The Batavia Shipwreck Disaster and Massacre of 1629 | Episode 114
Imagine being nearly Tetrised to death in the throes of a massive shipwreck. Now, imagine yourself sitting on a deserted island and watching as the remains of that ship are slowly beaten to death by the waves, and thinking “well, at least things can’t get any worse”. Then you meet the surviving crew and wonder if it’s too late to swim back to the wreck. On today’s episode: we’ll debunk the notion of the romance of life at sea by revealing why every famous mariner you ever heard of probably smelled like sun-baked sewage and ripe boils; we’ll discuss the only character in this show’s history that we’ve compared with Jim Jones, Machiavelli, and Charles Manson; and we’ll answer the age-old question, “how many people would you kill for a Klondike Bar”. And if you were listening to this on Patreon: I don’t know how many people died at your summer camp, but you would hear about the most insanely dangerous sleep away camp of all time; and you would hear the tale about a dire set of circumstances that led to the world record for the most people to be killed and eaten inside an area roughly the size of a school bus. If this were any other story, the instigating shipwreck would be an incredible disaster on its own. As it happens, I barely remember there was a shipwreck. Of all the stories we have covered, this is clearly going to be one of the most unhinged. Plus, you know my rule. If I’m telling you a story more than 400 years old, you know it has to be good. It’s lawless as hell, and the record keeping wasn’t great, but the drama is unstoppable. Until the end, when some people would die terribly in this dry run of the Lord of the Flies, while others would experience a little surgery with a hammer and chisel because of it. It is with no small amount of joy that I announce we will be adding a retrospective show called Doomsday Aftermath shortly that will allow you to re-experience early episodes with remastered audio, and a load of memories and behind-the-scenes stuff from the creation of that episode, and an update on what we’ve learned about the disaster itself since originally airing it. ––––– THANK YOU. Most shows survive at the whim of production companies and corporate sponsors, built from the top down. Doomsday doesn’t exist because some network exec believes in it – it exists because actual people do. It's built from the bottom up, and it’s been my privilege to bring you these stories. Just you, me, and a microphone. I don’t do this for you, so much as I do this because of you. If you'd like to support the show at Buy Me A Coffee, or join the club over at Patreon for AD-FREE EPISODES, LONGER EPISODES, EXTRA CONTENT, all that good stuff All older episodes can be found on any of your favorite channels Apple : https://tinyurl.com/5fnbumdw Spotify : https://tinyurl.com/73tb3uuw IHeartRadio : https://tinyurl.com/vwczpv5j Podchaser : https://tinyurl.com/263kda6w Stitcher : https://tinyurl.com/mcyxt6vw Google : https://tinyurl.com/3fjfxatt Spreaker : <a href="https://tinyurl.com/fm5y22su" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer...