Travelling Manners - The More Things Change ... Joan Lennon

The Bayswater Omnibus by George William Joy 1895

(from the blog It's About Time)

On 30 January 1836, The Times published "The Omnibus Law" - obviously the paper felt there was a need for guidelines ...

The Law included:

* Keep your feet off the seats.

* Sit with your limbs straight, and do not with your legs describe an angle of 45, thereby occupying the room of two persons.

*  Do not spit on the straw.  You are not in a hogsty but in an omnibus travelling in a country which boasts of its refinement.

*  Behave respectfully to females and put not an unprotected lass to the blush, because she cannot escape from your brutality.

*  If you bring a dog, let him be small and be confined by a string.

*  Do not introduce large parcels - an omnibus is not a van.

*  If you will broach politics or religion, speak with moderation: all have an equal right to their opinions, and all have an equal right to not have them wantonly shocked.

*  Refrain from affectation and conceited airs.  Remember that you are riding a distance for sixpence which, if made in a hackney coach, would cost you as many shillings; and that should your pride elevate you above plebeian accommodations, your purse should enable you to common aristocratic indulgences.

And my personal favourite:

*  Reserve bickerings and disputes for the open field.  The sound of your own voice may be music to your own ears - not so, perhaps, to those of your companions.

Plus ca change, as they say.

Omnibus Life by William Maw 1859 

(Wikipedia)

London Omnibus 1901 

(Wiki Commons)

Joan's website.
Joan's blog.

Riddles and Oracular speech - Katherine Langrish

You remember of course the riddle scene in ‘The Hobbit’, in which Bilbo Baggins pits his wits against hungry Gollum on the edge of the dark lake at the roots of the Misty Mountains?  And how, after each has guessed a number of traditional riddles (‘Thirty white horses on a red hill/First they champ, then they stamp, then they stand still’[1]) and a number of others which Tolkien obviously enjoyed writing himself (‘Alive without breath/As cold as death/Never thirsting/Ever drinking/Clad in mail/Never clinking’[2]), Bilbo finally foxes his adversary with the simple and thoughtless question, ‘What have I got in my pocket?’

Riddles have a long history, and probably a long prehistory too.  There are riddles in the Bible, such as the one Samson baffled the Philistines with: ‘Out of the eater came something to eat/Out of the strong came something sweet’[3] (Judges 14,14) – still to be found, with its pictorial answer, on the green and gold tins of Tate and Lyle’s Golden Syrup. And one of the earliest known riddles, strikingly similar in form to Samson’s, is written on a Babylonian tablet and reads: ‘Who becomes pregnant without conceiving? Who becomes fat without eating?’[4]

(By the way, all the answers will be found at the bottom of this post.  I’m certain you are going to try and guess them, so I’m not going to provide the answers straight up.)

Everyone remembers the riddle of the Sphinx, which Oedipus guessed; but did you know that Plato refers to a children’s riddle in ‘The Republic’ - ‘A man who was not a man threw a stone that was not a stone at a bird that was not a bird, on a twig that was not a twig’[5]’?  And that there are Sanskrit riddles in the Rig Veda and the Mahabharata?  And what about the Norse riddles of the Elder Edda, such as ‘The Words of the All-wise’ in which the dwarf Alvis (literally ‘All-wise’) – anxious to win the hand of Thor’s daughter – answers a number of questions which might be called riddles in reverse:

Thor:   What is heaven called, that all know

            In all the worlds there are?

Alvis:  Heaven by men, The Arch by gods,

            Wind-weaver by vanes,

            By giants High-earth, by elves Fair-roof,

            By dwarves The Dripping Hall.

Thor:   What is the moon called, that men see

            In all the worlds there are?

Alvis:  Moon by men, The Arch by gods,

            The Whirling Wheel in Hel,

            The Speeder by giants, The Bright One by dwarves,

            By elves Tally-of-Years.

All-wise answers Thor - by W.G. Collingwood

In the illustration above we see how for verse after verse (while Thor's daughter anxiously clutches her father) Alvis provides the kennings – the riddling poetic descriptions – for all the elemental, important things in the world such as fire, rain, the moon and sun, the sea, forests, night and day (and beer)… until at last dawn breaks and he turns to stone.

When I talk to schoolchildren I like to tell them about Norse kennings, and ask them some Anglo-Saxon riddles from the 10th century Exeter Book (carefully chosen: many of them contain bawdy double-entendres).  These riddles are of course also poems: and it seems to me one of the best and easiest ways to show children what poetry is and why it might be fun to read. “So,” I explain, “in a poem about the sea a Viking wouldn’t say ‘the sea.’  He’d call it the ‘whale’s home’ or the ‘swan’s bath’, and his audience would know what he meant. If you wanted to make a poem in which a king rewards one of his men with gold, you wouldn’t say ‘The king gave gold to his warrior.’  That would be plain boring.  Instead you would have to say something like ‘The Land-ruler gave Sif’s Hair to his Raven-feeder.’

How Loki Wrought Mischief in Asgard - by Willy Pogany

“For your listeners to understand it, they’d have to know the story of how the trickster god Loki cut off the goddess Sif’s beautiful hair.  The other gods were so angry with him that he went to the dwarfs and got them to make Sif some beautiful new hair out of pure gold, which magically grew just like real hair." (You'd also have to understand that a warrior who killed men on the battlefield and left them for the crows to eat was - a Raven-feeder.)

 

But there were plenty of other ‘kennings’ for gold.  For example, you could call it ‘Frodi’s flour.’ And to understand that, your audience would remember a completely different story, about a Danish king called Frodi who bought two giant slaves and set them to turn two huge magic millstones which would grind out whatever you told them to grind.  Instead of flour, King Frodi told them to grind out peace, prosperity and gold. (That’s why gold could be called ‘Frodi’s flour’.)  For a time, King Frodi’s people enjoyed a golden age.  Unfortunately, however, Frodi made the two giants work almost non-stop, not allowing them rest or sleep ‘for longer than it takes to hear a cuckoo call.’  In revenge, the two giants asked the millstones to grind out an army which attacked King Frodi and killed him.  And that was the end of his peaceful reign.

The Vikings thought more of a man if he could weave words: some of their most renowned warriors were also poets, like Egil Skallagrimsson, and Grettir the Strong. The murderous Harald Silkenhair in my book ‘Troll Blood’ - the third part of 'West of the Moon' - is a warrior poet in this tradition, and keeps his men happy by asking them riddles (here are two I made up for him):

“I know a stranger, a bright gold-giver

He strides in splendour over the world’s walls.

            All day he hurries between two bonfires.

            No man knows where he builds his bedchamber.”[6]

            “I know another, high in the heavens

            Two horns he wears on his hallowed head

            A wandering wizard, a wild night-farer,

            Sometimes he feasts, sometimes he fasts.”[7]

Spells, words, similes, riddles… the very word spell itself in Old English and Old Norse simply means speech.  To describe the world is to apprehend it, to understand it.  To this day we retain this double meaning.  A magician may cast a spell, but children spell out words aloud, syllable by syllable.  Words do not only give power, words are power.  Even in the Judaeo-Christian sense: God creates the world with the words ‘Let there be light,’ and St John describes Christ as the ‘Word of the Father’. 

It seems to me that riddles may always have had dual purpose.  They amuse us, but they do so in a different way from puns and jokes. If I ask you a riddle – even a simple child’s riddle like ‘What’s green and goes up and down?’[8] – and you can’t guess it, I score a point over you. More than that: I retain knowledge which I may or may not choose to tell you. I have the power to reveal or conceal. The riddle game is a contest which may once – as with Bilbo and Gollum, Thor and Alvis, Oedipus and the Sphinx – have had serious consequences.

And the Delphic Oracle was often delivered in riddling form. In 403 the Spartan general Lysander was warned by the oracle to beware the dragon (serpent), earthborn, in craftiness coming behind thee. The warning didn't help: he was killed from behind in 395 BC by - supposedly - a soldier who had a serpent painted on his shield.  Today we may suspect that oracular utterances were made deliberately vague so as to be applicable to any variety of future events – but that seems to me false to the ancient way of thinking.  Much more likely the sibyl or seer regarded riddling, poetic speech as sacred, the authentic voice of God.  Just as with poetry today, whoever heard it had to find their own meaning in what was uttered, follow the clue through the maze to the centre of themselves.  Riddling speech, like poetry, may have been thought of as the truest, the most revelatory way of communicating.

“Look how the floor of heaven’s thick inlaid

With patines of bright gold…”

“Had I the heaven’s embroidered cloths…”

“Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!

   O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!

   The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!"

To describe the night sky in this way is to use riddles as riddles were meant to be used.  You can still feel the shiver of power. 

---

[1] Teeth

[2] Fish

[3] A bee’s nest full of honey in the ribcage of a dead lion

[4] Clouds

[5] A eunuch throwing a piece of pumice at a bat on a reed.  (Yes.  Really.)

[6] The sun (and the two bonfires are sunrise and sunset)

[7] The moon

[8] A frog on a trampoline

Old Sport and That Hat: The Great Gatsby - Eve Edwards

Have you seen the Baz Luhrmann version of The Great Gatsby?  I went last week with some trepidation as the critics had been cool and found I enjoyed it more than I expected.  I had spent some of last year re-reading F. Scott Fitzgerald, including his short stories, and found the Luhrmann hyper-real version of his novel a convincing cinematic take, if not a perfect adaptation.  I've seen many critics bemoaning that it is an unfilmable book - surely something that can be said of any novel that has something to say on prose style as well as plot?  My cinema experience was in the spirit of a story like 'A Diamond as big as the Ritz' with its ludicrous little kingdom and improbable diamond so I wasn't disappointed.  Some of Fitzgerald's fictional worlds were every bit as bizarre as Luhrmann's imagination.

I suppose a mark of a good film is that you continue thinking about it afterwards.  One of the aspects that I've been pondering is the use of contemporary music.  I'm not a fan of rap but it did make me wonder if the Jazz voices of the era had something of the same shock factor.  If you are interested in the mash up approach, the will-i-am track Bang Bang is a good place to start as it mixes the Charleston with his style, making old new and new old.  The soundtrack also drove both of my teenagers to see it so that's no bad result for the director.

But perhaps the star of the film for me was the hat worn by Jordan Baker.  Thanks to copyright I can't drop in a photo, but if you've seen it, you probably know the one I mean.  That hat was a statement, curving round her face like a semi-colon.  Only pop stars who make dressing an extreme sport, such as Lady Gaga and Madonna, get away with that kind of approach to headgear these days.  Poor old Beatrix and Eugene were treated like the ugly sisters at Cinderella's ball for daring to go wild on wedding hats.  They weren't to my taste, but, your royal highnesses, in the 1920s you'd have pulled it off, no problem.

If you enjoy the world of the early decades of the twentieth century, may I put in a plug here for my new book, just out this month.  Dusk is a story for young adults (and older) set in 1914 to 1916, published by Penguin.  It follows the fortunes of a young half-German nurse trainee and a student at the Slade School of Art.

Vikings - Lucy Inglis

I began writing about history as a student of Anglo-Saxon. Our tutor was registered blind, so five of us sat around each week and discussed sea spray and the feel of heather, and leather tunics, and the morning-cold spear handles of dawn.

Since then I've gone on to eighteenth century history in all its tiny detail, imagining the feel of a begging bowl, a corset, a coin. But this week the Hollywood series for the television channel History, Vikings, has me back in the Dark Ages. I know! At first I thought, this is going to be rubbish. But it's not. It's entertaining and just...good. A bold attempt at depicting the eighth century? That takes time, money and research.

Too often, the people of the Dark Ages, and particularly the Vikings, are portrayed as little more than animals. The Vikings, who in reality were farmers who were running out of land in their own country, are depicted as rabid beserkers. They were a violent race, there's no getting away from it, but they were also a complex one and this series makes a genuine attempt to address that. There is, perhaps, a little too much cross-over with the Anglo-Saxon social convention of the time, but the amount of effort that has gone into making the programme look and feel authentic (if not sound - I'm not sure anyone can nail an eighth century Norse accent) is impressive. I have particularly enjoyed the sailing parts, as the Vikings' mastery of the seas is something we don't yet truly understand.

One of the reasons the Vikings are so badly misrepresented is that although there is much archeological evidence for how they lived and died, there are few resources on paper. They simply didn't write much down. But we do know they were trading as far afield as the Middle East by the ninth century and may even have got as far as Baghdad. They also spread into Constantinople and Russia. Their dominance in the North of England was natural, given that it was good farming land, close to their original home, relatively wealthy and populated by a people who were not naturally as tribal and aggressive.

The series features the famous attack on Lindisfarne in June 793, which in one brief event created the modern perception of the Vikings as crazed, godless warriors. They were, instead, raiders who didn't understand the significance of Christianity. But over the following three centuries, Christianity spread slowly through Scandinavia, changing the structure of society and making it far more like the Germanic countries to the south. That is not the remit of this series however, which dwells on the earlier and more dramatic events.

A very small point, but one I was also impressed with, is the use of colour. For anyone living at the time, almost everything was grey, from most clothing (even if it didn't start out that way) to building materials, to the moment of dawn most favourable for an attack. Colour, particularly vivid colours such as gold, silver, blue and red, were rare and denote a special incident, or a significant act. Usually, television trashes that completely and the noblewomen are clad in green velvet or something that looks suspiciously like satin. But that hasn't happened here. The series also features Ragnar Lothbrok's shieldmaiden wife. Shieldmaidens are an interesting phenomenon of Norse sagas and an interesting contrast to the silent 'peaceweaver' females in Germanic literature of the time.

So, as a sometime 'scholar' of Anglo-Saxon, I recommend Vikings wholeheartedly. To anyone writing fiction in the period, and to anyone interested in it, it will be valuable in terms of period look and feel. And it has Travis Fimmel as Ragnar Lothbrok and as you can see below he's really very...sorry, what was I saying?

*I am watching the series 'on demand'. It will be returning for another season next year.

Abdication by Mary Hoffman

Richard ll

Abdication has been in the news recently, with Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands stepping down in favour of her son, Prince Willem Alexander. It's quite a tradition in that country but in the UK carries a much less favourable connotation, because of Edward Vlll's behaviour in 1936. Hence all the jokes about Prince Charles looking rueful at the Dutch abdication ceremony, because no British Monarch would dream of doing such a thing.

And yet it did happen with Richard ll in 1399. He was deposed  by the man who became Henry lV, but had to agree to give up his crown. Shakespeare says it best:

"For I have given here my soul's consent
To undeck the pompous body of a king;
Made glory base and sovereignty a slave,
Proud majesty a subject, state a peasant."
Act lV, Scene  l

"Unking'd Richard" is imagined eloquent in a way he probably wasn't. But he probably was just as reluctant. The following year he was dead in Pontefract Castle, though whether from starvation or stabbing is not universally agreed.

No such fate awaited Edward Vlll; far from being a peasant, he was re-designated Duke of Windsor and lived out his remaining 35 years in comfort in France. Whether it was worth renouncing the throne for the woman he loved only he could say.

But the stain and horror of his actions was surely behind one of the people most affected by it, when the young Elizabeth ll pledged to serve as Queen till her life's end.

No abdication for her. But it has no such taint in the Netherlands, where the last three monarchs have voluntarily given up their titles.

Why should it be seen as so terribly different from retirement, in the case of extreme old age or illness, or resignation in Edward's case? Pope John Paul ll chose to carry on through his increasing weakness from Parkinson's, enacting a kind of personal Calvary that was clearly part of his vocation and dedication. Pope Benedict XVl cased worlwide shock by making the opposite choice earlier this year.

Picture credit: Rvin88

The Press scrambled for precedents in renouncing the Pontoficate and could find nothing more recent than Gregory in the 14th century. It counts as abdication rather than resignation because the Pope is the Head of State of Vatican City, apart from anything else.

But other European monarchs have abdication, often under pressure, since Richard ll. Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, gave up most of his titles in 1555, to retire to a monastery, where he died three years later. His son Philip ll became King of Spain and his brother Ferdinand became Holy Roman Emperor, both Charles and Philip's destinies intertwined with that of the English throne.

As was Mary, Queen of Scots, forced to abdicate in favour of her one-year-old son, James Vl of Scotland (and later the First of England) in 1567. Here too, the cause was a marriage disapproved of by the Peers and people, from the Catholic point of view because Bothwell was divorced 12 days earlier and by all sides because it was Bothwell who had murdered the Queen's former husband, Lord Darnley.Queen Christina of Sweden abdicated in 1654 in favour of her cusin Charles Gustavus, because she had decided not to marry and her nobles were tired of her extracagant ways.

Philip V of Spain's was a strange abdication, lasting only seven months in 1724. He gave up the throne to his son, perhaps because of his own mental instability, but had to take it back when Louis died without children in August of that year. Philip carried on reigning till his death in 1746.

Monarchs of Poland, China, Sardinia, France, Portugal, Serbia, Bulgaria, Luxembourg, Belgium, Cambodia and Kuwait have all voluntarily abdicated since then, not to mention the ones forced to give up their thrones and go into exile.

It is only in Britain that the issue is regarded with such distaste.

Ex-Queen Beatrix, Photo ©Emiel Ketelaar, FrozenImage

What do you think about abdication? Do you think the Queen should step down in favour of Prince Charles? And in what circumstances?

May Competition

We have five copies of Mary Hooper's new book The Disgrace of Kitty Grey to give away as prizes in our May Competition. (UK only)

Just answer this question in the Comments section below:

Which is your favourite Jane Austen novel and why?

(Any reference to Colin Firth will disqualify you!)

Who Really Discovered Australia? By Rosemary Hayes

A few years ago I was in the Maritime Museum in Fremantle, Western Australia where I made a discovery which intrigued me so much that I knew I'd have to write about it.   There, in the Shipwreck Galleries, I learnt about the many ships which had come to grief up and down the coast of Western Australia and, indeed, about the sailors, soldiers and passengers on these ships who had survived. Europeans who had trodden on Australian soil 150 years or so before Captain Cook sailed into Botany Bay on the other side of the continent.

Captain Cook didn't 'discover' Australia and, to be fair, he never said he did. He always acknowledged that that distinction went to the early Portuguese and Dutch seafarers who sailed to the East Indies in search of valuable spices. At first, the ships sailed round the Cape of Good Hope and then due North, past Madagascar and across the Indian Ocean but then, in 1611, the Dutch discovered a faster route. By sailing further south from the Cape the ships could catch the winds known as the 'roaring forties' which would speed them eastwards across the sea until they had to turn North again and sail parallel with the coast of the 'Southland' (Western Australia) and thence on to Java.  This route shortened the voyage by several weeks but, with no certain way of calculating longitude, it was easy to misjudge the turning point, and if a skipper got it wrong, then treacherous reefs and rocks lay in wait.

There are so many shipwreck stories but the ill fated voyage of the Batavia was the one that gripped my imagination, not least because it is so well documented in the meticulous diaries of the ship's Commander.

On October 28th 1628, the Dutch East India Company's retourship, Batavia, sailed from Texel on her maiden voyage to Batavia (present day Jakarta) in Java. The ship was laden with a priceless cargo including jewels, silver coins and objets d'art to be traded for highly prized spices.

WHO WAS ON BOARD?
A mixture of passengers. The rich passengers were reasonably comfortable but the poorer passengers had a miserable time. These were desperate folk, many of them destitute, who were in search of a better life in the colonies; they would be subject to deprivation on board and almost certainly to disease when they reached Jakata (Batavia) if they had not succumbed before then. Then there were the sailors, other crew members and soldiers; the soldiers, many of them French mercenaries, were there to protect the ship and the man the garrison at Batavia when they arrived. They would all have been a pretty tough lot. 17th century sea voyages were not for the faint hearted.

                                                                          Soldier

                                                                        Cabin boy

There were also some employees of the VOC (The Dutch East India Company). Commander Pelseart was in command of the ship and Jeronimus Corneliez, another company employee, was second in command. Pelseart was a conscientious company employee but he was not in good health. Neither of these company men knew how to sail a ship and the responsibility for this lay with the Captain, Ariaen  Jacobsz.

Jacobsz had sailed with Pelsaert on a previous voyage and despised him, so the relationship between Captain and Commander was tense. It was not improved when Jacobsz went on a violent drinking spree when the ship docked at Cape Town and Pelsaert rebuked him publicly.

The second-in-command, Under Merchant Jeronimus Corneliez, was a new recruit to the Company. He had joined as a last resort, to avoid being arrested at home in Holland. His career as an apothecary was ruined and his creditors had uncovered his association with an heretical sect which believed that sin did not exist.  This goes some way to explain his chilling detachment and lack of self blame during subsequent events. He was manipulative, persuasive and charismatic.

HATCHING A PLOT
The Captain, Jacobsz, and the Under Merchant, Corneliez, formed a dangerous alliance and they began to plan a mutiny. When the ship left the Cape, the Captain steered a course that ensured that they lost sight of the other members of the fleet, isolating the Batavia. They intended to seize the ship and her valuable cargo, kill the Commander and those loyal to him and then live as pirates. They gathered about them some hot-headed cadets and discontented sailors and directed them to attack the Commander's friend, a high born young woman, Lucretia van der Meylen, who was on her way to join her husband in Batavia. Jacobsz and Corneliez were sure that the Commander would react violently to this act - and his retaliation would be the signal for the mutiny to begin.

In the event, Pelsaert did not lash out as expected, remaining passive and reasonable. Lucretia could only identify one of her attackers and he was imprisoned on board to await trial on the mainland.

So, the lid was on the mutiny, but only just - when Batavia ran aground on Morning Reef off the Houtman Abrolhos Islands near present day Geraldton, on 4th June 1629.

                    The hull of Batavia in The Shipwreck Museum, Fremantle, Western Australia

                                                                A Replica of Batavia
SHIPWRECK
There are various theories about who was to blame for the shipwreck but ultimately the Captain was responsible. Navigation at that time was hazardous, the coast of 'The Southland' had been sketchily charted and it would be another 140 years before a satisfactory method of measuring longitude was perfected.

ON THE ISLANDS
The islands lying to the East of Morning Reef were flat, coral islands with little vegetation and no water. Initially, the passengers and some soldiers and sailors were ferried to a nearby island by the ship's boats. But there were still soldiers and sailors on board the stricken Batavia when the Commander, with the Captain and some 40 officers and sailors, took the ship's boats to search for a more hospitable landing place, but finding none then set off on the hazardous journey (some 2,000 miles) back to Batavia to get help, leaving the survivors to their fate. The Under Merchant, Corneliez, was the last to leave the sinking ship and make it to the island and he immediately took charge. He established some sort of order but he had not abandoned his mutinous plans; he and his followers would seize any ship sent to rescue them.

Corneliez and his henchmen set about getting rid of the weak, those loyal to the Commander and those who would be no use to them. He ordered the carpenters to make another boat from driftwood and had a group of people ferried to another waterless island where they were abandoned. He kept the water barrels salvaged from Batavia with him. He also had a group of soldiers taken to a distant island (they called it High Island), assuming that this, too, had no water.

Then followed a reign of terror. Corneliez never killed anyone himself but he let his followers run amok, killing and raping indiscriminately, and ordered them to kill many more (even young children). Anyone who was not with him was against him. After a time he sent his men to check on those on the other nearby island. Most had died and those who had not were too weak to defend themselves and were easily despatched.

However, when he sent a force to High Island, they were repelled. The soldiers on High Island had found water and there were wallabies and birds to eat. They were well organised by the soldier in charge, Wiebbe Hayes and had made crude weapons from barrel hoops and other materials that had been washed ashore. Next time, Corneliez went himself to High Island, pretending to make peace, but the soldiers were not deceived and captured him.

Recently I was lucky enough to fly out to the Abrolhos Islands. This tiny island (now called Beacon Island) was where Corneliez had his headquarters and was the site of many brutal massacres.

And this is me on the island where Wiebbe Hayes and his men were taken on Corneliez's orders

This may not look much but it is the remains of Wiebbe Hayes' fort, taken from the air, and it is the first European building in Australia

RESCUE

Meanwhile, against all the odds, Commander Pelsaert had made it to Batavia. The Captain was left there in jail and another, much smaller, Company ship, the Sardam, well armed and with a new crew, set off the rescue the survivors of the shipwreck.

The Sardam's arrival coincided with another raid on Wiebbe Hayes and his men, led by a young soldier loyal to Corneliez called Wouter Looes. This time they were making more progress and Hayes might have been defeated had not the Sardam been sighted. Hayes's men set off in the boat they had built, in a frantic race to reach the ship before Corneliez's supporters. They succeeded, warning the Commander of what had happened.

Commander Pelsaert wasted no time in trying the mutineers and passing sentence. Many were hanged there and then (including Corneliez) and others were taken back to Batavia to await their fate. He was also meticulous in salvaging all he could from Batavia, including 11 of the 12 chests of silver coins on board.

AND THEN

Pelsaert decided that two of the mutineers should have an unusual punishment. The young soldier, Wouter Looes and the cabin boy, Jan Pelgrom, although they were involved in the mutiny and massacre, were given supplies and a boat and marooned on the mainland when the Sardam left to go back to Batavia.

It is very likely that they survived. They were almost certainly marooned not far from the Murchison River so they would have had fresh water and there would have been animals, fish and birds to eat if they could trap them.

And if they survived, they would have been the first Europeans to settle in Australia.

There is strong evidence for early Dutch settlement. Later explorers to the region reported seeing aborigines with pale skin and fair hair and the huts in the coastal region were reported as being 'different from those in the southern districts, in being built, and very nicely plastered over the outside with clay, and clods of turf.'   So the Nanda people of the Western coastal regions may have absorbed some Dutch building techniques.

But most compelling of all is the recent DNA evidence that some Aboriginals from Western Australian coastal tribes do, indeed, carry Western European blood and that this genetic link predates British settlement in 1892.

I like to think that Jan Pelgrom and Wouter Looes did survive in this vast Southland, so different from the windmills and green fields of their native Holland - and that they were taken in by a local Aboriginal tribe.

The first half of my book, 'The Blue Eyed Aborigine' sticks as far as possible to the historical facts, as set out in Commander Pelsaert's diaries.  However, the second half of the book is pure fiction. No one knows what happened to Jan and Wouter, but I have imagined how their life may have been as they came to live among the Aborigines. And what did the Aborigines make of them? They would never have seen fair skinned men before. Who did they think were and where did they think they had come from?

WHAT NEXT?

Now, of course, I want to unearth more stories about these early shipwrecks and so I'm currently researching the voyage of the Zuytdorp (known, for good reason, as 'the ship of death') which was wrecked on the cliffs north of Kalbarri some time in June 1712.  According to stories passed down through generations of Aboriginal people of the region, a good many people survived the wreck but, again, no one knows what happened to these survivors. There is, however, a tantalising trail - buttons at the site of a large and well established Aboriginal camp, a tobacco box, some clay pipes.... Intriguing stuff!

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Rosemary Hayes lives in rural Cambridgeshire with her husband and a variety of animals. Her first novel, ‘Race Against Time’, was runner-up for the Kathleen Fidler Award in 1988 and since then she has written more than forty books for children.



Her most recent historical novel, ‘The Blue Eyed Aborigine’ retells one of the most extraordinary – and violent - events in Australia’s history.



As well as writing stories, Rosemary is a reader for a well known Author’s Advisory Service and runs creative writing workshops for both adults and children.