Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Visiting the "Batavia"


Maybe you have read Mike Dash's Batavia's Graveyard and as a result know all about history's bloodiest mutiny (and-the-mad-religious-maniac-who-led-it). Maybe you are also going to the Frank's APA 100th issue meetup in Amsterdam.

If so, then you will be able to travel to Lelystad, where they have a replica of the Batavia. I gather this modern retourship made the round trip to Australia a couple of years ago. I wonder did they also replicate the sanitary facilities the orginal ship had (I'm thinking in particular of the rope left hanging in the water (you will either remember this or you won't)).

In other Mike Dash news, I have started reading Thug, which is about the Thuggee cult in 19th century India. Apparently they weren't actually religious maniacs, they just liked killing people and stealing all their money.

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