Posted on 10/02/2023 6:41:57 PM PDT by CheshireTheCat
It was 2 Oct 1629, Dutchman Jeronimus Cornelisz was noosed along with 15 other men by the Dutch East Indies Company for a reign of terror that included mutiny and murder off the coast of Australia.* Six others would eventually hang in the infamous affair, two marooned on the Australian mainland, and many more punished for the gruesome atrocities committed on the Southern Ocean.
Cornelisz was not such an assuming character when he boarded the vessel Batavia in 1628.
Rather, he was a marginally failed merchant, someone who could buy his way on board as an under-merchant** and sail to the southern seas for the prospect of a new life. It has been speculated (here, for instance) that his move to Indonesia was motivated by a desire to put oceanic distances between himself — an apothecary who couldn’t make it in Haarlem — and prosecutors pursuing Anabaptists and other heretics. It didn’t help, either, that his infant child had recently died of the disgracing condition of syphilis. All that is enough to send a man to Indonesia, apparently.
Though Cornelisz was not a successful businessman, he was an energetic protagonist from his own station in life and could, eventually, win over any suggestible person with his intelligence and wit. It didn’t take long to do just that to the ship’s skipper, Ariaen Jacobsz — who already held a grudge against the Batavia‘s upper-merchant (and fleet commander), Francisco Pelsaert.
In due time their thoughts turned to the ship’s valuable cargo — silver and trade goods headed for the Mughal Empire. As night follows day, the next thoughts turned to mutiny.
Cornelisz pulled in people from each of the major groups onboard† to help with his mutiny without attracting the attention of the Pelsaert. All the plot needed was a kickstart......
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
Bkmk
—good book on the mutiny—
'sz' at the end of a Dutch name from the 12th through 19th centuries often comes from the genitive abbreviation for "son of." 'Zoon' is abbreviated 'z' and the 's' before it come from the name immediately prior. It was very typical for such names to end in -s, as most were at times expressed in Latin.
My great-grandfather's name was Christianus in its Latin form, but was often rendered as 'Christiaan' in the familiar Dutch. (Underlyingly, the 'a' in 'Christianus', occurring as it did in an open syllable, was long. With the Latin male nominative ending (-us), it therefore would typically have been rendered via the doubled 'aa'.
Cornelis is a typical Dutch name in the 12th through 20th centuries. A trailing 'z' is so conspicuous to a Dutch eye, that it would have been clear that it stood in place of 'zoon' as it did in many other neighboring European languages, as in Christianson, Josephson, etc.
That would make a great movie!
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