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| Logo of the VOC |
As part of these pay-ledgers there are also verzoekboeken, i.e. books or records that contain the requests of VOC servicemen and seamen to transfer part of their earned pay to close family or other people back home in the Republic. It is in such a verzoekboek, namely the one of the VOC ship Stavenisse (scan 419) that Jacob Odent van Heesen appears.
The Dutch East India Company or VOC
The Dutch East India Company or VOC was founded in 1602, in an attempt to unite the forces of the different Dutch companies that were active until then in the Asian trade and that were in essence short term companies that were incorporated for the purpose of a specific expedition and were liquidated when the journey had finished and the ship or fleet had returned home. These were high risk ventures and joining forces would help to reduce the overall risk level for the individual shareholders. The English had done this in 1600 with the creation of the East India Company. The States-General, the government of the Dutch Republic, had to follow suit to counter the competition of the English but also of the Portuguese.
The VOC received the monopoly for the trade between the Republic and the area east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Strait of Magellan. It had a decentralised organisation and consisted of six Chambers which were based in the cities from where the preceding short term companies were operated: Amsterdam and Zeeland (Middelburg), as the largest and most influential Chambers, and four smaller Chambers in Rotterdam, Delft, Hoorn and Enkhuizen. The VOC became the world's biggest trading company with many settlements across the trading route. At the pinnacle of its power the Company had 25,000 people in its service in Asia. Eventually, almost two centuries after the VOC was founded, it formally ceased to exist on the last day of the year 1799.
The typical voyage of the VOC fleet ships to Asia is shown in the picture below and went all the way along the African coast, passing the Cape, and then setting course to the Dutch East Indies (with capital Batavia, currently Jakarta).
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| Source: openarchives. |
The Stavenisse
From the VOC verzoekboeken we know that Jacob Odent van Heesen came from Diksmuide, in the Spanish Netherlands, and that he had signed on to join the 156-headed crew of the third class VOC ship Stavenisse on the 24th of December 1684. That very same day he already stood out to sea, on the Stavenisse's third voyage ever, first heading for the Cape and ultimately to Batavia.
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| A 17th century Dutch fluyt, seen from starboard (Source: National Maritime Museum of the Netherlands). |
Under the command of master Gerrit van Leeuwen, the Stavenisse left on its outward voyage on the 24th of December 1684 in Wielingen (Zeeland), with 156 people on board: 91 seafarers, 61 soldiers and 4 regular passengers. Most likely, Jacob Odent van Heesen was one of the seafarers, and not a soldier, although this is not clear from the Stavenisse's verzoekboek. A look at the list of people that were on board of the ship shows that there were quite some men from the Southern or Spanish Netherlands, including about 20 from present-day West and French Flanders.
Exactly 116 travel days later, on the 19th of April 1685, the ship and its 156 men arrived at the Cape. Two seafarers and five soldiers went ashore and one other soldier came on board. The ship remained moored for about two weeks until it continued its voyage on the 5th of May. By the time the Stavenisse had reached its final destination in Batavia on the 26th of July, eleven of the men on board had died (eight seafarers and three soldiers). Since the departure in Zeeland, 214 days had passed.
What happened to Jacob Odent van Heesen? Was he one of those who went ashore at the Cape or did he continue his voyage to Batavia? Was he one of the unlucky few who had died on board between the Cape and Batavia. Or did he make it to Batavia and kept serving the VOC on the intra-Asia lines? Unfortunately, the VOC documents don't give us any clue that could help us answer these questions. Neither do we know whether Jacob, assuming he had managed to stay alive, eventually returned to his homeland.
But, if he had been on the Stavenisse's return voyage from the Dutch East Indies back to Europe, then there was also a good chance that he would not make it after all. About two months after it had departed from Bengal on the 18th of December with a valuable load of textile, the Stavenisse was approaching the Cape. But during the night of the 16th of February 1686, in overcast weather and after a warning shout by the lookouts that they could see land, was ignored by the mate and officer of the watch (who insisted that they were 'fully 200 miles from the coast'), the ship ran aground and was wrecked just off the South African coast, south of the Bay of Natal and the mouth of the Utamvuna river. Only 60 castaways managed to survive and swim ashore.
Soon after, 47 of the survivors, including the ship's master Willem Knyff, set out to reach the Cape overland on foot. They were mostly treated kindly by the locals, except by a tribe they called Bushmen, who had murdered 17 of the castaways. The fate of 9 others remained unknown, and only 21 of them made it to the Cape. The 13 other survivors who had chosen to remain behind near the shipwreck were found by two English sailors from the English vessel Good Hope that was wrecked about 9 months earlier and about 20 miles further north. They took Stavenisse men to the settlement of the English survivors at Bay of Natal. Only 11 out of the 13 made it through this journey.
Meanwhile, the survivors who had made it to the Cape had testified to their superiors about Natal, where their ship was stranded, as a land of friendly and hospitable people, with an abundance of wealth and gold. Following these testimonials, the Dutch ship Noord became the first one ever to moor in the Bay of Natal in January 1689, on a mission to search and rescue any remaining survivors of the Stavenisse shipwreck, but also to enter into a deal with the local people to buy Terra Natal, the land of Natal, and the wealth it included, from them.
Jacob Odent van Heesen
Who was Jacob Odent van Heesen? The VOC records do not give us a lot of information, except that he came from Diksmuide. Diksmuide is right in the center of the ancestral cradle of the family Van Eessen/Vaneessen/Vanheessen. It seems, therefore, not unlikely that Jacob is a descendant of this family.
Jacob signed on for service in the VOC in the Chamber of Zeeland on the 24th of December 1684. Assuming that he was a young man at the time, let's say at least 20 years old, he must have been born certainly before 1665. Unfortunately many of the old archive records of Diksmuide and other locations on the World War I frontline have gone lost forever. Also the parish registers of Diksmuide for the period before 1671 are no longer available, so I could not find any Jacob Odent van Heesen being baptised so far. Maybe other sources could bring relief in the future and show us who his parents and maybe further ancestors were.
Moreover, if he survived and either returned home or remained in Asia, there could be people that descend from him, maybe even in a direct male line. I wonder how the surname could have been corrupted into an Asian variant. Who knows, maybe future Y-DNA testing could bring a surprise.
