Ada: Pelsaert held the trial right there on the islands — on Seals' Island, later nicknamed Traitor's Island. Under Dutch law he could use torture to extract confessions, and he did. Water torture.
Theo: And the sentences?
Ada: The worst mutineers had their right hands cut off. Cornelisz — the man who ordered but rarely struck — had both hands amputated.
Theo: There's the payoff. The hands that gave the orders.
Ada: On the second of October, sixteen twenty-nine, seven men were hanged, Cornelisz among them. Pelsaert recovered most of the silver chests.
Theo: You said two were spared. What happened to them?
Ada: The two youngest — Wouter Loos and Jan Pelgrom de Bye — were marooned on the Australian mainland, near Wittecarra Gully. The first Europeans to live on the continent. They were never heard from again.
Theo: So the maiden voyage ends in shipwreck, massacre, and a footrace. What do we take from it?
Ada: That the whole thing turned on a common soldier — not the merchant, not the self-crowned Captain-General. Hayes just did the decent thing, then rowed faster.
Theo: And Pelsaert?
Ada: Dead within a year, reputation ruined. But the tale was printed as the Ongeluckige Voyagie — the Unlucky Voyage — one of the first true-crime bestsellers.
Theo: Two boats, one ship, and it came down to who spoke first.
Ada: And there's a whole other story in those two marooned boys on the mainland — if you're curious, it's one tap away. You can interrupt any time and ask us anything.
Theo: This was Historai — where history answers back.