He arrived at the island as a shipwreckedmariner.
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| Dodo: best cooked slowly over a low heat |
He was half-crazed by dehydration andhunger, having endured nine days adrift in a longboat drinking only his ownurine.
Now, as he stepped ashore on a small isletoff the east coast of Mauritius, Volkert Evertszoon rubbed his eyes indisbelief.
The islet was home to an extraordinaryflightless bird that waddled along the beach in the most undignified fashionand could be easily caught by grabbing its feet.
Volkert and his fellow survivors from thecrippled vessel, Arnhem, could scarcely believetheir luck. Here, on the shores of Ile d’Ambre, was enough food to keep themalive for months.
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| Ile d'Ambre: dodo's last home |
What neither he nor his shipmates realisedwas that they would go down in history as the last eyewitnesses of the haplessdodo, a bird that would very soon be extinct. Indeed, it is more than likelythat their feasting on the Ile d’Ambre’s dodos, in February, 1662, led to thebird’s tragic demise.
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| Dutch ships: sailors preferred dodo meat to salt pork |
‘They were largerthan geese but not able to fly,’ wrote Volkert. ‘Instead of wings they hadsmall flaps, but they could run very fast. One of us would chase them so thatthey ran towards the other party who then grabbed them; when we had one tightlyheld by the leg it would cry out, then the others would come to its aid andcould be caught as well.’
Volkert and his menwere fortunate to find dodos on the islet. Ever since this peculiar bird hadfirst been sighted in Mauritius in the 1590s, it had been ruthlessly hunteddown for food.
It did not make for atasty feast: the dodo was often known as the ‘loathsome bird’ on account of itsdisgusting taste. But it was extremely easy to catch, and the sailors whohunted them were so hungry that anything was better to the putrid salt-porkthey had on board ship.
One ship’s commandereven declared them to taste palatable if cooked for a long time. ‘Their belly andbreast were of a pleasant flavour,’ wrote Wybrand van Warwijck in 1598, ‘andeasily masticated.’
Culinary delightswere far from the minds of Volkert Evertszoon and his men when they steppedashore on the Ile d’Ambre.
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| Perhaps the last dodo painted from life, in 1638 |
They were delightedto find so many dodos, a bird that had become a rarity ever since Dutchsettlers had introduced pigs to the Mauritius. Pigs were the dodo’s mostvoracious predator: the probable reason why the bird had survived on Iled’Ambre, but nowhere else in Mauritius, is that it was one of the onlyremaining islets that didn’t have any pigs.
Volkert was amazed that the birds were so tame. ‘[They] werenot shy at all,’ he wrote, ‘because they very likely were not used to see menpursuing them, and which [be]came us exceedingly well… having neither barrelnor ammunition to shoot them.’
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| A Mughal dodo: perhaps the most accurate depiction |
The birds seemed no less intrigued bythese shipwrecked mariners. ‘[They] … stared at us and remained quiet wherethey stand, not knowing whether they had wings to fly away or legs to run off,and suffering us to approach them as close as we pleased.’
Here was a feast indeed: Volkert and hismen drovethe dodos together into one place ‘in such a manner that we could catch themwith our hands.’
No sooner had they caughtone that all the others ‘on a sudden came running as fast as they could to itsassistance, and by which they were caught and made prisoners also.’
Volkert and his men livedcomfortably for the three months they stayed on the islet before being rescuedby the English ship, Truro.
In his account, Volkertdoes not record whether he and his men killed all the dodos on the islet.
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| Volkert's book: a feast for dodo lovers |
It is quite likely thatthey did: although the Dutch hunter, Isaac Lamotius, recorded seeing dodos in1688, it’s unclear if he is referring to the same bird. By the time he waswriting, the flightless Red Rail was known by the same Dutch name: dodaers.
Unless and until newevidence emerges, the most plausible explanation for the dodo’s demise is thatVolkert and his men ate it into extinction.
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| UK paperback |
NOW PUBLISHED IN PAPERBACK
And for my American readers, it is now published under the title: The Boy Who Went to War: The Story of a Reluctant German Soldier in WWII available here
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| Newly published US edition |
'Idiosyncratic and utterly fascinating... an extraordinary tale of hardship, horror and amazing good fortune' James Delingpole, The Daily Mail
