So, in regard to these petitioning merchants, first she would and then she wouldn’t, and she kept the matter hanging indecisively until a few months before April 1591. By that time the necessary capital had been raised and the final preparations made, so that on the tenth of that month “three tall ships,” named respectively the Penelope (which was the “Admirall”), the Marchant Royall (which was the “Vice-Admirall”) and the Edward Bonaventure “Rear-Admirall”) were able to let loose their canvas and sailed out of Plymouth Sound.

CHAPTER IV
THE ROUTE TO THE EAST

I want in this chapter to call your attention to a very gallant English captain named James Lancaster, whose grit and endurance in the time of hard things, whose self-effacing loyalty to duty, show that there were giants afloat in those days in the ships which were to voyage to the East.

The account of the first of these voyages I have taken from Hakluyt, who in turn had obtained it by word of mouth from a man named Edmund Barker, of Ipswich. Hakluyt was known for his love of associating with seamen and obtaining from them first-hand accounts of their experiences afloat. And inasmuch as Barker is described as Lancaster’s lieutenant on the voyage, and the account was witnessed by James Lancaster’s signature, we may rely on the facts being true. Hakluyt was of course very closely connected with the subject of our inquiry. When the East India Company was started he was appointed its first historiographer, a post for which he was eminently fitted. He lectured on the subject of voyaging to the Orient, he made the maps and journals which came back in these ships useful to subsequent navigators and of the greatest interest to merchants and others. And when he died his work was in part carried on by Samuel Purchas of Pilgrimes fame. The second of these voyages, in which Lancaster again triumphs over what many would call sheer bad luck, has been taken from a letter which was sent to the East India Company by one of its servants, and is preserved in the archives of the India Office and will be dealt with in the following chapter. But for the present we will confine our attention to the voyage of those three ships mentioned at the end of the last chapter.

After leaving Devonshire the Penelope, Marchant Royall and Edward Bonaventure arrived at the Canary Isles in a fortnight, having the advantage of a fair north-east wind. Before reaching the Equator they were able to capture a Portuguese caravel bound from Lisbon for Brazil with a cargo of Portuguese merchandise consisting of 60 tuns of wine, 1200 jars of oil, about 100 jars of olives and other produce. This came as a veritable good fortune to the English ships, for the latter’s crews had already begun to be afflicted with bad health. “We had two men died before wee passed the line, and divers sicke, which tooke their sicknesse in those hote climates: for they be wonderful unholesome from 8 degrees of Northerly latitude unto the line, at that time of the yeere: for we had nothing but Ternados, with such thunder, lightning, and raine, that we could not keep our men drie 3 houres together, which was an occasion of the infection among them, and their eating of salt victuals, with lacke of clothes to shift them.” After crossing the Equator they had for a long time an east-south-east wind, which carried them to within a hundred leagues of the coast of Brazil, and then getting a northerly wind they were able to make for the Cape of Good Hope, which they sighted on 28th July. For three days they stood off and on with a contrary wind, unable to weather it. They had had a long voyage, and the health of the crew in those leaky, stinking ships had become bad. They therefore made for Table Bay, or, as it was then called, Saldanha, where they anchored on 1st August.

The men were able to go ashore and obtain exercise after being cramped for so many weeks afloat, and found the land inhabited by black savages, “very brutish.” They obtained fresh food by shooting fowl, though “there was no fish but muskles and other shel-fish, which we gathered on the rockes.” Later on a number of seals and penguins were killed and taken on board, and eventually, thanks to negro assistance, cattle and sheep were obtained by bartering. But when the time came to start off for the rest of the voyage it was very clear that the squadron, owing to the loss by sickness, was deficient in able-bodied men. It was therefore “thought good rather to proceed with two ships wel manned, then with three evill manned: for here wee had of sound and whole men but 198.” It was deemed best to send home the Marchant Royall with fifty men, many of whom were pretty well recovered from the devastating disease of scurvy. The extraordinary feature of the voyage was that the sailors suffered from this disease more than the soldiers. “Our souldiers which have not bene used to the Sea, have best held out, but our mariners dropt away, which (in my judgement) proceedeth of their evill diet at home.”

So the other two ships proceeded on their way towards India: but not long after rounding the Cape of Good Hope they encountered “a mighty storme and extreeme gusts of wind” off Cape Corrientes, during which the Edward Bonaventure lost sight of the Penelope. The latter, in fact, was never seen again, and there is no doubt that she foundered with all hands. The Edward, however, pluckily kept on, though four days later “we had a terrible clap of thunder, which slew foure of our men outright, their necks being wrung in sonder without speaking any word, and of 94 men there was not one untouched, whereof some were stricken blind, others were bruised in their legs and armes, and others in their brests, so that they voided blood two days after, others were drawn out at length as though they had bene racked. But (God be thanked) they all recovered saving onely the foure which were slaine out right.” The same electric storm had wrecked the mainmast “from the head to the decke” and “some of the spikes that were ten inches into the timber were melted with the extreme heate thereof.” Truly Lancaster’s command was a very trying one. What with a scurvy crew, an unhandy ship, now partially disabled, and both hurricanes and electric storms, there was all the trouble to break the spirit of many a man. Still, he held determinedly on his way whither he was bound.

But his troubles were now very nearly ended in one big disaster. After having proceeded along the south-east coast of Africa, and steering in a north-easterly direction, the ship was wallowing along her course over the sea when a dramatic incident occurred. It was night, and while some were below sleeping, one of the men on deck, peering through the moonlight, saw ahead what he took for breakers. He called the attention of his companions and inquired what it was, and they readily answered that it was the sea breaking on the shoals. It was the “Iland of S. Laurence.” “Whereupon in very good time we cast about to avoyd the danger which we were like to have incurred.” But it had been a close shave, and though Lancaster was to endure many other grievous hardships before his days were ended, yet but for the light of the kindly moon his ship, his crew and his own life would almost certainly have been lost that night.