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ABSTRACT
In 1732, the VOC vessel Loenderveen limped into Saldanha Bay after months at sea on a disastrous voyage from the Netherlands. Mortality levels had been abnormally high, and bitter dissent had broken out between different factions of the officers with both sides appealing to the diverse mixture of soldiers and sailors on board. A full mutiny was only averted by arrival at the Cape, and the ringleaders were arraigned before the Council of Justice.
The resulting evidence provides an insight into the operation of power and hierarchy aboard a VOC vessel. The paper will consider issues such as the mobilization of ethnic loyalties, the tensions between sailors and soldiers, masculinity, honour and blasphemy, and the ways in which cultural symbols and rituals were appropriated into the conflict. All of this is set against the background of the dead and dying, and the fears of new VOC recruits in a pre-Enlightenment era of unknown worlds beyond ‘the line’.
