Baccus van Nekk

Baccus van Nekk is the Erasmus expedition’s chief merchant, treasurer, and company representative, a practical custodian of its money who measures survival in food, drink, and the prospect of profit. His near-blindness and unquenchable longing for liquor lend him a comic presence, but his work also places him at the center of the crew’s finances, captivity, and uncertain attempt to sail home. His hopes of turning the voyage into a fortune repeatedly meet the material facts of hunger, fear, and loss.

Identity and Position

Baccus represents the Dutch East India Company, which financed the expedition, and serves as both its chief merchant and treasurer. His authority is financial as well as personal: after the Captain-General dies, Baccus and Jan Roper jointly hold legal jurisdiction over the company’s money. That responsibility becomes consequential when John Blackthorne later needs funds to recruit sailors and gunners. Baccus is not merely a hopeful passenger, then; he is one of the people empowered to decide what resources the expedition can commit.

His physical appearance is part of the book’s portrait of him. Near-sighted even before the storm, he has lost his last pair of spectacles and habitually stands close to people so that he can make them out. Blackthorne dislikes others crowding him, but does not move away from Baccus, whom he considers a friend and recognizes as almost blind. The small accommodation establishes an intimacy between the two men amid the pressure of the stranded crew.

Profit, Comfort, and Fear

Baccus’s first response to the crew’s new circumstances is notably bodily: there is no liquor, only hot water with herbs, and he asks Blackthorne to request alcohol. His distress about drink sits alongside his professional attention to the larger commercial opportunity. When the crew fears that the Erasmus has been sealed and that they cannot return aboard, he urges them to keep their wits and imagines a profitable exchange of their cargo for spices, gold, and silver. He argues that the voyage had been driven from Chile, with the Spaniards hunting them and the return through the Strait blocked; reaching Japan appears to him their remaining chance to escape and prosper.

His confidence is not founded on anything he has personally seen. Baccus asks Blackthorne whether the local people wear gold or precious stones, and speculates that the presence of priests and Catholics might mean the stories of wealth are true. Blackthorne reports seeing no gold or gems. The gap between Baccus’s belief in the riches of Japan and his lack of evidence for them makes his optimism both a commercial calculation and a way of resisting the crew’s panic. When Maetsukker fears that the men will be killed, Baccus again tries to steady the conversation by insisting that they are the first to reach Japan and may become rich if they remain alert. His assurance cannot remove the danger, but it gives the stranded men a future to imagine.

Captivity and the Captain-General’s Death

Baccus’s hopefulness does not prevent him from taking part in the crew’s anxious assessment of blame. In the cellar, he carefully says what others evidently think: Blackthorne was unwise to attack the priest in front of the local lord, and that act helped bring the crew into their present predicament. The men agree, though cautiously. Baccus speaks as a representative of the group, putting their complaint into words while Blackthorne remains the person on whom their fate depends.

When Blackthorne later reunites with the surviving crew, Baccus is the one who explains that Captain-General Spillbergen is dead. The Captain-General had been ill and never emerged from the pit. After Blackthorne was taken away, Baccus sat beside him as he struggled for water in the darkness, choking and moaning before he died. Baccus admits that fear and confusion make the timing unclear, but remembers the death rattle. His account gives the loss a particular witness: the company’s financial officer, usually preoccupied with drink and profit, has also been beside the expedition’s leader at the moment of his death.

The survivors’ subsequent circumstances are recounted through Baccus’s practical details. Every ten days, a few samurai count the men and provide sacks of rice and copper cash. The crew trades the rice for meat, fruit, and other supplies. Baccus says that there is enough for their needs and that the women in the household do what the men want, while the crew’s recollection makes clear that conditions were not always so. His report records the routine that has replaced the freedom of shipboard life: a recurring inspection, allocated provisions, and dependence on local arrangements.

Blackthorne, the Crew, and the Money

When Blackthorne returns, Baccus leads him into the room where the crew has gathered. His drunkenness largely disappears in his excitement at the reunion; he holds the door for Blackthorne, then announces his arrival to the men. The welcome is immediate and noisy. Baccus’s place in the scene is not that of a detached treasurer but of a friend who helps turn a private reunion into a moment shared by the whole crew.

Blackthorne initially assumes that the men have repaired the Erasmus and praises them, promising triple shares of the prize money and an additional reward. Baccus corrects him: Toranaga’s men did the work, while Vinck showed them how. The correction matters because it separates the crew’s good fortune from any labor they performed, and because Baccus does not allow gratitude to become a false account of what happened. His commercial precision persists even in a scene of relief.

That precision becomes a point of conflict when Blackthorne tries to secure the money needed to hire new men. The bullion belongs to the company, not to Blackthorne personally. Baccus, as expedition treasurer and chief merchant, shares jurisdiction over it with the Captain-General; he and Jan Roper count and recount the funds, finding them short by a thousand coins. Baccus objects that Blackthorne wants too much to take with him to recruit replacements. Blackthorne insists that he must pay what is necessary to obtain seamen and gunners if he is to sail home. Their dispute is therefore not simply personal: it sets the company’s control of its capital against the practical cost of restoring the voyage.

Baccus does not want to remain aboard the Erasmus himself, but he agrees to accompany Blackthorne, while the others return to Yedo and the ship remains safely harbored under Naga’s command. Blackthorne chooses Vinck for his seamanship, not Baccus for his financial office. The decision marks the limits of Baccus’s usefulness to the immediate voyage without diminishing his importance to its accounts. Across his appearances, he remains a vivid counterweight to Blackthorne: a man who hopes for wealth and longs for familiar comforts, yet whose financial authority and eyewitness testimony help define what the crew has lost and what it may still be able to recover.