He arrived at the island as a shipwrecked
mariner.
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| Dodo: best cooked slowly over a low heat |
He was half-crazed by dehydration and
hunger, having endured nine days adrift in a longboat drinking only his own
urine.
Now, as he stepped ashore on a small islet
off the east coast of Mauritius, Volkert Evertszoon rubbed his eyes in
disbelief.
The islet was home to an extraordinary
flightless bird that waddled along the beach in the most undignified fashion
and could be easily caught by grabbing its feet.
Volkert and his fellow survivors from the
crippled vessel, Arnhem, could scarcely believe
their luck. Here, on the shores of Ile d’Ambre, was enough food to keep them
alive for months.
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| Ile d'Ambre: dodo's last home |
What neither he nor his shipmates realised
was that they would go down in history as the last eyewitnesses of the hapless
dodo, a bird that would very soon be extinct. Indeed, it is more than likely
that their feasting on the Ile d’Ambre’s dodos, in February, 1662, led to the
bird’s tragic demise.
 |
| Dutch ships: sailors preferred dodo meat to salt pork |
‘They were larger
than geese but not able to fly,’ wrote Volkert. ‘Instead of wings they had
small flaps, but they could run very fast. One of us would chase them so that
they ran towards the other party who then grabbed them; when we had one tightly
held by the leg it would cry out, then the others would come to its aid and
could be caught as well.’
Volkert and his men
were fortunate to find dodos on the islet. Ever since this peculiar bird had
first been sighted in Mauritius in the 1590s, it had been ruthlessly hunted
down for food.
It did not make for a
tasty feast: the dodo was often known as the ‘loathsome bird’ on account of its
disgusting taste. But it was extremely easy to catch, and the sailors who
hunted them were so hungry that anything was better to the putrid salt-pork
they had on board ship.
One ship’s commander
even declared them to taste palatable if cooked for a long time. ‘Their belly and
breast were of a pleasant flavour,’ wrote Wybrand van Warwijck in 1598, ‘and
easily masticated.’
Culinary delights
were far from the minds of Volkert Evertszoon and his men when they stepped
ashore on the Ile d’Ambre.
 |
| Perhaps the last dodo painted from life, in 1638 |
They were delighted
to find so many dodos, a bird that had become a rarity ever since Dutch
settlers had introduced pigs to the Mauritius. Pigs were the dodo’s most
voracious predator: the probable reason why the bird had survived on Ile
d’Ambre, but nowhere else in Mauritius, is that it was one of the only
remaining islets that didn’t have any pigs.
Volkert was amazed that the birds were so tame. ‘[They] were
not shy at all,’ he wrote, ‘because they very likely were not used to see men
pursuing them, and which [be]came us exceedingly well… having neither barrel
nor ammunition to shoot them.’
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| A Mughal dodo: perhaps the most accurate depiction |
The birds seemed no less intrigued by
these shipwrecked mariners. ‘[They] … stared at us and remained quiet where
they 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 his
men drove
the dodos together into one place ‘in such a manner that we could catch them
with our hands.’
No sooner had they caught
one that all the others ‘on a sudden came running as fast as they could to its
assistance, and by which they were caught and made prisoners also.’
Volkert and his men lived
comfortably for the three months they stayed on the islet before being rescued
by the English ship, Truro.
In his account, Volkert
does 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 that
they did: although the Dutch hunter, Isaac Lamotius, recorded seeing dodos in
1688, it’s unclear if he is referring to the same bird. By the time he was
writing, the flightless Red Rail was known by the same Dutch name: dodaers.
Unless and until new
evidence emerges, the most plausible explanation for the dodo’s demise is that
Volkert and his men ate it into extinction.
 |
| 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
 |
| Newly published US edition |
'Idiosyncratic and utterly fascinating... an extraordinary tale of hardship, horror and amazing good fortune' James Delingpole, The Daily Mail
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