Appendices etc » Tables

Table 1

Number of personnel resolved upon by the meeting of the directors, number actually sent, and number that actually arrived in Batavia(on the same ships, so not necessarily in the same year). Years run from August to and including July. Ships with other destinations (Ceylon, Coromandel or Pulicat) not included. For sources and way of compilation, see below.

Source for the data: D.A.S., outgoing voyages 861 through 1001 (for the second and thrid column), and the Resolutions of the Gentlemen XVII for the years 1656-1663, in voc-archive 103, 104, 105 (for the first column). Please note that the numbers should be considered estimates. The data on people disembarking in Batavia are almost complete, the data of people embarking in Amsterdam much less so, particularly for the period 1656-1658. Where embarking data for a certain ship was missing, an estimate has been made by dividing the number of arrivals from this ship in Batavia by 0,91, the average departure/arrival ratio for the entire period, based on all the successful voyages with complete data. E.g. in 1656 embarking data for 2 ships, the Witte Olifant and the Zeeland were missing. A total of 725 people disembarked from these ships. On the basis of this it is estimated that 796 people embarked. Added to the 3417 heads on the other ships, this gives the total of 4213.

The specified numbers of soldiers, sailors, and others are the known totals; I have not made estimates for those, as data are in many cases too incomplete to do that. This is why in many cases the math for an entire year doesn’t add up, as for many ships only the total number on board is known. To make easily visible where data are (virtually) complete, the numbers which do not add up to at least 97% of the total are in gray.

A special case in these data is the year 1658-1659, when the Wapen van Amsterdam made a pretty fast and uneventful passage, of which, however, no data on either side of the trip seem to exist. On the basis of its tonnage of 920 I have simply made an educated guess of 300 embarking and 273 disembarking in the totals.

Conversely, ships that ran into trouble or remained at the Cape for a while, and went ‘missing’ from the data afterwards (always with the remark that they probably arrived in Batavia at some point), have not been compensated for. The number of people arriving in Batavia will therefore probably have been slightly higher than the numbers here indicate. This only concerns three ships with a total known number of 196 people on board.

The numbers of soldiers and sailors ‘resolved upon’ is simply calculated from on the ratio that the resolutions mention, usually 2/3 against 1/3, or 3/5 against 2/5. Where not specified, the ratio was not mentioned in the resolution.