel]

It's like seeing Santa's workshop.

[Henry Zebrowski]

This is so we may transpose the tragedy of the Batavia to a modern location. Get it straight in everyone's heads.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it's like if Santa's workshop was run by Skynet.

[Ben Kissel]

Does it seem like a kind of fun? It's a fun idea.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The largest Amazon distribution warehouse in the world is in Ontario, out in Orange county. It has 7,000 robots working there.

[Ben Kissel]

Wow. But, Marcus, don't you love it when they do the social media promos where they, like, set it to music and you see the robots kind of dancing in unison? It's sort of like a giant, like, lockstep army of thousand pound unstoppable machines?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, and they make sure to cut out the part where the robot knocks over the piss bottle that the fucking employee had to use because they don't get bathroom breaks.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I thought they're fueled by the piss bottle.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, they're just inspired.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So let's take a trip. Everyone imagine an Amazon warehouse aflutter with orders, where the bosses, the middle management and the floor workers are going about their jobs day after day, ensuring that millions of dol worth of merchandise gets to its destination on time. Everyone is a cog in a machine within the biggest machine of all. The Amazon Corporation. And just as long as everyone in the warehouse does their job, no matter how difficult it might get, everything goes smoothly. And the shareholder stock keeps going up. One night, though, a particularly charismatic middle manager from a wealthy family who's failed at every job he's had before this one.

[Ben Kissel]

Hey, my name's Aaron. You can call me Thor. Yeah, I'm a swinger. Me and my wife, 25 years older than I, we like to swing on the weekends when I'm not busy here, obviously, managing the Amazon warehouse.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, he's just in the middle. He's not one of the guys at the top, but he gets drunk with his work buddies and they hatch a plot to take over the warehouse by force and sell everything contained within on the black market. All while they keep the warehouse itself as a base of operations.

[Ben Kissel]

No one will be the wiser. I will sell as many. Oh, we got all the. We got five trampolines. I know a guy will buy five trampolines. I got some bullets over here. We could sell that across. Across the street. There's a lot of young people looking for them. This is gonna be an amazing time for us boys. And then y'all can share my wife.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now, the warehouse is staffed with some good people and some very bad people. But most are somewhere in between.

[Ben Kissel]

Wait a second. Demetria, where'd you get that scimitar? I found it. A man ordered it. I. I use it to defend and take. I'm sorry. That's one of the customer scimitars, Dimitri.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But no matter their moral, most of these people, excepting those at the top, are quite unhappy working for Amazon because of the shit conditions and the shit pay. Especially when they consider how much the shareholders at the top are making. In other words, this warehouse is filled with desperate people. And as we've seen time and again throughout history, desperate people are often the most easily manipulated by those who are able to offer a simple solution to all their problems.

[Ben Kissel]

And it's like Amazon makes their own problems by making a desperate person inside of these places. By creating the scenario. Scenario in which that desperation is felt.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes. So the middle manager gets all the support he needs for the coup fairly easily. But just before he's able to put his plan into action, a massive earthquake isolates the warehouse from civilization and buries much of the merchandise inside under rubble. Likewise, the warehouse is no longer fit for a base of operations either. The bosses, of course, immediately hop into a helicopter to both escape the situation and to get help so everyone else who's trapped can be rescued.

[Ben Kissel]

Listen, Demetria, I love you and I miss you and I'll miss you and I. And I love your fervent enthusiasm, but you need to stay here behind. Make sure that all these squeegees are completely safe. We're going to Washington dc. All right? I love you. I'm gonna have sex with my wife and I'm gonna think about you.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But as soon as the bosses leave, the middle manager who'd been planning the warehouse coup, he steps up as the leader of the hundreds of people left behind. It's at that moment that everyone discovers that the mental manager is a total psychopath on par with the worst dictators in history. And he quickly uses his charisma to turn this Amazon warehouse into an NC17 version of Lord of the Flies.

[Marcus Parks]

Fuck yeah. I'd love to see that.

[Ben Kissel]

But not to be too stereotypical, but any one of us that has worked in any aspect has met a low powered middle manager.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh my God.

[Ben Kissel]

That if given the opportunity to kill everyone. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely Would Joe Garrix.

[Marcus Parks]

I remember him.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Or give it. Yeah, you already had a guy in mind.

[Ben Kissel]

Keith. I just remember Keith from my old job. And a guy named Will. Steven Hagen.

[Henry Zebrowski]

First, the middle manager divides the workers into three separate areas of the warehouse so he can consolidate control. Then he makes sure that the groups can't communicate with each other. After division and isolation, the middle manager and his inner circle turn their attention to the people in their immediate vicinity and begin committing senseless and grudges, grotesque atrocities on their fellow employees on an almost daily basis. Weeks pass and the bosses still aren't back. The warehouse coup is still sort of in the background, but the middle manager is now mostly Focused on total control over everyone who's left through rape and murder. Partly to save resources and partly because he and his cronies just develop a taste for it. Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

And they sort of build a. And imagine that they've also built a giant cocoon of him. And he's. He's wearing, you know, like some kind of. Of definitely minion gear. He's got a minion hat on. And it's made out of several like highly well constructed, super expensive tents that you get like on prime delivery, you see those things that you can get. And then like all of a sudden he's just like inside of this with like two big Stanley Cups filled with blood. Yes, yes. They can use the trampoline. You like he's covered in goods.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, the people not in the manager's inner circle then start joining in on the murder just to avoid becoming one of the dozens of victims. And some of those people get so hooked on the feeling of murder that they beg the manager to give them more people to kill. And that request is often obliged.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, kill Terry.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. What? No. After six weeks of this though, one of the people living under the terror of the middle manager escapes to one of the groups that the manager had isolated and he. He tells them about all the atrocities being committed on the other side of the warehouse.

[Ben Kissel]

You wouldn't believe. He put on a bunch of gar. He put on Garfield slippers. Right. And he had an OLED 65 inch screen just for some reason attached to a sash around his back. And he came up. The things that he did. I can't believe what he did. He force fed. He force fed Terry five pounds of creatine. I've never seen someone do this before. No idea how much lead is in that.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Soon after, a small war breaks out between the isolated group and the middle managers group. And it's only settled when the bosses finally return in a gilded helicopter. This is more or less the story of the Batavia and the corporation that made it all possible. The voc.

[Ben Kissel]

This whole story. The only way I could put this is that it's a fucking. It's a heist movie mixed with. It's crazy. It's a Quentin Tarantino movie on a boat.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. It's a heist movie mixed with a horror movie mixed with a survival movie mixed with a drama, mixed with a war movie. It's fucking got everything. It's incredible.

[Ben Kissel]

And nutmeg. Yeah, everyone loves nutmeg.

[Marcus Parks]

Which Amazon still sells.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh God, yes, of course.

[Ben Kissel]

Just honestly, just to celebrate this story I bought several pounds of nutmeg just through Amazon and I just left it out in the rain, you know what I mean? Like, just to let it rot. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm just using it to dye my skin.

[Ben Kissel]

We're gonna have a sidebar with.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But before we get to the story of the Batavia, let's acknowledge our main source today. Batavia's Graveyard by Mike Dash. Which is an absolutely incredible book, but definitely on the nerdier side due to the massive amount of historical context, which is, in my opinion, wholly necessary and utterly fascinating.

[Ben Kissel]

Oh yeah, we were about to get a Roy Cohn's fucking helping of history AIDS right now. Because this is going to be a. It's thick. But I do think that it's extremely important to set up the stakes. Like why everybody is doing this in the first place and why everyone's so afraid to fuck up. And like literally once because there's no coming back. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And also why everyone feels like they have permission to act like they act and to do the things they do. I'd also like to thank listener Peter V for bringing this story to our attention by sending us Dash's book in the mail mail last August. So thank you very much, Peter.

[Ben Kissel]

Thank you, Peter.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, Peter, thank you so much, Peter.

[Ben Kissel]

Peter. Sometimes I think about what it would.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Be like to taste your seed.

[Ben Kissel]

Kiss your rump. I wish to. To suck you.

[Marcus Parks]

I've always wanted to suck a man named after Peter.

[Ben Kissel]

Peter, fly from your grave.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now to really understand how the tragedy of the Batavia came to be, how over a hundred people were slaughtered by their co workers and shipmates, we've got to understand something about getting slaughtered by your co workers. Oh God. Fucking awful.

[Ben Kissel]

It's the worst. It's your office crashes. Your office crashes and everyone has to fight for themselves.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. We gotta understand the history of the company that fostered the environment that made all this possible. That corporation is of course the Dutch East India Company or the voc. This corporation, one of the first to ever exist, were the owners and operators of the Batavia. Now, to make it very clear, up top. Because I'm really gonna do my best to make the story easy to understand. I'm fucking. I'm doing absolutely. I'm really fucking trying hard.

[Ben Kissel]

Here we are. It's just. Pay attention to. Just pay to lock in.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay, I'll do my best, but you know me, so stupid.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, the.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The Dutch name of the Dutch East India Company is. I'm going to butcher this. But Weringida, Osendissa Kompagni or the voc.

[Ben Kissel]

How about the Dutch east to India Company? We are not going to get the Dutch accents correct.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, no. Nor are we going to really pronounce anything in Dutch correctly.

[Ben Kissel]

But you have. We have phonetic things written out.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Doing the best we can.

[Ben Kissel]

We're trying.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, we're trying.

[Marcus Parks]

It'd be easier if we got high before the show still. But now we wait till after.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, just know from now on, we're going to be referring to the Dutch East India Company as the voc.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The VOC is the big corporation here, and that's the.

[Marcus Parks]

The British indie company.

[Ben Kissel]

Fuck yeti. I swear to God, you already. We have to maintain control.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now by the 17th century.

[Ben Kissel]

Oh, wow, we're starting early. Just remember starting early. Cause it's locked.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, the 17th century is when all this happened.

[Ben Kissel]

I agree.

[Marcus Parks]

Which is the 1600s.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

You're welcome.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Thanks for clearing that up. Now, by the 17th century, Amsterdam was one of the wealthiest cities in the world. And that wealth was almost entirely owed to shipping. The Dutch had figured out how to ship goods faster, cheaper, and at a larger volume than any other European power. But the Dutch came out on top because of that most precious of commodities, spice.

[Marcus Parks]

He who owns the spice runs the universe.

[Ben Kissel]

Yes, but it's. It's kind of crazy.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

People just sat around eating, right? Like all day. That's what all this food, all European foods, just like boiled roots and old stinky lamb and all this kind of.

[Marcus Parks]

So why isn't it improved, proofed?

[Ben Kissel]

But it's.

[Henry Zebrowski]

There's actually a story behind why British food was so bland for so long is because spices became so pervasive in society that the upper classes started seeing spice as a lower class thing. So they made their food purposefully bland as to make it, quote unquote, pure. And that just sort of pervaded all of English society up until fairly recently.

[Marcus Parks]

Being rich sucks.

[Ben Kissel]

Honestly.

[Marcus Parks]

The only thing has become such a.

[Ben Kissel]

You just get really bored and I don't get it. You either become P. Diddy or you become like, you just collect typewriters. I don't know why.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now, today we take the spices we buy at comparatively impossible prices for granted. But the road that leads from the grocery store all the way back to the 17th century is a long and bloody one. And it heavily involves the VOC corporation and ships like the Batavia.

[Ben Kissel]

We just like spices as a. As humans. We. We've come to like them, I guess. I don't know how we discovered spices. I think literally just came from chewing on. Could be because you Know, I didn't know Pepper was a tree. Yeah, I had no idea Pepper was a tree. Yeah, I didn't know where it came from.

[Marcus Parks]

I tell you what, man. I kill a girl for some Chef Paul's magic seasoning.

[Ben Kissel]

Paul Prudho. I got the salmon seasoning for Paul Prudho. And honestly, there are. Sometimes the poultry is not to be.

[Marcus Parks]

Slept on as well.

[Ben Kissel]

I love the poultry season. And I looked at like, even just like Holden's daughter came over last night to the house. And there's a little part of me that was just like I just imagined, what if that Paul Prudhomme was in the center of her torso? Could I get it and. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just feel like I have earned it.

[Marcus Parks]

Meanwhile, you put it there to go kill her.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

I'm sorry, Holden.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now, it seems somewhat ridiculous that something as simple could lead to the creation of one of the most powerful corporations the world has ever seen.

[Ben Kissel]

Bring me the spice.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So to show you how the VOC and the Dutch came out on top, let's take one spice and see how its introduction into European society changed everything.

[Ben Kissel]

Baby spice?

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, that spice is nutmeg.

[Ben Kissel]

Nutmeg.

[Marcus Parks]

So stupid.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now, nutmeg trees were handy little two in ones that also produce the spice mace. And they grow naturally in exactly one place on Earth. The Banda Islands of Indonesia in Southeast Asia. Now, after nutmeg was introduced on a wide scale to Europe in the late Middle Ages by Muslim traders who'd been dealing with the people of the Banda Islands for hundreds of years, it began to be used in all manner of practical ways.

[Ben Kissel]

And that's also how we got the.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Black Plague, for example. By the late Middle ages, that's the 13th to 15th centuries, doctors in London had come to believe that nutmeg was a cure all, prescribing it for arthritis, gallbladders, the bloody flux, and even the plague.

[Ben Kissel]

I'm afraid to say the stockpile. Since the nutmeg has no effect on this patient. Get me a candy cane. Yes. The only thing that will cure this man's cancer is peppermint. What do you think? Is that RFK Jr?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes. Here in London town, we cure everything with Christmas cheer.

[Ben Kissel]

I think it's super important for people to pray. Spices. A new natural way to heal yourself. It's good. Cause I can kill whales on the moon from the Batavia. I wish I could. I could. I'd kill a baby. But I also prefer nothing.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Speaking of the plague, those infamous plague masks with the long noses, they were stuffed with a Blend of spices, including nutmeg, to protect against the Black Death. Because it was believed that the plague was spread through bad, bad air. Outside of medicine, Europeans also came to depend on nutmeg for the preservation of meat, because nutmeg naturally slows down rot. And nutmeg was also used to extend the life of ale. And that was very important because this was a time when fresh water was in short supply in cities because the rivers were full of piss. And yes, what a good time. Yes. That's also not to mention that nutmeg is yummy.

[Ben Kissel]

I mean, I don't know.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's yummy.

[Ben Kissel]

I don't mind a pumpkin. Yeah, like, I mean, it's fine old time. If it's not literally Thanksgiving Day. I will have a nutmeg beer, but otherwise I'm not having nutmeg anywhere. Well, I have nutmeg maybe once a year you put a little bit in there. But honestly, on a like a potato gratin, nutmeg's actually really good. Uplifting flavor. But that's as far as I go.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, before nutmeg beer would like. Ale would only last like five days max. And then it would go bad.

[Ben Kissel]

I'm not saying. Yeah, if that was the only beer. Yeah, I'm drinking nutmeg beer, but I'm saying I don't like, live then.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Sure, sure. Well, in addition to the practical uses, nutmeg was also tied to the surefire moneymaker that is human sexuality. Nutmeg was considered to be a powerful aphrodisiac.

[Ben Kissel]

Nut it, Meg.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. And one British lord even wrote a poem about his nightly ritual of eating a spoonful of the stuff in order to have arousing dreams.

[Ben Kissel]

So it's fucking telling you about, dude.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, yeah, dude.

[Ben Kissel]

Fucking have horny ass dreams eating a bunch of nutmeg.

[Marcus Parks]

You were telling me about this.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, in your sleep dreaming Last Night on Ms. Farley. My pecker was up this morning early and I was fain without my gown to raise in the cold to get him down hard shift, alas, but yet ashore, although it be no pleasing cure.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. So he doesn't like eating nutmeg, but he loves the boners it gives me.

[Ben Kissel]

I need the boners. I must have the boners to have sex with my nephew.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Sometimes, though, as it usually goes with aphrodisiacs, the sexual component of nutmeg would get people into trouble, as it did with one particularly rakish young Danish man whose experiments with nutmeg landed him in the defendant's box at his Very own witch trial in 1619.

[Ben Kissel]

Experiments with nutmeg. Sounds like a ween album.

[Henry Zebrowski]

In 1619, this Dutchman, who very well may have just been playing a prank for being honest, he told his friend that if he wanted to capture the object of his desire, he should do exactly this.

[Ben Kissel]

Okay.

[Henry Zebrowski]

First, eat an entire nutmeg seed whole.

[Marcus Parks]

Got it?

[Ben Kissel]

Yep.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Then sift through your feces in the days after to retrieve the semi digested material.

[Marcus Parks]

Sure.

[Ben Kissel]

All right. But what if I've already eaten, like. Listen, buddy, I, I, I'm hearing you. Yeah, I eat like three ball bearings yesterday. If there's a bunch around in there, like, how do I know what's nut and what's bearing?

[Henry Zebrowski]

You bring it to me and I'll tell you.

[Ben Kissel]

Thank you. Okay, that's all I.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You can also suck on it for a little while and then you can get the nutmeg taste. Yeah, yeah. Rinse it off first.

[Ben Kissel]

Okay, sure. It's like that fancy coffee.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Next, grate the nutmeg seed that has passed through your entire digestive tract into a glass of beer or wine. Then give said drink to the object of your affection. After she gulps it down, she will fall hopelessly in love with you. Whoa. Now, presumably the woman who was giving this disgusting swell noticed the change in taste.

[Ben Kissel]

This tastes like your fart. Yeah, this tastes like Buttman. It seems you are the cleverest lady I've ever laid nutmegs apart.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The whole plot was quickly uncovered and the prankster was thankfully not executed. He came very close.

[Ben Kissel]

I don't want to be murdered over nutmeg.

[Marcus Parks]

Wait, so who was almost killed?

[Henry Zebrowski]

The guy who tricked him? Yeah, the guy who told his friend to swallow it and all that. Yeah. And, and the other guy also got in trouble.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I was gonna say kill the idiot.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. But it's sort of like, you know, when you hire someone for murder, you're the one who gets charged with first degree murder. Yeah, it's sort of like that. Yeah, but I mean, the man was. Both men were punished for robbing the young woman of her virtue. Now, by the 17th century, nutmeg had been completely integrated into European society as nutmeg spiced ale and nutmeg seasoned meat had become the expected standard as opposed to the occasional treat. That meant that Europe needed a shitload of nut delivered to the continent on a constant basis. Now, the Portuguese, Spanish and English had already supplanted the original Muslim suppliers by this point. But while the Dutch were late to enter the spice trade, they soon became the number one Supplier of nutmeg. After the establishment of the Dutch East India Company, the voc, the term and.

[Ben Kissel]

Word nutmeg will eventually begin to lose meaning during this section. But it's okay. It's just nut.

[Marcus Parks]

It really is like the most boring spice.

[Ben Kissel]

This entire story centers on nutmeg.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now, just to make it clear, we're going to be referring to the Indies a lot in this series. By the Indies, we mean the islands of Southeast Asia, which includes the Malaysian, Philippine, and especially Indonesian archipelagos. Y'all got to say archipelagos or archipelago.

[Ben Kissel]

It's archipelago.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Archipelago.

[Marcus Parks]

I've never said it before, but archipelago sounds great.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Doesn't it, though? Yeah, but I mean, point is, though, these are areas of the world that are rich with spice. Now, one of the reasons why the Dutch became so much better than anyone else at the spice and shipping game is because they understood navigation on a level that surpassed even the vaunted British navy. See, as all the European power spent more time on the high seas, they developed dossiers for specific routes that included maps and sailing instructions. These dossiers were called rudders. And the secrets contained therein were so closely guarded that if a captain were to fail to destroy the rudder for their journey upon capture by enemy forces, or if he just lost the fucking thing, he could be executed for treason.

[Ben Kissel]

You just are out there, man. When you go that far out into the ocean and you just don't know how big it is, like you start to learn. Like, you just start. That's insane. Yeah. To just do attempt. This is so out of. I would not do this.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Obviously.

[Ben Kissel]

I'm a comedian. I say inside.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah. You would be killed immediately on the boat.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And also, it's just like, why not just say you destroyed it if you lost it? I'd be like, I felt threatened, so I destroyed it.

[Ben Kissel]

People can't. Because people can't keep a secret. And then when people start showing up at your secret little Heidi Pepper spot and you might gonna get. You're gonna get really angry.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Well, the Dutch eventually developed the best rudders out of anyone, mostly because their cartographers have put together the most comprehensive and accurate maps of the time. But since the Dutch caught on late as to how valuable the spice sourced from the islands of Southeast Asia could be, their fleets in the beginning were made up of a lot of smaller companies in the Netherlands, competing against both each other and the more consolidated companies of Europe, like the British East India Company.

[Marcus Parks]

Ah, yes.

[Ben Kissel]

Ah, yes, Very good. Now, weren't they all apart like these Are their big, like war. We're gonna teen years war.

[Henry Zebrowski]

We. We. There's a lot of stuff that I had.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. Holy Roman Empire.

[Henry Zebrowski]

There' a lot of stuff I had I didn't skip over.

[Ben Kissel]

A lot of stuff.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

A lot of shit. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, the Dutch government decided that in order to dominate the spice trade, it would be in the country's best interest to form a single joint stock corporation made up of a bunch of small investors. And in 1602, that was how the VOC was born.

[Ben Kissel]

Because weren't they cut out? Like that was like a part of it. They were a part of the. Because of the 18 years war. One of the long story shorts is that they were cut out of the spice trade. And they had to figure. They really had to figure out their own way.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

To get their own shit.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now, the VOC was just the second company in history to do business like this to be a joint stock corporation. They were right behind the British East India Company. And all the corporations since have followed in the footsteps of these two businesses. Basically, this is the birth of the modern corporation.

[Ben Kissel]

And it's one of the most powerful aspects of the human animal. The fact that we can understand in 4D space and reality a concept and make it real like a corporation. Does it exist? Corporation isn't anything you can't arrive like. Yes, there are buildings or corporation owns.

[Marcus Parks]

Corporations are people. Right.

[Ben Kissel]

They. They are very big people. Very, very big people that we can't seem to see the head or the arms or the legs of. And they are. It is. But it's interesting in that that are just our language can create a concept that then can become just as real as a building.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. But while today's corporations wield enormous power over our daily lives using politics and lobbying, the strength of the VOC and its competitors. Century was far more literal as the VOC and the English East India Company. They both had their own private armies made up of mercenaries from all over Europe.

[Ben Kissel]

You wait till you see the broccoli squads coming from Zuckerberg around here to make sure we're all like, like NBC's fucking tweets. This is gonna happen.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The VOC had thousands of soldiers on its payroll, which meant that they were capable of waging war and colonization. And at times these companies would go to war with each other over colonized lands, killing thousands in the process. And these over nutmeg?

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, dude. And you know that these guys are all like, it's just nutmeg. They're like on this island being like, we don't even like the nutmeg.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's everywhere.

[Ben Kissel]

We just fucking. We're sick of nutmeg. Have it. Take it. Just pay. Pay for it. Take the nutmeg. What do we give a fucking shit? Just take it. It's nutmeg. Why are you doing you torturing that guy? You're disemboweling that guy. Holy shit. You're crucifying a guy on a boat.

[Marcus Parks]

Take the duck back. But they didn't really care about life and death back then, you know, it was a lot more willy nilly.

[Ben Kissel]

Humans. Human life. Oh, no, actually, Eddie, I think that human life, its cost has not increased with inflation.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now, as for the people who invested in the VOC went. And to give you an idea of how much money we're talking about here, the investors were made up of 200 merchants across the United Provinces of the Netherlands. At minimum, an investor required 5,000 guilders to join, which is roughly $26,000 in today's currency.

[Marcus Parks]

Doable, yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The largest investors, however, contributed the modern equivalent of 11.5 million. And the return on these investments could be as large as 10 times their original outlay. In other words, the top VOC investors were the Bezos's, the Musk's, the Buffetts and the Zuckerbergs of their day.

[Ben Kissel]

Man, I could just see the inauguration. There's like the four of them. It's just like, you know, just dudes with the big metal hats and guys with just big like sacks of flour and stuff just like hanging out. Those are the billionaires.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, as far as who these people at the top were, the VOC was led by a sinister sounding group of capitalists named the Gentleman 17.

[Ben Kissel]

Only sinister because you are not in it. Because when we are together, hanging out, just the 17 of us, we are having some of the best times of our lives. We're going to have the best show of our lives, boys.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The gentleman 17 directed the VOC's overall strategies and in the process reaped the majority of the profits gained from Southeast Asian imports, which those imports also. It wasn't just spice. They also imported precious metals, they imported cotton, indigo, and eventually people.

[Ben Kissel]

Indigo is also a big thing. All of this is in Civ 6, which I've never been. I've never been into trading. I feel like the trading in Civ 6 is broken.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, we'll get there.

[Marcus Parks]

What is indigo used for?

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's a dye.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, it's a die.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. It goes into jeans, it's blue. It's like it's a plant.

[Marcus Parks]

All right, cool. Now I know.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, the VOC transported pretty much anything that would fit on a ship and anything that could be sold at a profit in Europe. The profit margins, at least for those at the top, were astounding. And that was due in large part to the absolutely ruthless policies the VOC Institute instituted. As for the men in the middle and the bottom, they were told that they could earn a fortune working for the VOC with just one trip across the ocean. Now that of course, wasn't always the case, as most sailors and soldiers received a set salary that was well below a living wage.

[Ben Kissel]

But if you were in above the line, you'd make a fuck ton of money.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, if you were able. But that's the thing. You kind of already had to start above the line. In order to get above the line, you had to at least be born of a higher social status. You couldn't, like, work your way up from like a sailor, like, you know, the boss.

[Ben Kissel]

That's crazy. That, that, that doesn't happen anymore, right? Yeah, it's nice. It doesn't happen. You can't just be born with a lot of money and then just be able to, like, make it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, no, we're. I, I really want people to pay attention to the fact that the world is quickly returning to the way it used to be. It's very much returning to the way it was back in the fucking 17th century when these motherfuckers were in charge.

[Ben Kissel]

Make America Dutch again.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, I mean, as we were saying, you know, there was room for upward mobility for a me who had a successful voyage. And men often rose in rank and opportunity in the VOC by taking a cue from the top and operating from a place of cold cruelty, all in the name of profit. See, as spice.

[Ben Kissel]

You must throttle them. You must control the spice.

[Henry Zebrowski]

See, as it still is with most Corporations today, the VOC's primary goal was to maximize value for shareholders. But there was not a single guardrail in place back in the 17th century to keep the VOC's bosses or employees from going too far in pursuit of higher profits. This is what completely deregulated capitalism looks like. Basically, the VOC's policies resulted in not only inhumane conditions for their employees, but all out wars against indigenous populations in which men were handsomely rewarded for the torture and slaughter of hundreds, sometimes thousands of people.

[Ben Kissel]

You want pepper? You can take it, just take it. You want jeans? We'll make the jeans. We'll make jeans.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, no.

[Marcus Parks]

I named my son and daughter Salt Baptist.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Is that all you want?

[Ben Kissel]

You know, like, I think we can make an arrangement, right?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, this slaughter was especially prevalent in the conquest of the Banda Islands and the subsequent establishment of the Batavia colony on the island of Java. So let's take a moment to explain just how the VOC established a foothold in the Indies and how they came to be the world's number one purveyors of spice.

[Ben Kissel]

Spice.

[Marcus Parks]

Gimme, gimme.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now in the early 17th century, the Dutch and the English were neck and neck when it came to the international spice game. And one of the most valuable spiceries in the world, the aforementioned Banda Islands of Indonesia, were in dispute between the two. Now, as I said earlier, the Banda Islands are the only place on earth where nutmeg grows naturally. But that wasn't it its only valuable spice. It's also the only place on earth where clove trees grow naturally. You don't like cloves?

[Ben Kissel]

No.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You don't like spiced wine?

[Marcus Parks]

No.

[Ben Kissel]

You don't like a mulled wine?

[Marcus Parks]

I also remember smoking cloves when you thought that was cool.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, dude, that was my favorite. Yeah, I smoke clothes until I cough blood.

[Marcus Parks]

I bought like multiple packs of cloves and now I just can't.

[Ben Kissel]

Thanks, Banda.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, as far as the Europeans went, the Bandinese have been trading with the Portuguese for about 90 years when the VOC finally showed up. Now the Portuguese of course not been the kindest of trading partners, but the Dutch were far worse. Worse than anyone, in fact. Somebody's gotta be the worst colonizer. It's the Dutch.

[Ben Kissel]

We will take that. Thank you. Honestly, it's a huge honor to be called the worst colonizer because there's so much competition and it's just nice to be nominated with some of my favorite people. Spain. Loving you. Loving what China's doing on the in the Asian continent. Good work, China. Thank you.

[Marcus Parks]

They're just so angry because their shoes are made out of wool.

[Ben Kissel]

It's honesty. Hell. It is hell trying to play horse. Have you ever tried to play horse in wooden clogs?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, the Dutch's arrival on the Banda Islands was marked with an omen. When they stepped foot on land, a volcano that had been dormant for centuries suddenly erupted. For the Bandines, this was the fulfillment of a prophecy foretold five years earlier by a Muslim holy who said that an army of white strangers would soon arrive to the Banda Islands to take them by force. And as you might expect, the prophecy very quickly came true.

[Ben Kissel]

Racist.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Why they got to be white?

[Ben Kissel]

But it is Interesting in that way because they called it some magical prophecy when it was definitely a Muslim guy. That's like they're coming here.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Prophecy at all.

[Ben Kissel]

This isn't some mystical thing I'm seeing.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He's a businessman. He was telling you the fucking forecast of the market.

[Ben Kissel]

I know these guys, and they can't wait to not pay me anymore. And I have a distinct feeling they're figuring out how to find me.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, to begin the campaign to take the Banda Islands, the VOC invaded one of them in particular and slaughtered the entire population. 1800 people died, all because the natives had been trading with the English after signing a treaty with the VOC for 100% trading rights.

[Ben Kissel]

Listen, before you do anything, just don't tell them about hazelnuts, okay? Because this shit's blowing. This has gone way out of proportion, buddy. All right? This was not supposed to be like this, dude.

[Marcus Parks]

He man wants some cinnamon.

[Ben Kissel]

Don't even do it, dude. They get hooked. Don't even talk about dill.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I mean, with this slaughter. I mean, the Bandines were basically killed for breach of contract. And out of 1800 murdered, 400 died by drowning when they tried to escape the VOC's vicious private army by swimming to another island. Once depopulated, the VOC replaced the people of this island with natives from other islands as workers. And they built a fortress with the highly unsubtle name of Fort Revenge.

[Ben Kissel]

I just love the ring of it. I just love it. It's just fun. It's easy to remember.

[Marcus Parks]

Revenge for what?

[Ben Kissel]

They killed everybody trying to live with our nutmeg.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No shit. Revenge for breaking a contract. Yeah, they broke a breach of contract. You were meant to just trade with us. You fucking went with. You go to our competitors. I'll show you what happens when you go to our competitors.

[Ben Kissel]

It's. It's negotiation.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now, after the VOC had been operating from Fort Revenge for almost a decade, the Bandinese decided to finally throw in their lot with the English. Because as bad as the English India Company was, the VOC was worse. The Bandinese, however, had no idea just how far ahead of the game the voc was by 1620. To begin with, most VOC ships were heavily armed with cannons which had originally been installed to defend themselves against Portuguese, Spanish and English ships, also on the lookout for spice.

[Ben Kissel]

And they learned a new mechanism of sending out a bunch of ships at once. They learned that that's the way to do it. Instead of just sending out one guy and hope he comes back, you just send Out a constant flow of ships now so that it never send them.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Out like 15 at a time.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. So that never stops. So that you're always. So they're crossing each other so they actually. Which is interesting. So there's support on the open ocean.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. But within just a few years of its founding, the VOC went on the offensive and began intentionally sink the ships of foreign competitors in full naval battles. The VOC also had far more capital, stronger support from their government, and better ships than anyone else.

[Ben Kissel]

Man, have been so been fun if I had to like be the first maid of the Hollywood video ship and I had to slaughter everybody at the. On the blockbuster ship. Yeah. You know, I mean just to get. Because they all have the new. They got the. They got Hitch in first, you know what I mean? So I got to get all that Hitch because people are looking for Hitch, right? That's Kevin James Will Smith vehicle. But listen, that was a fucking guaranteed money maker. That's the version. That's their nutmeg. That was our nutmeg.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I don't want to fucking get on the fucking Joe's Crab Shack ship and have to go fight the Logan's roadhouse ship. Well, putting all these factors together, the better ships, the stronger government, the bigger capital. The VOC had nearly wiped out the English East India Company by 1620, which meant that the Bandinese event Indonesia never stood a chance, nor did the English. Now the VOC's man on the ground in Indonesia, the man who eventually wiped out the Bandinese, was a right Dutch bastard named Jan's Peter Zoon Kuhn. If I were to cast the biopic, Jan's Kuhn would be played by Ralph Innocent, the father and the witch.

[Ben Kissel]

Very much so. Great, great casting. And he was put out there because they didn't want want him back in the Netherlands anymore. Legitimately, this man was so scary and he was such a non Persona non grata that they put him out in the middle of fucking nowhere. Because also they knew he'd be the guy that would kill everybody.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Nicknamed Descrale because of his thin figure and bony fingers.

[Ben Kissel]

It's that guy, right? The guy who talks like this. Come here. Come daughter.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Coon was a humorless and ultimately genocidal VOC company man through and through. Kuhn was a chief merchant, a high management position in the voc, and his only goal when he arrived on the Banda Islands in 1612 was to subjugate its people and secure the world's largest supplies of nutmeg and clothes for his company.

[Marcus Parks]

So no one made him laugh.

[Ben Kissel]

There was one time I laughed. I saw a young, beautiful man. Woman fiddled with china. And I sat and I watched as she gave birth. And as the feet slid out of her gash, I saw that it was dead. And in that moment, I chuckled.

[Marcus Parks]

You're hilarious.

[Ben Kissel]

Thank you. That's a part of my. You want to check me out it's too wild for Netflix thing comedy special where I'm just uncontrollable, saying things people wish they could say.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, to start with, Jan Kunz took a thousand men on the VOC payroll and invaded the island of Java to conquer the city of Jakarta, both as a show of force and to further drive the English East India Company out of the Indies. Once captured, Kuhn burned Jakarta to the ground and built the VOC capital city of Batavia on its ashes. This settlement, one of the first company towns in history, was named after the Germanic tribe that were thought to be the ancestors of the Dutch people. So we got Batavia the colony and Batavia the ship. Now, Kuhn spent the next year building up his forces, and before long, he'd amassed an army of 13 ships, 1600 soldiers, and this is fucking incredible. 80 Japanese ronin.

[Ben Kissel]

How?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Fucking samurais without lords or masters.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, I guess they're right over there.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, yeah, they're mercenaries.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, they're total mercenaries. So, like, yeah, let's get the fucking samurai. Like, they'll show them what. What's what.

[Ben Kissel]

Yes. My favorite is when they all get together and they do that cheeseburger. Cheeseburger sketch. Absolute favorite. A little culturally insensitive.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now, true to form, the ronin were the deadliest and cruelest men in kun's crew. Besides being vicious warriors, they would torture prisoners psychologically by beheading some of them and rolling the heads around the feet of the other captives while laughing at the panic it caused.

[Ben Kissel]

Is it funny?

[Henry Zebrowski]

On one occasion, six Japanese ronin on the VOC's payroll quartered and beheaded 44 Bandinese prisoners with samurai swords.

[Marcus Parks]

Why?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Because that's what they wanted to do. Then they displayed the heads on bamboo spikes for all to see.

[Ben Kissel]

Honestly, I'm looking for self starters. I'm looking for people that have. They anticipate needs. Yeah, super. They're really great within the corporate culture here, the voc.

[Marcus Parks]

And it's good they use bamboo because it grows back so easily.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes.

[Ben Kissel]

And it's sustainable.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I mean, this whole story is. I mean, it might as well be called the evil that men do. It's what happens when people are left unchecked when you just say, go out and be as cruel and mean and savage as possible and come back and we'll give you a nice little fat paycheck.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, because these guys also believe there was. Obviously, it's money and it's power, but there is also a kind of. Of like a Manifest Destiny style. We are expressing our power over the world.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, absolutely. No, that happened again and again. You know, it happens with. You know, it also happens, you know, when native populations start dying of disease that the Europeans would bring over. They would say, this is God's judgment on these people. They're dying because we are meant for this land. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And, you know, people don't care as long as they still got their nutmeg coming in.

[Henry Zebrowski]

They really are.

[Ben Kissel]

I kind of want an orange. Yeah? Yeah. Like, ah, well, here's my orange thing.

[Marcus Parks]

Let's go take Florida.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. We live in California.

[Ben Kissel]

I want the other ones. I want the other ones.

[Marcus Parks]

So sweet. The ones with the snakes in the trees.

[Ben Kissel]

I want one taken from a dead child's hands Now.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yong Kun's orders from the voc, they were just to subjugate the Bandinese. He was not supposed to slaughter them en masse. But when a torturous interrogation of a Bandinese warrior revealed a plot on Khun life, he took it very personally.

[Ben Kissel]

I do tend to do that, yes.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And thereafter set himself on the task of completely annihilating the Bandinese people. Many Bandonese were driven into barren areas by VOC armies and starved, while others were simply beaten to death. Many more were enslaved and forced to work the plantations that were quickly springing up around the islands, but not that many.

[Ben Kissel]

Dude, have you heard of garlic salt? Honestly, there's some crazy shit over there. You should go to that other island over there. I've heard they've got. Have you heard of smoked paprika? Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Why don't you ask the ronin about teriyaki?

[Ben Kissel]

Do not tell them the secret of teriyaki.

[Henry Zebrowski]

In the end, it's estimated that out of the 15,000 people that Kuhn found on the Banda Islands, fewer than a thousand survived his campaign of terror. Furthermore, the VOC ordered that all clove and nutmeg trees not controlled by the VOC were to be destroyed so as to regulate the supply and keep the prices as high as possible. Anyone on the islands caught growing, stealing, or possessing these plants without authorization were subject to the death penalty carried out by VOC employees.

[Marcus Parks]

Did it just randomly grow?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, but if it's on your land, if it's in your room. If you've got it with you, you're fucking dead.

[Ben Kissel]

And this is before we decided that we could, like, grow it ourselves or whatever. Yeah. So we just wanted. Because they already had it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, so we'll just take it and. Well, it only grows in certain climates. Like, you can't just. You can't. I don't think you can grow a nutmeg tree in, like, Bristol.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, but it sounds like a children's book.

[Marcus Parks]

You could steal one, plant it in a Greek island that you've stolen.

[Ben Kissel]

Mykonos.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Eventually they did start planting them on other islands, but. Yeah, but. But for the longest time, this was the only place where you could get nutmeg.

[Ben Kissel]

I still. Honestly and truly, this also reminds me when Craziest Days at Borders is that we had. We found out that someone had taken some books, like one of the employees, and it was really crazy about how, like, they. They charged me. They're like, well, you know, because I was the manager on time, and they said, can you handle this? Can you talk with this guy? And I had to hold a gun to the back of his head while he committed sepu.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

In front of J.K. rowling. And it was honestly, truly one of just. She's so nice in person.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You get the prize.

[Ben Kissel]

She. Her phone. Turf. Turf.

[Marcus Parks]

As long as blood squirting on her shoes, she's fine.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, she loves it.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now, for taking the plot on his life personally, Coon received a strongly worded letter from the men who ran the VOC. The aforementioned gentleman, 17. But their issue was not with the genocide per se, but what the genocide might do to trade relations.

[Ben Kissel]

I'm sorry, I didn't think about it like that. I got ahead of myself.

[Marcus Parks]

And the letter did end with a winky face.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, One of these of those emojis.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You've been a bad, bad widow, boy.

[Ben Kissel]

Yes, I have. I guess I should get a spanker.

[Henry Zebrowski]

See, word of genocide tends to get around, and there were plenty of other native civilizations in the Indies that the VOC planned to do business with. In other words, Kuhn was reprimanded not for crimes against humanity, but for bad business practices. Despite the reprimand, Jans kept his position as one of the VOC's chief merchants and was thereafter considered a Dutch national hero in the mold of so colonists before and after, and even has a statue that stands to this day.

[Ben Kissel]

But he was also the man for the job, because someone. They believed that they needed that type of psychopath to hold this Far very valuable outpost for them.

[Marcus Parks]

That would be O.C. or a kill.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, sure, I can't wait to watch.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now, while the Dutch government was somewhat involved in all this, the genocide and subjugation of the Bandinese was planned, authorized and carried out by employees of the voc. Again, it's just a private company. And with this conquest they'd proved that they would do and allow just about anything if it increased their profit margin. Once the Banda Islands were in their grasp, the VOC completely controlled the world's nutmeg and clove supply, which brought them close to a total monopoly on the global spice trade at large. And just like how we can't avoid putting money into Amazon's pockets, even if we don't buy shit from Amazon directly, most likely the people we buy shit from do use Amazon. Anyone in Europe who wanted their spiced wines and erectile aids were now contributing to the profits of the voc. Somewhere down the supply line.

[Ben Kissel]

What's it doing? Oh, I don't care.

[Marcus Parks]

Erectile aids is, you know, how it all got started.

[Ben Kissel]

It's really very sad.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That is very sad. That's true.

[Ben Kissel]

Fly from your grave.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now, concerning the type of person that was willing to work for the voc, the number one quality needed was a tolerance for risk. See, out of the million some odd people who sailed with the VOC to the Indies over the course of their exist, less than one in three returned to Europe alive.

[Ben Kissel]

It was not a comfortable trip, it wasn't a fun trip.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, and you, you were just as likely to die on the trip as you were when you got to the East Indies themselves. Statistically speaking, you were far more likely to die than you were to get rich. Some who sailed to the Indies did end up settling in Southeast Asia, but most of the settlers were killed by various plagues, diseases, or in skirmishes as with the natives. The VOC's reputation for brutality and this acknowledged risk, however, attracted a certain type of man to their employment. A type whose morals were flexible to.

[Ben Kissel]

Say the least, now didn't like. So they would also, they would trade with closer places, so they would trade with other people in Europe. They probably trade in some other places, probably in the Middle east maybe where they do, right? Yeah. But then it's kind of interesting on this leg, this was the leg that was the most profitable, but also the most horrible.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The Indies leg. It was the longest, it was the worst, it was the most dangerous.

[Ben Kissel]

And so that's why all of the bottom of the talent pool was at this leg.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, and like, how, just for my own thought process, how would they actually get there? Would they have to go all the way around Africa, down the bottom or.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, they went around. They would. Usually they would start in, they would start from Europe, they would sail down to the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, stop once and then make the rest of the trip to Indonesia.

[Ben Kissel]

So what they learned was a faster way to go was because it was about taking a left. Like literally you had to go from. It was a left out of Netherlands. You take a right in Africa and then you get to right before Australia and you make a left and you go up and you catch this one current. But guess what happens if you don't? You get really fucked up. Guess what? Australia. Really? Surrounded by miles and miles and miles and miles and miles. Miles of coral, which is extremely sharp. And destroy ships, countless ships. So it's interesting, almost like you kind of waiting for something to go wrong.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yep. Now, the roll call on a VOC ship was made up of sailors, soldiers, tradesmen and merchants. The soldiers and sailors were often otherwise unemployable men who were violent, often lazy, and above all else, expendable.

[Ben Kissel]

And that's how I like to be. Please kill me and forget me because I don't even know my name. I'm a random man with a bandana and I'm next to a cannon but you'll never know me, will you? All right. I am his brother. I look just like him and sound just like him too.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Where'd you come from?

[Ben Kissel]

Home. Doesn't really matter cause I'm a walking corpse.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, the tradesmen on the ship, which included carpenters, cooks, surgeons and what have you, they seem like men who were just looking for steady work. But if a man ended up on a VOC ship, it usually meant that he had fucked up pretty badly at some point in his life. This is last stop shit. But speaking of fuck ups, let's talk about the merchants. The merchants were the men responsible for protecting the goods and the profit potential of the voyage. And as such, they were given authority to override the captain's orders if the merchant deemed it necessary to protect the VOC's interests.

[Ben Kissel]

Nothing like a corporation putting in some talentless, unconnected middle person to be at the very top of the little thing that you might know. Because he's over the captain.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, he's over the captain.

[Ben Kissel]

So the captain is the person who knows how to run the ship and do all the stuff. The ship. But he is a boss. It's just some guy from the company.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

And that's all he does.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Let's surprise the newspapers and go full speed ahead with this ship called the Titanic, like all these guys do.

[Marcus Parks]

And what happens when they kill the captain? The first mate takes over or they take over.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I think they just keep going, like promoting from within the sailors. But, you know, but the, but that's the thing is that the, the, the captain we're going to get to, you know, his job later, but mostly he's there to navigate and to manage the sailors. Keep the sailors in line. Okay? Now, if the merchants survived the sea voyage and landed in the Indies, they then had the task of maximizing profits on the ground by negotiating with the local leaders the VOC hadn't killed yet to obtain spices and or goods to bring back to Europe. Now, concerning the social standing of the merchants, many of them were most definitely in the past fuck up category. The majority were down on their luck. Financially disgraced debtors who'd lost everything, or businessmen on their way down the economic ladder who would do anything to turn around their failing fortunes.

[Ben Kissel]

Because sometimes if you came back with a super fucking successful run from the Indies, you could get re put back into some form of respectable. Like there was always kind of like a shot, yeah, that maybe if I come back and I make everybody a fuck ton of money, they'll legitimize me again and then I could go back to doing a more cush thing. I can go to France or I could go to some other place. It's not fucking Jakarta.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, was there like a shit ton of merchants on the ship or was there just like three or four?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Just a few. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There weren't. There weren't very many. Now, on a VOC ship, merchants were divided into two ranks, upper merchants and under merchants. These were the middle managers of the company. But since most of them were in dire financial straits, even they were desperate men. As such, one of the VOC desperate under merchants will play the psychopathic villain in today's tale. A man named Euronymous Cornelis.

[Ben Kissel]

You talk to me and you ask me how do you control control a man? And I tell you, you do it by his soul. Excuse me, I farted.

[Marcus Parks]

You don't have to call them under merchants. You can just call them merchants.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, that's that. Well, that's the thing. It's to separate them from the upper merchants.

[Marcus Parks]

But the up dude, you can still call the guys the upper merchants and the other guys merchants. You have to call them shitheads.

[Ben Kissel]

What I'm saying This is actually one of the traits of that that's going to come up again and again in this story. Once we get the actual plot, you really start to see the corporatization, the ladders put into place that these guys follow like they are real God's law. That's how afraid they are of their bosses. That these roles will be actually extremely important to the story that comes up because of how everybody behaves according to their roles.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, of course they're scared of their bosses. They kill islands of people in front of them.

[Ben Kissel]

Yes, this is why we're doing the context.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, yeah. Yes, their bosses execute people. Now, to be perfectly clear here, the dictatorial middle manager in the Amazon allegory that began today's episode that represented Euronymous Cornelius, because after the Batavia wrecked, Euonymus would use his psychopathic charm to trap the survivors in a nightmare of his own making. None of this happens without Euronymous. Now, Euronymous Cornelis was indeed a complete nutter psychopath. But he was not the same strife as, say, a Ted Bundy. Rather, Euronymous is more like a Nazi who probably would have gone his entire life without hurting another person, had circumstances not open the door to savagery.

[Ben Kissel]

It's nice to have an invitation to violence. Thank you. Because I was just a pussy before. Not now, though.

[Marcus Parks]

I'll kill everyone, but I won't fuck their corpse.

[Ben Kissel]

My thing is that I need a government's permission to do it, but. But as soon as I get it, I can't fucking wait to do it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, Euronymous whole thing is not that he would kill anyone, is that he liked to get people to kill for him.

[Ben Kissel]

The true capitalist.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Born in 1598 in the Dutch town of Leevarten to wealthy landowning parents, Euronymous was raised as an Anabaptist. The Anabaptists were a fascinating and highly aggressive Christian cult. And their philosophy of violence undoubtedly influenced Euronymous Cornelis in the most negative of way. Now, the core principle of the Anabaptists was that they believed that only adults acting on their own free will should be baptized. Infant baptism, in their opinion, was utter horseshit. Because babies can't really decide anything for themselves.

[Ben Kissel]

You're just making a baby wet. And I don't need to make a baby wet in a church. I can do it by leaving it out in the rain.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, kind of agree.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, I do too.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, of course it's stupid.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It means nothing. Yeah, it's theater. This belief about baptism, however, was considered heresy to Both the Catholic Church and the Protestants, which put the Anabaptists at odds with the rest of the Netherlands from the get go. Additionally, Anabaptism was a millenarian cult, meaning they believed that a vengeful Christ was sure to return any day now to kick off a vicious apocalypse.

[Ben Kissel]

Is that Christ? No, just some guy. Sorry, I get really scared. Is that Christ? Oh my God, is he. Oh no, just some long haired guy, white skin.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But most importantly, as far as the Anabaptist Baptist neighbors went, they believed that it was their duty to build a new Jerusalem by force, which led to mass murder in the year 1534. Yay. Although it's sometimes. Although it's kind of nice to take a break and see the whites going against the whites. Yeah, yeah. Just like different kinds of whites fighting.

[Ben Kissel]

And skirmishing and doing. You know, it's funny because of all the serial killers, I feel like so many people cover, like they always want us to cover true crime and do serial killers because they're like, oh, we want blood, we want murder. And it's like so far in this episode we've killed thousands, thousands of people. And that's just theater. That's just history I think is amazing. Just think about they just all wiping stuff out and. Because it's not individually cleaving someone to death.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

I feel like this kind of may be part of the issue. Yeah. Is that we see it kind of like you just like forget.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Just. No, this is like bigger than a serial killer.

[Henry Zebrowski]

To be clear, 44 people have been beheaded in this episode. Episode already.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, at least, at least. Because. Well, there's also the whole, you know, the whole island.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Was murdered.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, in the year 1534, Anabaptists seized the German town of Munster, where they expelled or killed any non believers and spent 16 months as rulers of their own little theocracy. The leaders, predictably enough, soon began practicing compulsory polygamy because they'd expelled, expelled or killed many of the men in Munster.

[Ben Kissel]

And it was definitely a thing that they just stumbled upon because of her prophecy. And it's not just because the guy just noticed that there's a lot of just like open wives. Never just said like, oh wow, there just seems to be a bunch of lonely ass women here that I could have sex with.

[Henry Zebrowski]

They had to do it.

[Ben Kissel]

They had to. Because God said.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Finally though, the city was retaken by a joint force of Catholics and Protestants.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh wow.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Working together. Who executed the leaders and nailed the genitals of one in particular to the city gates. It's usually what they do to polygamists, stuff like that. They do like to mutilate the genitals. Genitals, yeah, and display them.

[Ben Kissel]

And you can use a little door knocker. The balls. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

By the end, around 3,000 people had died in the so called Munster rebellion. This was all due to the Anabaptists.

[Ben Kissel]

And where was grandpa? Say Munsters. The monsters TV show.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The monsters reference. Yeah. Well, after the rebellion was put down, the Anabaptists splintered and some factions continued rapidly robbing and killing anyone who wasn't a member of their cult. Others, however, followed an Anabaptist named Minnow Simmons, who adopted a philosophy of non violence. Well, we now know the descendants of these followers of Minnow as the Mennonites.

[Ben Kissel]

Oh, the Amish.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, the Amish Light, as we like to call them in Texas, because they would make their own clothes, but they would still wear Nikes and shop at.

[Ben Kissel]

Walmart and they can have cell phones.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And you got to take care of your feet, you know?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, yeah, of course, yeah. I mean, but yeah, I know. Got what like the point of Mennonites was.

[Marcus Parks]

But it's just bad social people.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

I've actually. I think I knew some Mennonites. It's interesting. It's technically like a very peaceful.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Sure.

[Ben Kissel]

It's kind of a Quakery thing.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. But I never got the point of like you have. You have to make your own clothes, but you can buy Nikes.

[Ben Kissel]

It's because they are just barely hanging on.

[Henry Zebrowski]

There were, however, some Anabaptists who assimilated into the Mennonite religion in name only, while still following the violent ideologies of other Anabaptist leaders, if only to survive in a decidedly anti Anabaptist environment. Amongst those who still believed in the philosophy of violence were the parents of our villain, Euronymous. Cornelius. For Euronymous, using organized violence to get what you want would very much have not only been an acceptable path, but second nature.

[Ben Kissel]

I learned to read by getting spanked with each letter. He used to write up a bunch of letters and they used to. To spank me with them. And I'll tell you what, I know the language better than anyone.

[Marcus Parks]

All right, time to learn Korean.

[Ben Kissel]

Ow. These letters are sharp.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now, after school, Euronymous became an apprentice to an apothecary on the road to becoming one himself. Apothecaries were, in essence, the pharmacists of their day, concocting potions and treatments from roots, herbs and other exotic ingredients like animal Excrement. Well, as far as the exotic ingredients went, specifically the animal excrement, pigeon was supposed to be a cure for epilepsy, while horse manure was said to cure the lung condition known as pleurisy.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, good, I've been eating it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, your lungs. Oh, man, I can see them from here. They're healthy.

[Ben Kissel]

There's just nothing like just sitting there coughing and choking, just being like, hey, have some more horseshit. Like, listen, you don't seem to be feeling good. Have you had any horseshit today?

[Marcus Parks]

Well, that's why Nick Nolte's still alive.

[Ben Kissel]

He's horse. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Animal penises were also held in high regard by apothecaries. Dried boar penis, for example, supposedly reduced phlegm and balanced the humors the way.

[Ben Kissel]

You used to do that. Was the old fashioned manual where you should go, that's how you get rid of the flam.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, yeah, because a lot of the. The apothecary stuff, it was. It was all around like, you know, the four humors theory, you know, was that. Phlegm, blood, bile. What's the fourth one?

[Ben Kissel]

Snuberance. Yeah, well, it's how you.

[Marcus Parks]

It's when you get a poor throat.

[Ben Kissel]

Yep.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Stupid.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But if you really wanted the top of the line cure all from an apothecary, it was believed that nothing was better than ground up mummy flesh.

[Ben Kissel]

Oh, please.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, I try it once, you know, twice if you ask, you probably could be sick.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Interestingly though, in addition to cures, apothecaries also made poisons. They were kind of exterminators. They made rat poison and such.

[Ben Kissel]

They did a lot of weird shit.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

I always remember for Romeo and Juliet.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But as we'll see later, after the wreck of the Batavia, Euronymous was just as bad at making poisons as he was at the rest of the apothecary business. And after trying to run his own shop for a few years, he declared. Declared bankruptcy in 1628.

[Marcus Parks]

I don't understand. How are you bad at making poison?

[Ben Kissel]

This is just like orange juice. This is delicious.

[Henry Zebrowski]

They're actually gonna show later. Like, he's bad at it.

[Ben Kissel]

It's like 7 up. He just accidentally makes delicious. He's like, wow, this is good, this crystal Pepsi.

[Henry Zebrowski]

All right.

[Marcus Parks]

You'll die any hour now.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, you're bad at making poison is you make him sick but you don't kill them. And so they just sit there screaming and screaming in pain, which, you know, isn't really the point unless it is. Unless it Is now. In addition to his bad business sense, Geronimus's personal life was also an absolute nightmare. The year before his business failed, he got married to another Anabaptist and settled in the Dutch city of Harlem. His wife soon became pregnant, but the pregnancy was difficult. For some reason, Euronymous hired an absolute loot lunatic as a midwife. An uncouth, deranged and dangerously incompetent individual who danced and sang compulsively frequently, spoke of so called torments inside her head and slept every night with an ax. Thank you. Thank you.

[Ben Kissel]

I think that she was probably hot.

[Marcus Parks]

That's what I was gonna say.

[Ben Kissel]

That was the issue here. I think that has been a husband been issue since day one. Since nannies existed.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So when the baby finally came, the midwife mishandled the delivery and left the placenta in the womb of Euronymous wife which became infected and septic. The new mother was therefore unable to breastfeed.

[Ben Kissel]

What? Yeah, that's what happened. You leave the placenta up in.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's what can happen. You're supposed to take it out.

[Ben Kissel]

How does it affect? Has it clogged the tubes?

[Henry Zebrowski]

I don't know.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, you're supposed to take it out and you got to put it back in the front hole.

[Ben Kissel]

That's what I thought.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

And then you fold it back up. Yeah, your ass.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

If you don't take it out though, hard to keep singing and dancing. I know that much.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Did your mom eat your placenta? Absolutely not. I don't think my mom even knows that. That is a thing that people do. Did your mother eat your placenta?

[Ben Kissel]

No. She ordered in. Yeah, she actually. She actually didn't eat mine. She actually wanted one. From the restaurant.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, my father chopped it up and put it on an Arby sandwich.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Whose sandwich?

[Ben Kissel]

His.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, because the new mother was sick, she was unable to breastfeed. But Euronymous was like, all right, the first midwife, she's insane, let's get rid of her. But instead he hired a wet nurse to handle the breastfeeding, who was just as bad, if not worse, a woman who had already gone mad with syphilis. And the baby contracted the disease as a result, within weeks. If the average 17th century infantile death from syphilis is anything to go on, Euonymus child died. Died a horrible, horrible death.

[Ben Kissel]

Funny story. I'm sure.

[Henry Zebrowski]

By the end, babies who died from syphilis bled profusely from the mouth and anus and were covered in so many sores and rashes that they were said to have looked moth eaten when they mercifully died. But concerning the woman who gave the baby syphilis, the author Batavia's graveyard speculates that Euronymous might have had an affair with her and contracted syphilis himself. Which would partly explain his horrific behavior after the Batavia wrecked.

[Ben Kissel]

Everything I do is highly logical. Even my madness.

[Marcus Parks]

Surprised he didn't murder her. I was. He had made love to her. It's like the only time. And then it ended up leading to a bunch of murder.

[Ben Kissel]

It's because he didn't fully become who he was going to be until the moment came where he could finally blossom.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Again, this may have just been one factor that unlocked Euronymous true psychopathy. See, after the Batavia wrecked and its passengers and crew were stranded, Euronymous was definitely acting on a philosophy. And that philosophy was heavily influenced by a man named Johannes Torrentius.

[Ben Kissel]

This guy's fascinating too.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. See, Torrentius was Euronymous's fencing partner and friend, but he was better known in the Netherlands as a highly controversial painter who was infamous for openly using sex workers, refusing to financially support his wife, and allegedly being in regular contact with Satan.

[Ben Kissel]

He's the most actual Dutch person we've met so far.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Terentius claimed that all of his artistic skills came from black magic rituals.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, you would know what they're like. It's what I do. You just wouldn't know. It's something I do. Something cool.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. He said he would place blank canvases on the floor and the paintings would magically create themselves. Terentius also bought black chickens and roosters exclusively so he could sacrifice them to Beelzebub.

[Ben Kissel]

They're the only ones he takes. It's just his favorite thing. It's his favorite color. He likes chicken.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And Terentius claimed to go on long walks in the woods where he would have a extensive conversations with Satan himself.

[Ben Kissel]

It's crazy talking to my old buddy. I was talking to my old buddy in the woods the other day and he said to me, I was like, lord Satan, how are you feeling? And he was saying something. He was like, I'm just not feeling good right now. I'm not feeling very confident right now in myself. You know, I just reminded him, like, you're Satan. You know, you don't need to. You don't need all of this, Mr. G. Just feel good for yourself. Feel good on by yourself. And I really think you took it to heart in many ways. And he gave me five dicks. Yeah, it's pretty good. Pretty Cool to be me.

[Marcus Parks]

Three are on my body. Two were in my pocket.

[Ben Kissel]

Two were in my pocket. I made a bit of a shtle drum with them.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Terentius, however, was not a Satanist. He was a gnostic, which is basically.

[Ben Kissel]

A Satanist, according to these fucks.

[Marcus Parks]

Agnostic means you don't believe in shit.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, gnostic. Not agnostic. Gnostic. That meant that he believed that God and Satan were equal.

[Ben Kissel]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, cool.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. And since Terentius had friends in high places, he was able to openly discuss his gnostic beliefs where others might be charged with heresy. And who else was listening but Euronymous Cornelis?

[Ben Kissel]

See, Gnostics believe, that's why they're super controversial is that all of their books were taken and hidden in caves. Right. Like the Dead Sea Scrolls. Those are all Gnostic works.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The Book of Enoch.

[Ben Kissel]

Yes. And what it in the book of Judas, the book of Thomas. And basically what they say is you don't need the capital C church to get enlightenment. You Jesus is in everyone. You can have this mystical property. And the church doesn't like that because that means that you. You don't need them.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. It means they don't get your money.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Before long, Euronymous was mixing Terentius Gnostic beliefs with Anabaptist dogma. And eventually Euronimus came upon the conclusion that he was incapable of sin. That no thought or deed, not even murder, could be described as evil. Because what is evil anyway?

[Ben Kissel]

It's just four letters. Four letters? What could you even do? What's a letter? Just a line on a piece of paper. What's paper? It's tree blood. What's what is even trees?

[Henry Zebrowski]

But in 1628, the same year Euronymous went bankrupt, Tarintius finally wore out his welcome in Dutch high society. He was arrested for heresy, at long last tortured on the rack and sentenced to 20 years in prison. I can't imagine who he pissed off to make this happen. After Terentius trial, Dutch authorities declared that all suspected heretics be banished from the city of Harlem, which ended up working to the advantage of Europe. Euronimous Corneli's See, by that point, he'd failed as an apothecary. He was bankrupt, his baby had died of syphilis and his wife still hadn't recovered from the womb infection.

[Ben Kissel]

She's being a huge bummer about it. So I'm just like, listen, baby, can we get past this? It's been a week.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm just impressed she's still alive.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, I mean, just barely.

[Ben Kissel]

She Had a very big.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it takes a while to kill someone with a 10 pound pussy.

[Henry Zebrowski]

There's a lot of energy to drop.

[Ben Kissel]

The baby didn't touch the sides.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So Euronymous, his life and fucking ruins, more or less used the heretic order as an excuse to abandon his wife for a job with who else but the voc? Now, the only explicit criteria to sign a VOC contract was that you should not be bankrupt, nor Catholic, nor infamous.

[Ben Kissel]

Oh, no.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Andronimous was bankrupt, but he still had a fairly high social status because he came from a wealthy family and he had connections as such. A wealthy captain, who I'd imagine regretted this decision later, vouched for Euronymous to the voc. Euronymous was therefore hired as an under merchant and was soon bound for the Indies to make his fortune.

[Ben Kissel]

He also was one of the only guys that wasn't a total criminal to apply. So that was at. At the time, they didn't really know what they were getting involved in and so they were kind of. It was like, you know, when I guess in the army or in the navy, people get kind of upset when someone goes to like officer school and just shows up and takes over. Yeah, that's what this guy's like. It's just like no experience whatsoever. He's just evil now.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Being pretty evil. Yeah, well, I mean, I mean, he's definitely on the road. He's abandoned his ailing wife to, you know, to go make money.

[Ben Kissel]

What is she going to do? Honestly, you spend an afternoon with her, she is just. My baby has got syphilis. I'm a bargain. All day. All day. Okay, so send me to Jakarta now.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Being an under merchant made Jeronimus a member of the upper class on a VOC ship. That upper class included upper merchants, bookkeepers, clerks, and their assistants. Basically, on a ship the size of the Batavia, you had about a dozen of these guys. And so Jeronimus and a dozen others of his class would make up the business, his staff on one of the most impressive ships in the VOC fleet. Finally, we arrive at the Batavia. Now, a big factor in the VOC success on the high seas was their ability to streamline mass production of ships on an industrial scale. And in fact, they were one of the first companies to ever do so.

[Ben Kissel]

Dude, I was like looking at pictures of it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Insane.

[Ben Kissel]

It's crazy.

[Marcus Parks]

It's huge, right?

[Ben Kissel]

I guess it's one of those where we all like, that's where all the thing comes from, where like, people doubt that ancient man could have done Specific giant things. But then when you look at what manpower can do on its own, it's so fucking impressive. If you have no regulations, it's amazing what you can pull off.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. How many people even died making the goddamn ship?

[Henry Zebrowski]

A lot. Well. While other shipbuilders in Europe took at least two years to build one ship, the VOC construct and launch sea craft in just six months. This, of course, helped with their strategy of flooding the zone. But besides just building them fast, the VOC also built them better. VOC ships were most complex machines in existence at the time. Conveyances that maximized loading, cost, cargo space and defense. And the Batavia was considered the top of the line when it came to VOC ships. The Batavia was a class of ship the VOC called a return ship, which was designed to carry both high class passengers and cargo on long voyages to and from the Indies. A distance of some, some 15,000 miles journeyed over an average of eight months one way.

[Ben Kissel]

And it's a big central ship, right. It has a bunch of smaller ships that kind of go with it, right? Like, kind of like support ships.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Measuring as long as a football field is wide, The Batavia had four decks, three masts and 30 guns. Its upper works, this, it sounds like the gaudiest fucking thing in the world. Its upper works were painted bright green and gold, while its stern was decorated with gaudy flourishes specifically requested by the gentleman 17 so as to quote overawe, the people of the East.

[Ben Kissel]

What I love first is when a boat has tits on the front of it. And it shows respect. It shows respect. People respect the tits. When they show up, they go and they look at, they're like, whoa, look at those big tits. Yes, let's do business for them.

[Marcus Parks]

A lot of times they did have tits on the front.

[Ben Kissel]

That's what I'm saying.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, yeah. Like literally.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, they also wasn't specifically this boat because a lot of times they wouldn't put a lot of like j into these boats. But the Batavia, they're like, let's make this one nice.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. The gentleman 17 were like, go all out with this ship. In all, the construction of the Batavia cost the modern equivalent of $13 million. But if all went well, it was expected to pay for itself a dozen times over. Over the course of 10 to 20 years, Ships of the Batavius class were supposed to last for six round trips to and from the Indies before they were disman and their timber used to build houses. But unfortunately for the voc, the Batavia would not make it to the Indies even once.

[Ben Kissel]

Spoiler.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now as far as cargo bound for the island of Java on the Batavia went, It included a 25 foot prefabricated gateway and 137 sandstone blocks weighing 37 tons. They were going to use these building materials for a castle.

[Ben Kissel]

So what they do is. So if you're going to the Indies, it's such a long trip. So there's. And because they have business out there, there's a bunch of people that will put stuff onto the ship to go and bring over there because they got to handle over there. This was from Coon. Coon was trying to build a castle that was supposed to be in tribute.

[Henry Zebrowski]

To himself and he literally Castle Batavia.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. They were going to just bring stuff to build him a house.

[Marcus Parks]

There's there.

[Ben Kissel]

No, it's nutmeg.

[Henry Zebrowski]

We got rocks. Not the good rocks. Well, concerning treasure. The ship was loaded with boxes of silver. Millions of dollars worth of the stuff.

[Ben Kissel]

This is the ocean's eleven style. You have to start seeing all this stuff that's going. So yeah, so now we got the big blocks. That's like one thing. That's the boring stuff. But then all of a sudden you see these big loads of fucking silver just being dropped in one by one by one. You remember it's staffed by entirely criminals.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. And the silver was earmarked for trade with the locals in the Indies. But most important impressive were the massive 500 pound wooden chest full of gilders worth $32.5 million in today's currency.

[Ben Kissel]

One boat.

[Henry Zebrowski]

These chests were the last things loaded on board the Batavia before it set sail. And as was custom, the loading of the treasure was done under the personal Supervision of the Gentleman 17. This was the only time they actually came out to the docks to watch the money be loaded onto the boat.

[Ben Kissel]

Because they were the ones that brought the money. They had to hand over the money to the guys. Now there are there we will. The guy that's in charge of the money that will be on the boat. That is our main character, Paul Rudd. Our Paul Rudd. Yeah, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And. And the gentleman 17. They're not going on the trip.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, no, no, no. Does Jeff Bezos work at the Amazon factory?

[Ben Kissel]

Every once in a while he'll put on a little shower cap and go out there and he just kind of like goes like oh, it's crazy. Golf balls.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now the captain of the Batavia was a man named, named Ariana Jacobs. Jacobs was in his mid-40s which actually made him one of the oldest men on the Batavia.

[Ben Kissel]

This is our Nick Nolte.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

God damn it. God damn it. That is what this guy is. He's a salty dog man.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yep. Jacobs was a quick tempered, alcoholic rapist, but an excellent sailor nonetheless.

[Ben Kissel]

It's kind of like makes me one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

That's the whole thing. It's redundant.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Well, that made him right home working for the voc. But as I mentioned earlier, the captain was not the true commander of a VOC ship. While Jacobs was in charge of the navigation and sailor management, the person who was really calling the shots on the Batavia was the upper merchant, a man named Francisco Pelsart.

[Ben Kissel]

Now this is our Paul Rudd.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

This is our lovable scamp. Okay. It is gonna have to figure out if he could make it right in the end.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

And. And his. All this is going to rest on Pelsart's shoulders.

[Marcus Parks]

I got a feeling his family's going to get killed.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now, Pelsart's job was to place the cargo and profits of the company above all else. When the Batavia launched, Pelsart was one of the VOC's most valued upper merchants. He'd been hired at the lowest merchant rank, but had worked his way up because he had a knack for languages and was particularly skilled at negotiation. This guy, I mean, he's just some dude, but knew how to speak like, Urdu. He knew how to speak a whole bunch of different languages.

[Ben Kissel]

But he also was a guy that was kind of like. He was viewed as charming. Well, he was good at it. He was a good negotiator and he wasn't brutal. He was like a guy that liked, kind of like, in a way, liked people. Like, he liked the job in a way. He's a salesman, but he's a no up. He's a constant up.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, well, Pelsart. Well, actually, no, Pelsart was not a constant up.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, he. His sometimes every once in a while, he fucked up. It's the penis. It's the penis. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, Pelsart had been responsible for establishing the VOC's lucrative indigo trade, and it even urged the gentleman17 to expand the company throughout India before the British had a chance to do so. They refused his advice and let the British take India. But had the gentleman 17 listened to Francisco Pelsart, the modern world would be a very different place.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, British might fight, I guess, when they. They do really wear jeans like we do.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Pelsart's weakness, however, was women. The ladies and his dalliances once almost cost the VOC dearly While negotiating at a court in India Pelsart seduced a noble woman, but just before sex. She mistook a bottle of clove oil for a bottle of wine. And after drinking the whole thing.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, come on. I mean you can only be so responsible.

[Ben Kissel]

You can't tell the differ.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Dying Cl. I don't know. She. After they. She dropped dead.

[Ben Kissel]

Oh man. Man. Well, because at the time it was very. It was customary for if you were in another country, they let you pretty much anybody you want. You could up anybody of any case you could do, you know, use their. Their version of sex workers. Them. You can do whatever. They didn't care. But the main thing was like leave the local nobility ability alone. But he ended up because. But guess I think a lot of them are being more attractive.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Problems. You meet a princess.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

She's hot as.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Then you kill her accidentally because you're a.

[Marcus Parks]

Why did he have the clove oil?

[Ben Kissel]

I don't know.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hate clothes. No. And he immediately went into this like cliche, like you just help me.

[Ben Kissel]

She was normal before. God help me out.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You think it's time to get some new. You think, huh?

[Ben Kissel]

The second girl is OD on me this week.

[Marcus Parks]

Lucky he had a boat full of lady murderers.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. He called upon his fellow VOC employees to help him cover up the death of the noble woman. And they were able to secretly bury her body without the Indian court discovering what had happened.

[Marcus Parks]

Not so secretly. We're talking about it now.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, now we're ruining the secret.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, this sort of shit happened all the time with the VOC as cover ups and corruption became baseline behavior for just about every merchant. As the common VOC saying went, there were no Ten Commandments south of the equator.

[Ben Kissel]

I'm gonna steal that.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. When do you go south of the equator? When we go to Australia.

[Ben Kissel]

No, I.

[Henry Zebrowski]

There's no Ten Commandments and all that. When do you follow the ten Commandments?

[Ben Kissel]

Well, I don't merge murder. I don't. I will. I covet. I guess I. I make fun of my mom.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

But also I love her. I do honor her in a way. But.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, you're all about false idols, I'll tell you that.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And so, with Francisco Pelsart acting as the leader of the expedition as upper merchant, Ariana Jacobs as captain. Following Pelsart's orders and Euronymous Cornelis assigned as well of the ship's under merchants, the Batavia set sail on its maiden voyage for the island of Java in October of 1628.

[Ben Kissel]

Just remember, each one of these guys have their back Absolutely against the wall. Francisco Pelsart had to beg his way onto this ship.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He just, he had just gone through.

[Ben Kissel]

Like a whole, like scandal.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Scandal. A whole, like a whole thing that I didn't even want to go into. But he, yeah, he, he's like, this is like last chance time for Francisco.

[Ben Kissel]

This is a. Because he's on. Because it's a horrible run. You don't want. It's a real nice ship, but it is a rough run. He does not want to be on this. So you have him, you have Ariana Jakobs, who literally, he's got a. He's. What's his name? He's about to retire. This is his, this is supposed to be his last trip.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, he's our Danny Glover.

[Ben Kissel]

Yes, but he's like, he's nebulous, right? He's kind of. But his whole thing is that this was the last time I'm supposed to go, this is the last time I'm doing this. I'm never doing it again. And then you have the other guy, then you have Euronymous, who's a psychopath. That we don't know yet.

[Marcus Parks]

I know you said it earlier, but how many people are on the boat?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, that's what I was about to get into. These three men made up just a fraction of the Batavia's full passenger manifest. And all the Batavia was loaded with 340 people. A hundred of these 340 were soldiers who had been contracted by the VOC for garrison duties in the Indies. Desperate men with nothing to lose and nothing to do for the entire entirety of their eight month journey. For the most part, the soldiers were German, but their ranks included men from France, Scotland, England and the Netherlands. They were largely untrained and from what it sounds like, they lived by prison rules. In prison like conditions. While aboard the Batavia, for example, casual violence and thievery amongst the soldiers was the norm and the only bonds were friendships of convenience or between guys who just happened to be from the same town.

[Ben Kissel]

And also, they didn't always bugger each other. Mostly they saved that for the cabin boys.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Your friend would keep an eye on your possessions, share their food and water and take care of you if you got sick. Because the sick bays on the Batavia were reserved for officers, VOC merchants and higher class passengers only. Everyone else get better or die. As far as where they lived, soldiers quarters were on the orlop, the lowest deck of the ship. The ceilings in the orlop were low enough so as to make standing upright impossible. And it was so close to the waterline, that the men didn't have vents or portholes for air or light. Now this might have been bearable if not for the fact that the soldiers spent the majority of the eight month long journey in the orlock.

[Marcus Parks]

Wouldn't that make your soldiers weaker?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

[Ben Kissel]

But once they got there, they maybe could rest and recoup and then get back. That's kind of. Well, that's also push ups. Well, also, to be honest, that's why you send so many.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

So that you can lose 15%. Like literally.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. And like they're expendable.

[Ben Kissel]

Remember, everyone on this boat is expendable.

[Henry Zebrowski]

They're expendable.

[Ben Kissel]

Nobody's care, nobody gives a. Yeah. If any one of these guys come back.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

It's the Jet Lee's, the Dolph Lundgren's of it.

[Ben Kissel]

This is what I'm saying. It's Ocean's Eleven. Nobody's gonna miss any of these.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And like prisoners, the soldiers were only allowed outside of the orlop for two 30 minute periods a day to use the latrines and breathe fresh air. For their health.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, good.

[Ben Kissel]

For their health.

[Henry Zebrowski]

If it's any indication as to how the VOC regarded soldiers, the orlop did double duty. That was where the spices were stored on the return journey. As a result, I'd imagine the orlop developed quite the interesting aroma after a few voyages.

[Ben Kissel]

Oh yeah. So. Oh my Uber is here. I wonder if the. Also what they would do is. Is the treasure room. So that was also what I love is that the. All the money and all the jewels. Cuz. Also Pelsart was bringing his own personal jewels. He had a collection of something like 75 grand of W that were kept in this specific safe room that was behind the orlop. So in order to get to it, you would have to go through the soldiers to get to that stuff.

[Marcus Parks]

That's smart.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Also, why even bring the soldiers back?

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, they didn't.

[Ben Kissel]

Oh, they would be stuff.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, that's the whole point. Is that where the soul. Like the place where the soldiers were brought to the Endies, they would just.

[Marcus Parks]

Cops of that place.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. And on the way back, that hold was filled with spice.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay, good.

[Ben Kissel]

And then. But ostensibly the ship would go again. So then it's just going to get worse and worse.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So it just starts smelling like nutmeg piss, you know, body odor and.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, like being in Santa's pants.

[Marcus Parks]

The Washington commander's locker room.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now, the soldiers were the lowest station aboard the Batavia. But the ones right above them, the sailors, weren't much higher. The Batavia's crew was made up of 180 unwashed men with no changes of clothes who lived in less than 70ft of deck that shared space with a dozen heavy guns and miles of cable.

[Ben Kissel]

I don't care if I die. I don't know who I am. Me neither. Yeah, me neither.

[Marcus Parks]

Roll one guy to be lower than a sailor.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh. It was said that the ordinary VOC seamen was such a horrifying sight that they were kept far away from the higher class passengers so as to not offend the passengers delicate sensibilities.

[Ben Kissel]

Some people have. They're allergic to me and I don't know if it's my personality or if it's the fact that I'm covered in barnacles.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh yes, let me suck on your eyeballs.

[Ben Kissel]

Honestly, just for fun, just for something.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Different, I'd place it at the open sores that you're covered in.

[Ben Kissel]

Oh, oh, I forget. If they're not open, you can't feed them little mouth.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Speaking of passengers though, the Batavia also held the families of any VOC employees who could afford to bring them along. That meant that there were plenty of women and children aboard this ship. And the women especially had to constantly be on their guard to protect themselves from the rapacious soldiers and sailors.

[Ben Kissel]

They were sort of kept separate. Try to keep them separate, put them.

[Marcus Parks]

Up in the crow's nest.

[Ben Kissel]

They would give them little hours, they would be allowed to go up top, they would allow to go up top. Everyone had to leave. They were allowed to go up top and then they had to go back down. But they were like. It's also kind of funny because it's again, as we'll see, it's this desperate attempt to create this modern, civilized, hierarchical society. On this boat we are an extension of the Netherlands and this boat will, it will remain order orderly and it will and it will be fine from here on out.

[Marcus Parks]

Why would you bring your family?

[Ben Kissel]

Because they encouraged it so that you wouldn't worry about. So you try real hard to not die.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. So you'd be. So you could keep an eye on them. Because if, say if you just didn't want to be apart from them if you planned on settling in the West End or the East Indies. Yeah, okay. Many reasons. Other passengers on the Batavia's maiden voyage included a 52 year old Calvinist minister named Chrisbert Bastions, who had brought along his wife, seven children and their servants. Minister Bastions was headed to the Indies not as A missionary, but to serve the Dutch colonels who'd made a home there. But unfortunately for the minister, booking passage on the Batavia would be the worst decision he ever made.

[Ben Kissel]

What? What did you just say?

[Marcus Parks]

Did he get dysentery?

[Henry Zebrowski]

He's. He's going to get it bad now. The Batavia got off to a bad start. It was beset with delays and storms and even ran aground just after launch on a sand bank. Apparently one in five Dutch ships that were built crashed on this sandbank and sank.

[Ben Kissel]

And this is kind of like. So Pelsart and Jakobs immediately had sort of an antagonistic relationship because Jacobs was kind of like eating, but he got stuck and he showed. He's like, I'm an old sea. It's like, I'm an old sea dog. You. I'll tell you how to do this. And he saved the boat. Everyone's like, oh, okay, maybe things will be fine.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Where was the sandbank? Was it by Europe or Africa?

[Ben Kissel]

Right outside.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's right outside of the Netherlands. That's so aggravating. But the ship was saved by Captain Jakob's excellent instruction. And once it got to sea, it began its 15,000 mile journey with a fleet of six other ships, all overseen by upper merchant Francisco Pelsart. Now, after six months at sea, the Batavia put in at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, which was the only acceptable port of call mandated by the VOC because they wanted round trips to take the shortest amount of time possible. What it seems though, during that six months on the water, Euronymous Cornelis became friendly with Captain Jacobs because the two of them, along with a group of sailors, they got drunk one night and stole one of the Batavia's boats for a little ride around the Cape.

[Ben Kissel]

He was trying to cut off kind of blow off steam. And Jacobs was a really bad fucking drunk. He was a bad drunk and a rapist. And what he was doing was they were going around all the other boats and in a funny way he just started fights with the crews and all these other boats. Like this guy just decided to fight the entire mission. Yeah, for some reason they got hammered.

[Marcus Parks]

Varsity team beats up the JV team.

[Ben Kissel]

But they're on the same team.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, we all go to the same school. But like, I play football, you play baseball, I'mma slap you, basically.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, upper merchant Pelsart couldn't have been more angry with this little adventure. And as a result cut the Batavia's time in port to just eight days, less than half of what was expected. This naturally led to Some resentment amongst the crew, especially the soldiers, because now it's like, well, you're not going to get two and a half weeks anymore to, you know, breathe fresh air, be a human. You now have a little over a week. Perhaps not coincidentally, it's also around this time that Captain Jakobs and Euronymous Cornelius began plotting the mutiny that would result in six weeks of bloody mayhem. The one that was supposed to make them both very rich men. And that is where we'll pick back up next week for the Tragedy of the Batavia Part two.

[Ben Kissel]

And it just builds. So now it's gonna build because you remember, like, we're gonna see what causes them to kind of put together what it's like to plan a mutiny and how it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It all gets just destroyed in a second.

[Marcus Parks]

I love that it's already horrible, but it gets worse.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, you have no idea how bad it's going to get.

[Ben Kissel]

These guys go straight to hell.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Not even joking. These guys are going straight down.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, it is a. It is a full descent in hell as. As much as one of. As I've ever seen.

[Marcus Parks]

And. But the families will be fine.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. The women and children do great.

[Henry Zebrowski]

They do great.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. You ever heard of menudo? That was. That was. That came from this. That was. The kids.

[Ben Kissel]

It was.

[Henry Zebrowski]

They became the nudo. And then. Yeah, then.

[Ben Kissel]

Oh, yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And then, you know, living the vida loca there. And, you know, now he's an actor.

[Ben Kissel]

Incredible.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

All from.

[Henry Zebrowski]

All from the Batavia.

[Ben Kissel]

Let's just say we have no idea how long this is going to be, but it's going to be not that long. Right.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's going to be, you know, a couple episodes. Yeah, definitely a few. It's going to be a few episodes.

[Ben Kissel]

Very excited with this because it's about to get really fucking gnarly immediately.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

But you'll see if you go to patreon.com last podcast and left, you could watch us scream about it and have our jaws flopping around. And you go to LP on the left and TikTok and Instagram. For some reason, they're still there.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

So you want to go look at that? That's good for advertising.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, we know.

[Ben Kissel]

And then Twitch tv, lpntv, go and watch our streams, such as not tonight. Yesterday we did Hoopa Goo. But it will soon be on YouTube.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, it'll be on YouTube. And then you can see the next Hoopa goo goo on February 6th, 6:00pm Pacific, 9:00pm Eastern.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And that is, of course, starring Mr. Ed Larson. Yes. I was on the last hoopa goo.

[Marcus Parks]

Dr. Nurse.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Mr. Nurse. Yeah, Mr. Nurse. The musical accompaniment. Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Wonderful music.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Thank you, thank you. I played the best Christmas music my synth could make.

[Marcus Parks]

Also, we're gonna be in Dallas on February 22, actually, Grand Prairie, Texas. So make sure you catch us there. And then of course, on the 14th of March, we'll be at the Ryman Theater in Nashville. And just two days after that, that Sunday on the 16th, Henry and I got a side stories in Huntsville, Alabama.

[Ben Kissel]

We're coming for you. NASA.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, that's right. You NASA pieces of.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. Dare you to show up because we are asking you to.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

And I was. Will put you on the list.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's right.

[Marcus Parks]

I will put you on the list and I will spank myself. And then of course, we will be on the 18th of April, we'll be in Detroit. And on May 3rd, we'll be in Toronto. And at the end of June, we're coming back to Atlanta for our rescheduled date.

[Ben Kissel]

Yep. I cannot wait to see all of you.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Can't wait. Can't wait to see y'all on the high seas.

[Ben Kissel]

I don't want to go and I'm not going to go.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. On the high seas.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. I'm not going to the high seas.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, you are. You actually, you. You actually had a meeting today specifically about you going on the high.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. The crime wave.

[Ben Kissel]

I still feel like a low C. I think it's a low.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Henry and I are going to do a cruise and we're going to announce it next week and you'll be able to buy tickets and be loved.

[Ben Kissel]

You're going to come see us on a crime cruise. You just got to be careful, okay? Honestly. We're going to go out there. Someone's going to get murdered.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I must stay home.

[Ben Kissel]

We understand.

[Marcus Parks]

As you should.

[Ben Kissel]

He'll say it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Never.

[Marcus Parks]

Hail Peter.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, yeah. I was hoping you would for sending the book. Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Oh, that is nice.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I was hoping you would.

[Marcus Parks]

Peter, I see you in there. Peter.

[Ben Kissel]

Peter, let me suck your dick. I want to suck your dick.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I bet he's feeling a lot of conflicted feelings right now because he did get shouted out by his favorite podcast. But then he's also having to relive probably the lifelong trauma about, you know, his name being Peter.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

But you know what you gotta do?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Double edged sword.

[Ben Kissel]

Life sucks.

[Henry Zebrowski]

See you later.

[Marcus Parks]

Bye, Peter.

[Ben Kissel]

Bye. Our state has changed a lot in the last 140 years. We know because Multicare has been here guided by a single purpose making our communities healthier. That comes from making courageous decisions, partnering with local communities to grow programs and services, and expanding healthcare access to those who need it most. Together, we're building a healthier future.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Learn [e-mail] Walmart+ it's Walmart+ free delivery, which saves members time + money. Yep + an included Paramount+ subscription to stream movies, shows, sports and that can't miss documentary + Burger King savings that's right. Members get 25% off Burger King Digital order every day of the week. Walmart plus it's Walmart plus become a member at walmartplus.com $35 order minimum bear mal plus essential plan only separate registration required. Valid and participating USBKs in the BK app or bk.com for members only 25% off one time per calendar day. Terms apply. See Walmart plus terms and conditions.