Perhaps because Pieter had not been found guilty of crimes such as theft or violence during his escape, the The prosecutor pointed out that – freeing himselfįrom his chains – he had violated the earlier sentence of the court and demanded that he serve an extra two years ofĬonvict labour. Captured as a runawayĬonvict, Pieter Ewouts was again brought before the Court of Justice. Wharf in the vessels that laid on the ridge to be worked on, until yesterday when he was caught’. Pieter declared he had ‘ever since this time sought to flee from here Īnd in the meantime he had been here and there during the day, while at night he had slept at the Company’s equipage Market bridge), where Pieter and ‘the European left each other without ever seeing each other again’. They ‘came on land again near the Hoenderpassersbrug’ (chicken Left the artillery and swam across the river’, in the words of Pieter’s later testimony before the Court of Justice Pieter and his fellow convict did not hesitate. He would later claim that ‘one of the heavy planks had fallen on the chain’, causing It was during this work that Pieter’sĬhains had broken loose. Unload heavy planks from a vessel lying behind the artillery and to carry them in’. The Court of Justice sentenced him ‘to be fiercelyīeaten and consequently put in chains in order to be banished for the period of three consequent years of labour at the Company’sĪfter the convicts arrived at the artillery that morning, they were commanded ‘to Stabbed a fellow crew member during a drunken fight in the city. He was brought before the Raad van Justitie (Court of Justice) of Batavia after he had On the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, VOC) ship Coning Carel. Only two months earlier, he had been a young sailor Was also in chains, which ‘linked him to another European’. The convicts walked through the city chained in pairs. Quarter of the Dutch colonial city of Batavia to the artillery. Morning in the middle of December 1728, around eight o’clock, the convict Pieter Ewoutsįrom Middelburg was ordered ‘with several other convicts’ to walk from the convict barracks in the artisans’