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Batavia shipwreck reveals a key to Dutch success in 17th-century world trade
- wsc981 5y agoNot directly related, but interesting nonetheless, I think ... I am guessing this is the very same Batavia ship of this real-life horror story of mutiny, murder, rape, etcetera. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batavia_(1628_ship) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batavia_(1628_ship)
- schnitzelstoat 5y agoThe Casefile podcast has a really good episode on the shipwreck.
- funwares 5y agoBatavia's Graveyard by Mike Dash is a book I'd highly recommend to anyone wanting to do a deep dive into this truly bizarre story.
- jsiepkes 5y agoYeah the story of the Batavia makes the Star Trek mirror universe empire seem like a bunch of boy scouts compared how the VOC ran things. > Cornelisz and several of the major mutineers had both hands chopped off before being hanged. > The remaining mutineers were taken to Batavia for trial. Five were hanged, while several others were flogged, keelhauled or dropped from the yardarm on the later voyage back home. Cornelisz' second in command, Jacop Pietersz, was broken on the wheel, the most severe punishment available at the time. Though luck for Pelsaert because the VOC still thought that was too little too late: > A board of inquiry decided that Pelsaert had exercised a lack of authority and was therefore partly responsible for what had happened.
- satori99 5y agoTwo of the mutineers were also left (to die) on the Australian mainland in 1628 -- 140 years before Australia was "Discovered" by James Cook.
- dustintrex 5y agoNone of that seems particularly bad compared to the orgy of rape and murder orchestrated by Cornelisz and co, who are estimated to have killed 125 of the passangers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batavia_(1628_ship) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batavia_(1628_ship)
- dddw 5y agoWhat am I missing here? The key is that the boat was made from wood?
- gerikson 5y agoLooks more like the Dutch were able to source different kinds of wood and integrate them into a production of many ships.
- vanderZwan 5y agoIt's literally explained at the end of the abstract: > Our research illustrates the compatibility of dendrochronological studies with musealisation of shipwreck assemblages, and the results demonstrate that the VOC successfully coped with timber shortages in the early 17th century through diversification of timber sources (mainly Baltic region, Lübeck hinterland in northern Germany, and Lower Saxony in northwest Germany), allocation of sourcing regions to specific timber products (hull planks from the Baltic and Lübeck, framing elements from Lower Saxony), and skillful woodworking craftmanship (sapwood was removed from all timber elements). These strategies, combined with an innovative hull design and the use of wind-powered sawmills, allowed the Dutch to produce unprecedented numbers of ocean-going ships for long-distance voyaging and interregional trade in Asia, proving key to their success in 17th-century world trade. They solved a logistics problem (timber shortage), the issue of lumber from different regions having different qualities (using it for different parts of the ship), and had wind-powered proto-industrialization (wind-powered sawmills). Of course, the paper ends with reinforcing the idea that the VOC was the key to the Dutch economy, totally ignoring the part where grain trade with the Baltics was a much more significant source of income than the VOC ever was, but that not as flashy as colonialist exploitation bringing in the spices and inventing capitalism I guess.
- hyperpallium2 5y ago> Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or VOC)
- vanderZwan 5y ago
- dandare 5y ago> Batavia shipwreck reveals a key to Dutch success in 17th-century world trade And the key to success was posting clickbait headlines to Hacker News?
- noworld 5y agoYes, but back then it was called Sealbait and it was used to test loyalty. They would write enticing headlines on the outside of sealed correspondence to entice the couriers to break the seal.
- tdrdt 5y agoTrivia: In the Netherlands we also have buildings from the 16th century that use wood originally tooled as ship beams. A lot of the time they contain holes that were cut out when they were building a ship. When a ship was demolished or never finished sometimes those beams were used for house construction.
- yobbo 5y agoAs I gather, the interesting part is that the hull was built of oak planks sandwiched between pine planks. Total thickness 18 cm. It seems it was self-reinforcing, not built by "cladding" a frame.
- vondur 5y agoI believe the Dutch were renown for their shipbuilding expertise at the time. Tsar Peter the Great made a visit to the Netherlands to see for himself Dutch construction techniques and even worked with the carpenters at the docks. https://erenow.net/modern/peterthegreat/14.php https://erenow.net/modern/peterthegreat/14.php