Unearthed grave sheds light on Batavia shipwreck mass murder 
 
 Updated 
 
 Secrets from one of the nation's most horrific maritime mass murders have been unearthed on a tiny island off Western Australia's coast. 
 
 A new grave has been discovered almost four centuries after the Batavia was wrecked on Morning Reef, within the Abrolhos Islands. 
 
 The Dutch East India vessel was on its maiden voyage when it wrecked with more than 300 people on board. 
 
 The survivors managed to swim to the nearby Beacon Island, but about 40 people drowned. 
 
 What then played out on the tiny coral outcrop was a 17th-century tale of mutiny and systematic murders of those aboard that inspired movies, books and plays and remained one of the darkest chapters of Australia's maritime history. 
 
 Some of the evidence of the bloodthirsty episode has only now been uncovered, with experts revealing on Tuesday they have found another skeleton, the 11th found on Beacon Island since the 60s. 
 
 Two musket balls were found near the body, which was about 1.5 metres underground. 
 
 A forensic team was examining the remains and said they were believed to be that of an adolescent. 
 
 The WA Museum's head of maritime archaeology, Jeremy Green, said the find was a major step forward in better understanding what was an internationally significant chapter in history. 
 
 "This was the first time that Europeans lived in Australia — albeit it wasn't in the mainland but it was here — so it's the oldest known European habitation in Australia," he said. 
 
 "So it's got to be important." 
 
 Human tooth led archaeologists to discovery 
 
 A human tooth found on the final day of an expedition at the island in 2013 led archaeologists to examine the same area where they eventually discovered the skeleton. 
 
 Mr Green said mutton birds on the island dug down into the ground and brought little items to the surface, which indicated areas of archaeological interest. 
 
 Surprisingly, he said it appeared the skeleton was not the owner of the tooth. 
 
 "What's very interesting is that it looks like that tooth doesn't belong to that grave, which means that there's another grave very close," he said. 
 
 A mass grave was discovered on Beacon Island in 1999, but archaeologists had to wait 15 years before old fishermen shacks were removed so they could comb the entire island for clues left behind in 1629. 
 
 Many individuals died, it was a horrendous event ... we wouldn't expect at all for many of them to survive ... but we're finding them, so some of them do. UWA Archaeologist Professor Alistair Paterson 
 
 The team of researchers was studying the island as part of the Australian Research Council-funded project, led by UWA archaeologist Professor Alistair Paterson. 
 
 Professor Paterson said experts travelled from as far away as Holland to help piece together the Batavia story. 
 
 "Obviously it's a really significant site, not just for Western Australia and the Dutch, but also for Australia ... so we're pretty excited to see this next phase occurring here," he said. 
 
 "Many individuals died, it was a horrendous event, and yet we know many of those people died in the water. Presumably they were disposed of in surface conditions, so we wouldn't expect at all for many of [their remains] to survive ... but we're finding them, so some of them do." 
 
 The Batavia was carrying gold and silver when it sailed from Texel for the Dutch East Indies on October 27, 1628, to obtain spices. 
 
 But the vessel went off course and was wrecked in the Abrolhos on June 4, 1629. 
 
 A total of 180 people – among them 30 women and children – were ferried off the ship, while about 70 men remained. 
 
 According to the WA Museum, the survivors landed on Beacon Island. 
 
 Some, including the ship's captain, navigated a longboat to Java to find help after it became clear they could not survive long on what was left of the ship's provisions. 
 
 Undermerchant Jeronimus Cornelisz assumed charge of the group, and began picking off survivors, by sending them in search of water on nearby islands, where he thought they would not survive. 
 
 His men drowned many others. 
 
 He also murdered women and children, the ill and infirm. He kept a number of women alive to subject to repeated rapes. 
 
 He was eventually overcome by a force he had sent to one of the islands, as he tried to lure them into a trap. 
 
 When the captain returned to the site of the shipwreck, he sentenced the mutineers to having their right hands chopped off, then put them to death on the gallows. 
 
 Some of the lesser offenders were returned to Holland, while another two men were left stranded on the mainland as punishment. 
 
 Professor Paterson said the chapter in history needed more recognition. 
 
 "I still think that we've got some way to go to realise the importance of this and other Dutch sites in Western Australia," he said. 
 
 "West Australians know the story really well, particularly in Geraldton and other places, but I think there's a lot more of that story to be picked up elsewhere in the country." 
 
 Topics: maritime, history, archaeology, geraldton-6530 
 
 First posted ||||| Image copyright Dr Paul Bourke Image caption Archaeologists say much can be learned from the excavated skeleton 
 
 The skeleton of a victim from one of Australia's most famous shipwrecks has been unearthed by archaeologists. 
 
 The remains on Beacon Island, off Western Australia, date from the wreck of the Dutch East India ship the Batavia in 1629. 
 
 In the aftermath of the disaster, more than 100 survivors were murdered by a group of mutineers. 
 
 Maritime experts hope the latest find will shed new light on the episode. 
 
 The wreck site was first discovered in 1963 and a mass grave was found in 1999. 
 
 But Dr Daniel Franklin, of The University of Western Australia Centre for Forensic Science, said this was the first skeleton to be found undisturbed on Beacon Island through archaeological investigations. 
 
 He said it "represents a unique opportunity to reconstruct events surrounding this individual's death and internment". 
 
 Image copyright Dr Paul Bourke Image caption The Batavia story is well-known across Australia 
 
 Jeremy Green, head of maritime archaeology at the Western Australian Museum, said they hoped to learn more about about the life of sailors on board Dutch East India Company ships. 
 
 "It is as much about knowing where the people came from, what their diet was, as well as how they died," he said. 
 
 The skeleton is of an adolescent and two musket balls were reported to have been found nearby. 
 
 The Batavia had sailed from the Netherlands to the Dutch East Indies but veered off course and was shipwrecked in the Abrolhos Islands. 
 
 Of about 340 people on board, most made it to nearby Beacon Island and the ship's captain set off in a longboat to find help. 
 
 A bloody mutiny then broke out among those left behind led by a merchant Jeronimus Cornelisz, and his group began killing off the survivors. 
 
 Women and children were among those murdered and several women were kept as sex slaves. 
 
 Cornelisz was later found guilty of mutiny and executed along with several of his henchmen. 
 
 The fate of the Batavia and its passengers and crew has been the subject of books, documentaries and even an opera. ||||| Body Count Rises on 400-Year-Old 'Murder Island' Shipwreck Archaeologists have discovered a new communal grave tied to an infamous and bloody 1629 mutiny of Murder Island. 
 
 On an island off the coast of Western Australia, archaeologists have found a mass grave associated with a shipwreck so nightmarishly gruesome, it makes Lord of the Flies look tame. 
 
 The grave contains remains of five passengers on the Batavia, a flagship of the Dutch East India Company that sank in 1629 on its maiden voyage from the Netherlands to Java. The bodies, interred neatly in a row and showing no signs of violence, likely died soon after the wreck of dehydration—before madness set in among some of the survivors. 
 
 Notoriously, many of the Batavia’s other passengers were murdered by mutineers after the ship ran aground on Morning Reef near Beacon Island. Signs of this brutality abound in other gravesites excavated by archaeologists. One such skeleton belongs to a man missing the top of his skull from a sword blow. His body was unceremoniously dragged into its final resting place. 
 
 View Images Unlike many victims of the Batavia wreck, the most recent mass grave discovery contained orderly burials with no signs of associated violence. 
 
 Photograph courtesy Alistair Paterson, The University of Western Australia. 
 
 The Batavia devolved into chaos when the ship’s commander Francisco Pelsaert left some 282 survivors behind on Beacon Island—part of the Houtman Abrolhos, an island chain some 50 miles off Australia’s coast—as he tried to find a nearby source of water. Thanks to horrendous luck, it took him three months to return with help. 
 
 In Pelsaert’s absence, a hedonistic merchant named Jeronimus Cornelisz took charge and orchestrated dozens of murders, killing even women and children. His reign of terror ended when some men he had sent to explore other islands overpowered him; upon Pelsaert’s return, Cornelisz and many of his fellow mutineers were executed. 
 
 In all, some 115 people died following the shipwreck, many of whom were slain. Beacon Island now bears the nickname “Batavia’s Graveyard,” and some media outlets have taken to calling it “Murder Island.” 
 
 “It’s quite a bizarre story, isn’t it?” says Jeremy Green, head of maritime archaeology at the Western Australian Museum, who has studied the wreck of the Batavia for more than 40 years. “I haven’t read anything quite as bad.” 
 
 Shining a Light on Tragedy 
 
 The mass grave findings on Beacon Island, though tragic, offer a rare scientific luxury. Because Pelsaert published his journals after the incident, archaeologists can compare their findings with a detailed historical account. (Read an English translation of Pelsaert’s journals.) 
 
 It’s a line of inquiry that scientists have pursued for decades. In fact, Green says that the 1963 discovery of the Batavia prompted Western Australia to pass laws protecting the province’s underwater archaeological heritage—the first laws of its kind on Earth. 
 
 While some remains were found on Beacon Island at the time, it took another two decades to uncover more of the Batavia’s victims. In the late 1980s, fishermen on Beacon Island were digging a drain from their bathroom when they stumbled across human bones. In 1994 archaeologists began excavating the site, which contained the bodies of three adults, a teenager, a child, and an infant. 
 
 
 
 In the years since, archaeologists have kept up the hunt for new gravesites. 
 
 “A total of 10 individuals have been discovered in a central part of Beacon Island in the past three years during our research project, providing valuable new information,” University of Western Australia professor Daniel Franklin said in a statement. 
 
 View Images Archaeologists hope than further analysis of the 400-year-old victims of the Batavia wreck and subsequent mutiny will shed new light on the ship's passengers. 
 
 Photograph courtesy Alistair Paterson, The University of Western Australia. 
 
 Liesbeth Smits, a physical anthropologist at the University of Amsterdam, plans on measuring the newfound skeletons’ precise elemental compositions, which chemically hint at the victims’ diets and home countries. “You are what you eat,” she says. 
 
 Using these techniques, she previously found that despite the vessel’s Dutch port of call, many of the Batavia's passengers hailed from Scandinavia, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. 
 
 Green says that this cosmopolitan crew came with the times. In the 1620s, Europe was in the throes of the horrific Thirty Years’ War, and the Netherlands was still fighting its decades-long war of independence against Spain. 
 
 Joining the Dutch East India Company came with risks; only one of three Europeans who made the trip ever returned. But as the conflicts of the age dispossessed many, some saw the Batavia as a way out. 
 
 “People move where there was opportunity. [They could be] fed and reasonably well-paid, with prospects of making a small fortune if they were lucky,” says Green. 
 
 
 
 Study of these decidedly unlucky passengers continues. Green says that the team will publish scholarly articles on their findings next year—illuminating with the light of science an atrocity that played out nearly four centuries ago.
– More details from "one of the darkest chapters of Australia's maritime history" are coming to light, nearly 400 years after they occurred. On June 4, 1629, the Dutch East India ship the Batavia was downed by a reef on its maiden voyage. Most of the roughly 340 people aboard managed to reach nearby Beacon Island, off Western Australia, with the ship's captain setting off in search of help in a longboat. What happened in July of that year was gruesome: The West Australian reports that more than 120 people, among them women and children, were massacred by a group of mutineers led by undermerchant Jeronimus Cornelisz: Some were felled by musket fire or swords, others poisoned or drowned. Upon the captain's return, Cornelisz and many of his men were executed, reports the BBC. The Batavia's wreck was found in 1963, and a mass grave on the island was uncovered in 1999. Australia's ABC reports that the final day of searching the island during a 2013 expedition surfaced a tooth. Upon returning, archaeologists searched the area where the tooth was uncovered and have now found the island's 11th skeleton—with an archaeologist explaining it's the first to have been found using archaeology, while the others found to date were uncovered "by accident." Two musket balls were recovered near the remains, which are believed to be that of a youth. Jeremy Green, the WA Museum's head of maritime archaeology, says it doesn't appear the remains and the tooth are linked, however, indicating there may be another grave nearby. He frames the importance of uncovering more: "This was the first time that Europeans lived in Australia—albeit it wasn't in the mainland but it was here—so it's the oldest known European habitation in Australia." (The tragic story behind three partial skeletons was recently revealed, more than 160 years later.)