J34 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 



Cape, on the 28th of October, 1628. On the night of the 4th of June in the 

 following year, the ship, being separated from the fleet, was driven in a storm on 

 to the Abrolhos shoals, and became a total wreck. The crew and passengers, to 

 the number of over two hundred, effected a landing on three separate islands of the 

 group. Owing to the shortness of water, Captain Pelsart, with some of the officers, pro- 

 ceeded in the skiff, at the request of the ship's company, to seek for further supplies in 

 some of the adjacent islands. This search, so far as the islands were concerned, 

 proved unavailing, and they extended their investigations to the adjacent mainland. 

 After many, for the most part but partially successful, attempts to land, they 

 were carried so far to the north-east by the prevailing currents that they 

 decided to go on to Batavia, and to return thence with another vessel to the 

 relief of the shipwrecked survivors on the Abrolhos Islands. This earliest recorded 

 observation of a distinct northerly set of the ocean currents up the Western 

 Coast of Australia is, as hereafter shown, of considerable interest. 



During the protracted absence of Captain Pelsart and his officers in quest of 

 relief, a grim tragedy was enacted at the Abrolhos. It would appear that previous 

 to the catastrophe that befel the "Batavia," the supercargo, one Jerom Cornelis, 

 in league with the pilot and some others, had plotted to run away with the vessel, 

 carrying her either to the French port of Dunkirk, or turning pirates in her on 

 their own account. Captain Pelsart's absence revived in Cornelis' mind the same 

 design on a new basis. Being left practically in command of the situation, he 

 determined, in company with his elected associates, to make himself possessed of 

 the very considerable treasures which had been saved from the wreck, and, further, 

 to seize and appropriate any vessel which Captain Pelsart might return in to 

 their succour. 



In order to get rid of the large number of the lost ship's company who were 

 likely to oppose, or to prove an incumbrance to the realization of, his plans, he 

 decided to put them all to death in cold blood, and actually carried this 

 murderous design into partial fulfilment. A portion of the intended victims, how- 

 ever, managed to escape to one of the adjacent islands, on which another colony, in 

 charge of Lieutenant Weybheys, had been sentenced to destruction by the mutineers. 

 He, with the united forces, successfully repelled the several attacks which 

 Cornelis subsequently made upon them with the object of their extermination. 

 In the course of these encounters Cornelis was taken prisoner by Lieutenant 

 Weybheys, who succeeded in giving timely advice to Captain Pelsart, on his 



