CHAPTER XX
Attempt of the English and Dutch to discover a New Route to the Far East—Voyages round the World—Attempted English Voyage to Japan—English and Dutch Voyages to India—First Dutch Voyage to Japan—Adams, the English Pilot—His Adventures and Detention in Japan[66]—A. D. 1513-1607.
For a full century subsequent to the discovery of the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope, the commerce of the Indian seas, so far as Europe was concerned, remained almost a complete monopoly in the hands of the Portuguese. The ancient Venetian commerce with India, by the Red Sea, had been speedily brought to an end, while the trade carried on overland, by way of Aleppo and the Persian Gulf, was mainly controlled by the Portuguese, who held possession of Ormus, through which it mostly passed. Nor did the Spanish discovery of another passage to India, by the Straits of Magellan, and the lodgment which the Spaniards made about the year 1570, in the Philippine Islands, very materially interfere with the Portuguese monopoly. The passage by the Straits of Magellan was seldom or never attempted, the Spanish trade being confined to two annual ships between Acapulco and Manila.
It was the desire to share in this East India commerce (which made Lisbon the wealthiest and most populous city of Europe) that led to so many attempts to discover a northeastern, a northwestern, and even a northern passage to India (directly over the pole), not only as shorter, but as avoiding any collision with the Portuguese and Spanish, who did not hesitate to maintain by force their respective exclusive claims to the passages by the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Magellan. These attempts were at first confined to the English, beginning with that made by Sebastian Cabot, on his third and last voyage from England. The Dutch and Belgians were long content to buy Indian merchandise at Lisbon, which they resold in the north of Europe; but after the union of the Spanish and Portuguese dominions, in 1580, and the seizure, which soon followed, of the Dutch ships at Lisbon, and their exclusion from any trade with Portugal, the Dutch began to entertain, even more ardently than the English, the desire of a direct commerce with the far East. Drake, in his voyage round the world (1577-80), outward by the Straits of Magellan and homeward by the Cape of Good Hope, a track in which he was speedily followed by Cavendish (1586-88), led the way to the Indian seas; but the failure of Cavendish in a second attempt to pass the Straits of Magellan, and the capture, A. D. 1594, by Spanish-American cruisers in the Pacific, of Sir Richard Hawkins, a son of the famous Sir John Hawkins, who had attempted a voyage to Japan by the same route, served to keep up the terrors of that passage.
Meanwhile, Captain Lancaster, as early as 1592, accomplished the first English voyage to India by the Cape of Good Hope. After a rather disastrous voyage, he returned in 1594, having been greatly delayed by his ignorance of the monsoons. A second expedition, destined for China, sailed in 1596, but perished miserably at sea. It is to the Dutch that the credit mainly belongs of first breaking in upon the Portuguese and Spanish monopoly of Indian commerce.[67]
Among other Dutch ship captains and merchants who had been thrown into prison at Lisbon was Cornelius Houtman, who improved that opportunity to acquire, by conversation with Portuguese seamen, a knowledge of the Indian seas; and it was by his persuasion that the merchants of Amsterdam, associating as an East India Company, fitted out, in 1595, eight vessels,—four to renew the experiment of a northeastern passage, and four to proceed to India by the Cape of Good Hope. The voyage of the first four, under the direction of Hugh Linschooten,[67] who had lately returned from Goa, where he had resided six years in the service of the archbishop, resulted in the discovery of Nova Zembla, beyond which neither this expedition nor two subsequent ones were able to proceed. The four other ships, under the charge of Houtman, reached the west coast of Java, and in spite of the arts and opposition of the Portuguese, whom they found established at Bantam, in that island, they opened a trade with the natives, not without an occasional intermixture of hostilities, in which they lost more than half their numbers, besides being obliged to abandon and burn one of their vessels. The other three ships returned to Holland in 1598. This voyage had not been profitable; yet the actual commencement of the long-desired Indian traffic greatly stimulated the hopes of the merchants, and that same year not less than four distinct India squadrons were fitted out,—one of two vessels, under Houtman; another, under Jacques Mahay, of five vessels, known as Verhagen’s fleet, from the chief promoter of the enterprise; a third, of three vessels, under Oliver Noort; and a fourth, of not less than eight vessels, set forth by a new East India association, including not only the merchants of Amsterdam, but those of the other cities of the province of Holland, rudiment of the afterwards so celebrated Dutch East India Company. The first and last of these expeditions proceeded by the Cape of Good Hope. The other two were to attempt the passage by the Straits of Magellan.
The Dutch merchants were at this time much richer than those of England, and for these enterprises of theirs to India they obtained the assistance of quite a number of adventurous Englishmen. Houtman had an English pilot named Davis; Noort carried, in the same capacity, Thomas Melis, who had made the voyage round the world with Cavendish. The fleet of Mahay had two English pilots, William Adams and Timothy Shotten, with the former of whom, as being the first Englishman who ever reached Japan, and long a resident there, our narrative has chiefly to do.
Born, according to his own account, on the banks of the Medway, between Rochester and Chatham, Adams, at the age of twelve, had commenced a seafaring life, apprentice to Master Nicholas Diggins, of Limehouse, near London, whom he served for twelve years. He acted afterward as master and pilot in her Majesty’s (Queen Elizabeth’s) ships. Then for eleven or twelve years he was employed by the worshipful company of the Barbary merchants. The Dutch traffic with India beginning, desirous, as he tells us, “to make a little experience of the small knowledge which God had given him,” he was induced to enter that service.
Mahay’s squadron, in which Adams sailed as chief pilot, consisted of the “Hope,” of two hundred and fifty tons and one hundred and thirty men, the “Faith,” of one hundred and fifty tons and one hundred and nine men, the “Charity,” of one hundred and sixty tons and one hundred and ten men, the “Fidelity,” of one hundred tons and eighty-six men, and the “Good News,” of seventy-five tons and fifty-six men; but these names of good omen did not save these small and overcrowded vessels from a succession of disasters, too common in the maritime enterprises of those days. They left the Texel the 24th of June, and on the 21st of August reached the Cape Verde Islands, where they remained twenty-one days to refresh the men, of whom many were sick with scurvy, including Mahay, their chief commander, who died soon after they had recommenced their voyage. Encountering contrary winds and heavy rains, they were forced to the coast of Guinea, and landed on Cape Gonsalves, just south of the line. The sick were set on shore, and soon after a French sailor came aboard, who promised to do them all favor with the negro king. The country could furnish very few supplies; and as the sick recovered from the scurvy, those hitherto well began to suffer from fever.
In this state of distress they set sail for the coast of Brazil; but falling in soon after with the island of Annabon, in the Gulf of Guinea, they landed, took the town, which contained eighty houses, and obtained a supply of oxen, and of oranges and other fruits; but still the men continued to die, of whom they buried more than thirty on this island.
Two months were thus spent on the African coast. The ships, setting sail again about the middle of November, were greatly delayed by one of the vessels losing her mainmast, and it was five months before they reached the Straits of Magellan, the crews during most of that time on short allowance, and driven to such extremity as to eat the calf-skins with which the ropes were covered.
Having entered the straits the beginning of April, 1599, they obtained a good supply of penguins for food; but the commander stopping to wood and water, they were overtaken by the winter then just setting in, during which they lost more than a hundred men by cold and hunger, and were thus detained—though, according to Adams, there were many times when they might have gone through—till the 24th of September, when at last they entered the South Sea.
A few days after, they encountered a violent storm, by which the ships were separated. Captain Wert, with the “Faith” and “Fidelity,” was driven back into the straits, where he fell in with Oliver Noort, who had left Holland a few days after the Verhagen fleet, had followed in the same track, had encountered many of the same difficulties, but who, more fortunate, not only passed the strait, but succeeded in completing the fourth circumnavigation of the globe,—a feat accomplished before his voyage only by the ships of Magellan, Drake, and Cavendish. As Noort was unable to afford him any aid, Wert abandoned the enterprise, and returned with his two ships to Holland.
The other three ships steered separately for the coast of Chili, where a rendezvous, in the latitude of forty-six degrees, had been appointed. The “Charity,” in which Adams was, on reaching the place of rendezvous found some Indian inhabitants, who at first furnished sheep in exchange for bells and knives, with which they seemed well satisfied, but who shortly after disappeared, probably through Spanish influence. Having waited twenty-eight days, and hearing nothing of her consorts, the “Charity” ran by Valdivia to the island of Mocha, and thence toward the neighboring island of Santa Maria. Seeing on the mainland near by a number of people, boats were sent for a parley; but the people would suffer none to land from the boats, at which they shot a multitude of arrows. “Nevertheless,” says Adams, “having no victuals in our ship, and hoping to find refreshing, we forcibly landed some seven-and-twenty or thirty of our men, and drove the wild people from the water-side, having the most of our men hurt with their arrows. Having landed, we made signs of friendship, and in the end came to parley, with signs that our desire was to have victuals for iron, silver, and cloth, which we showed them. Whereupon they gave our folks wine, with batatas (sweet potatoes) and other fruits, and bade them, by signs and tokens, to go aboard, and the next day to come again, and they would bring us victuals.”
The next day, after a council, in which it was resolved not to land more than two or three men at once, the captain approached the shore with all the force he had. Great numbers of people were seen, who made signs for the boats to land; and in the end, as the people would not come near the boats, twenty-three men landed with muskets, and marched up toward four or five houses; but before they had gone the distance of a musket-shot they found themselves in an ambush, and the whole, including Thomas Adams, a brother of William, the chief pilot, were slain or taken. “So our boats waited long,” says Adams, “to see if any of them would come again; but seeing no hope to recover them, our boats returned, with this sorrowful news, that all our men that landed were slain, which was a lamentable thing to hear, for we had scarce so many men left as could wind up our anchor.”
After waiting a day longer, they went over to the neighboring island of Santa Maria, where they found the “Hope,” which had just arrived, but in as great distress as themselves, having, at the island of Mocha, the day before the “Charity” had passed there, lost their commander and twenty-seven men in an attempt to land to obtain provisions. Some provisions were finally got by detaining two Spaniards, who came to visit the ships, and requiring them to pay a ransom in sheep and oxen. It was proposed to burn one of the ships, as there were not men enough for both; but the new captains, of whom the one in command of the “Charity” was named Quackernack, could not agree which of the ships to burn.
At length, the men being somewhat refreshed, a council was called to consider what should be done to make the voyage as profitable as possible to the merchants. It was stated by one of the sailors, who had been to Japan in a Portuguese ship, that woollen cloth, of which they had much on board, was good merchandise there; and considering that the Moluccas, and most parts of the East Indies, were not countries in which woollen cloths would be likely to be very acceptable; hearing also from the people on shore that Spanish cruisers were after them,—by whom, in fact, their third vessel was captured, news of their intentions and force having been sent from Spain to Peru about the time of their departure from Holland,—it was finally resolved to stand away for Japan. Leaving the coast of Chili on the 27th of November, and standing northwesterly across the equator for three or four months, they had the trade-wind and pleasant weather. In their way they encountered a group of islands somewhere about sixteen degrees of north latitude (perhaps the Sandwich Islands), to which eight of their men ran off with the pinnace, and were eaten, as was supposed, by the islanders, who, by the report of one who was taken, were cannibals.
In the latitude of twenty-seven degrees north, the vessels, encountering variable winds and stormy weather, were separated. The “Hope” was never more heard of; the “Charity” still kept on her course, though with many of her men sick and others dead, when, on the 11th of April, being then in great misery, with only four or five men out of a company of four-and-twenty able to walk, and as many more to creep on their knees, the whole expecting shortly to die, at last they made the hoped-for land, which proved to be the eastern coast of Shimo. They were immediately boarded by numerous boats, which they had no force to resist; but the boatmen offered no injury beyond stealing what they could conveniently lay their hands on. This, however, was put a stop to the next day by the governor of the neighboring district, who sent soldiers on board to protect the cargo, and who treated the crew with great kindness, furnishing them with all necessary refreshments, and giving them a house on shore for their sick, of whom nine finally died.
For some days the only conversation was by signs; but before long a Portuguese Jesuit, with some other Portuguese, arrived from Nagasaki, on the opposite western coast of the island.
The Dutch now had an interpreter; but, what with religious and what with national antipathies, little was to be hoped from a Jesuit and a Portuguese. In fact, the Portuguese accused them of being pirates, and two of their own company, in hopes to get control of the cargo, turned traitors, and plotted with the Portuguese. After nine days the emperor [Iyeyasu] sent five galleys, in which Adams, attended by one of the sailors, was conveyed to Ōsaka, distant about eighty leagues. Here he found the emperor, “in a wonderful costly house, gilded with gold in abundance,” who, in several interviews, treated him with great kindness, and was very inquisitive as to his country and the cause of his coming. Adams replied that the English were a people who had long sought out the East Indies, desiring friendship, in the way of trade, with all kings and potentates, and having in their country divers commodities which might be exchanged to mutual advantage. The emperor then inquired if the people of Adams’ country had no wars. He answered that they had with the Spanish and Portuguese, but were at peace with all other nations. He also inquired as to Adams’ religious opinions, and the way in which he got to Japan; but when Adams, by way of answer, exhibited a chart of the world, and pointed out the passage through the Straits of Magellan, he showed plain signs of incredulity.
Notwithstanding this friendly reception, Adams was ordered back to prison, where he was kept for nine-and-thirty days, expecting, though well treated, to be crucified, which he learned was the customary mode of execution in that country.
In fact, as he afterwards discovered, the Portuguese were employing this interval in poisoning the minds of the natives against these new-comers, whom they represented as thieves and common sea-robbers, whom it was necessary to put to death to prevent any more of their freebooting countrymen from coming, to the ruin of the Japanese trade. But at length the emperor gave this answer: that, as these strangers had as yet done no damage to him nor to any of his people, it would be against reason and justice to put them to death; and, sending again for Adams, after another long conversation and numerous inquiries, he set him at liberty, and gave him leave to visit the ship and his companions, of whom, in the interval, he had heard nothing. He found them close by, the ship having in the interval been brought to Sakai, within seven or eight miles of Ōsaka. The men had suffered nothing, but the ship had been completely stripped, her whole company being thus left with only the clothes on their backs. The emperor, indeed, ordered restitution; but the plundered articles were so dispersed and concealed that nothing could be recovered, except fifty thousand rials in silver (five thousand dollars), which had formed a part of the cargo, and which was given up to the officers as a fund for their support and that of the men. Afterward the ship was taken still eastward to a port near Yedo. All means were used to get her clear, with leave to depart, in which suit a considerable part of the money was spent; till, at the end of two years, the men refusing any longer to obey Adams and the master, the remaining money was, “for quietness’ sake,” divided, and each was left to shift for himself. The emperor, however, added an allowance to each man of two pounds of rice a day, besides an annual pension in money amounting to about twenty-four dollars. In Adams’ case this pension was afterward raised to one hundred and forty dollars, as a reward for having built two ships for the emperor on the European model. Adams’ knowledge of mathematics also proved serviceable to him, and he was soon in such favor as to be able, according to his own account, to return good for evil to several of his former maligners. The emperor acknowledged his services, and endeavored to content him by giving him “a living like unto a lordship in England, with eighty or ninety husbandmen as his servants and slaves”; but he still pined for home, and importuned for leave to depart, desiring, as he says, “to see his poor wife and children, according to conscience and nature.” This suit he again renewed, upon hearing from some Japanese traders that Dutch merchants had established themselves at Acheen in Sumatra, and Patania on the east coast of Malacca. He promised to bring both the Dutch and English to trade in Japan; but all he could obtain was leave for the Dutch captain and another Dutchman to depart. This they presently did, for Patania, in a Japanese junk, furnished by the king or prince of Hirado, whence they proceeded to Jor, at the southern end of the peninsula of Malacca, where they found a Dutch fleet of nine sail. In this fleet the Dutch captain obtained an appointment as master, but was soon after killed in a sea-fight with the Portuguese, with whom the Dutch were, by this time, vigorously and successfully contending for the mastership of the eastern seas.[68]