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Around the year 1655, a great ship of the Dutch East India Company waits at anchor off Texel for an east wind – then sails with the Christmas fleet for Batavia. Nearly eight months at sea, told through a young sailor, a ship's boy at the sandglass and an old Norwegian carving by lantern light: weighing anchor, the half-hour glass and the ship's bell, the islands to the south, calms at the Line, the Company's garden at the Cape, the cold westerlies, the middle watch under southern stars, the turn north, the strait and the sounding lead, and a last quiet night on the roadstead at Batavia. The ship and its people are invented; the routines, the route and the history are real, and the episode also notes, calmly and factually, what the Company's trade cost the people of the Indies. Calm, unhurried, with plenty of quiet.

Chapters
0:00 Waiting for the East Wind
11:49 Weighing Anchor
22:36 Bells and Glasses
32:44 South Past the Islands
42:53 Calms and the Line
52:33 The Garden at the Cape
1:02:19 Into the Westerlies
1:15:18 The Middle Watch
1:28:15 Turning North
1:41:12 The Strait and the Lead
1:54:01 The Roadstead at Batavia
2:06:45 Closing (Good Night)

Further reading
– J. R. Bruijn, F. S. Gaastra, I. Schöffer, Dutch-Asiatic Shipping in the 17th and 18th Centuries, 3 vols. (The Hague, 1979–1987); online: https://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/das
– Femme S. Gaastra, The Dutch East India Company: Expansion and Decline (Zutphen, 2003)
– Roelof van Gelder, Het Oost-Indisch avontuur. Duitsers in dienst van de VOC (SUN, 1997)
– Mike Dash, Batavia's Graveyard (2002)
– "Scurvy and the Health of European Crews in the Indian Ocean in the Seventeenth Century" (journal article)
– Western Australian Museum, "Health and disease on VOC ships" (Report No. 109)
– Willem Ysbrandtsz Bontekoe, Journael (Hoorn, 1646)
– Johann Jacob Merklein, Reise nach Java (Nuremberg, 1663); English extracts in R. Raven-Hart, Cape Good Hope 1652–1702
– Jan van Riebeeck, Dagverhaal (DBNL): https://www.dbnl.org/
– South African History Online, "Arrival of Jan van Riebeeck": https://www.sahistory.org.za/

Images and narration voice are AI-generated; script researched and edited by our team.

Particle overlay: Pexels video 9665235 via Pexels.