SBS - Batavia Revealed Shipwreck Psycho (2018)

BATAVIA REVEALED SHIPWRECK PSYCHO tells the real-life story of the bloodiest shipwreck of all time. The grisly fate of 125 Dutch men, women and children marooned on Beacon Island off the coast of Western Australia in 1629 is explored in this real-life Lord of the Flies story, pieced together by a surviving journal and the remains unearthed in an archaeological dig. On a remote desert island, archaeologists and forensic scientists hunt for clues to a terrifying, 400 year old tale of shipwrecked castaways brutally murdered by their own kind, led by one man. In 1629, the pride of the Dutch fleet was on its way to the East Indies when it hit a coral reef off the coast of Australia and sank. Some of the 300 passengers and crew drowned but most managed to swim to the nearby cluster of uninhabited islands. For the survivors, it was the equivalent of crash landing on the moon. They were stranded thousands of kilometres from any known civilisation, on alien land with little hope of rescue. The survivors probably thought their situation couldn’t get any worse. In fact, their nightmare was just beginning. A real-life Lord of the Flies scenario unfolded led by one man. The apothecary, Jeronmius Cornelius, was a cult-like leader. He created a world of anarchy and violence where power games, sexual slaves, hedonism and madness prevailed. Survivor turned against survivor and a reign of fear, violence and eventually death was wrought on the hapless castaways. Over three blood-soaked months, 115 men, women, children, even babies, were brutally slaughtered. Now, a team of archaeologists and forensic scientists are on a mission to learn more about what happened and more importantly - why. In the hunt for clues they unearth skeletons of victims, and travel to where it all began, the Netherlands, to get inside the mind of the leader of the murder and ask the question was he truly a psychopath? SHIPWRECK PSYCHO shines a light on a disturbing event, when a civilization was hijacked by a psychopath who drew on the darkest and most depraved side of humanity for his own selfish ends.

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