The Golden Book of the Dutch Navigators

by Hendrik Willem Van Loon

When the Santa Maria left, her decks were stacked high with disorderly masses of colonial products. The sailors on duty had to make a path through this accumulated stuff, and the captain lacked the authority to put his own ship in order. A few days out a cabin-boy fell overboard. The sea was quiet, and it would have been possible to save the child, but when the crew ran for a boat, it was found to be filled with heavy boxes. By the time the boat was at last lowered the boy had drowned.

The Santa Maria sailed direct for the Cape. There it fell in with another vessel called the San Thome, and it now became a matter of pride which ship could round the cape first. Severe western winds made the Santa Maria wait several days. The San Thome, however, ventured forth to brave the gale. When finally the storm had abated and the Santa Maria had reached the Atlantic Ocean, the bodies and pieces of wreckage which floated upon the water told what had happened to the other vessel. This, however, was only the beginning of trouble. On the fifth of March the Santa Maria was almost lost. Her rudder broke, and it could not be repaired. A storm, accompanied by a tropical display of thunder and lightning, broke loose. For more than forty-eight hours the ship was at the mercy of the waves. The crew spent the time on deck absorbed in prayer. When little electric flames began to appear upon the masts and yards (the so-called St. Elmo's fire, a spooky phenomenon to all sailors of all times), they felt sure that the end of the world had come. The captain commanded all his men to pray the "Salvo corpo Sancto," and this was done with great demonstrations of fervor. The celestial fireworks, however, did not abate. On the contrary the crew witnessed the appearance of a five-pointed crown, which showed itself upon the mainmast, and was hailed with cries of the "crown of the Holy Virgin." After this final electric display the storm went on its way.

In his sober fashion Jan Huygen had looked on. He did not take much stock in this sudden piety, and called it "a lot of useless noise." Then he watched the men repairing the rudder. It was discovered that there was no anvil on board the ship, and a gun was used as an anvil. A pair of bellows was improvised out of some old skins. With this contrivance some sort of steering-gear was finally rigged up, and the voyage was continued. After that, except for occasional and very sudden squalls, when all the sails had to be lowered to save them from being blown to pieces, the Santa Maria was past her greatest danger, though the heavy seas caused by a prolonged storm proved to be another obstacle. No further progress was possible until the ship had been lightened. For this purpose the large boat and all its valuable contents were simply thrown overboard.

The recital of Jan Huygen's trip is a long epic of bungling. The captain did not know his job; the officers were incompetent; the men were unruly and ready to mutiny at the slightest provocation; and everybody blamed everybody else for everything that went wrong. The captain, in the last instance, accused the good Lord, Who "would not allow His own faithful people to pass the Cape of Good Hope with their strong and mighty ships," while making the voyage an easy one for "the blasphemous English heretics with their little insignificant schooners." In this statement there was more wisdom than the captain suspected. The English sailors knew their business and could afford to take risks. The Portuguese sailors of that day hastened from one coastline and from one island to the next, as they had done a century before. As long as they were on the high seas they were unhappy. They returned to life when they were in port. Every time the Santa Maria passed a few days in some harbor we get a recital of the joys of that particular bit of paradise. If we are to believe Portuguese tradition, St. Helena, where the ship passed a week of the month of May of the year 1589, was placed in its exact geographical position by the Almighty to serve His faithful children as a welcome resting-point upon their perilous voyage to the far Indies. The island was full of goats, wild pigs, chickens, partridges, and thousands of pigeons, all of which creatures allowed themselves to be killed with the utmost ease, and furnished food for generations of sailors who visited those shores.

Indeed, this island was so healthy a spot that it was used as a general infirmary. After a few days on shore even the weakest of sufferers was sufficiently strong to catch specimens of the wild fauna of the island. Often, therefore, the sick sailors were left behind. With a little salt and some oil and a few spices they could support themselves easily until the next ship came along and picked them up. We know what ailed most of these stricken sailors. They suffered from scurvy, due to a bad diet; but it took several centuries before the cause of scurvy was discovered. When Jan Huygen went to the Indies the crew of every ship was invariably attacked by this most painful disease. Therefore the islands were of great importance.

Nowadays St. Helena is no longer a paradise. Three centuries ago it was the one blessed point of relief for the Indian traders. The diary of Jan Huygen tells of attempts made to colonize the island. The King of Portugal, however, had forbidden any settlement upon this solitary rock. For a while it had harbored a number of runaway slaves. Whenever a ship came near they had fled to the mountains. Finally, however, they had been caught and taken back to Portugal and sold. For a long time the island had been inhabited by a pious hermit. He had built a small chapel, and there the visiting sailors were allowed to worship. In his spare time, however, the holy man had hunted goats, and he had entered into an export business of goat-skins. Every year between five and six hundred skins were sold. Then this ingenious scheme was discovered, and the saintly hunter was sent home.

On the twenty-first of May the Santa Maria continued her northward course. Again bad food and bad water caused illness among the men. A score of them died. Often they hid themselves somewhere in the hold, and had been dead for several days before they made their presence noticeable. It was miserable business; and now, with a ship of sick and disabled men, the Santa Maria was doomed to fall in with three small British vessels. At once there was a panic among the Portuguese sailors. The British hoisted their pennant, and opened with a salvo of guns. The Portuguese fled below decks, and the English, in sport, shot the sails to pieces. The crew of the Santa Maria tried to load their heavy cannon, but there was such a mass of howling and swearing humanity around the guns that it took hours before anything could be done. The ships were then very near one another, and the British sailors could be heard jeering at the cowardice of their prey. But just when Jan Huygen thought the end had come the British squadron veered around and disappeared. The Santa Maria then reached Terceira in the Azores without further molestation.

Like all other truthful chroniclers of his day, Jan Huygen speculates about the mysterious island of St. Brandon. This blessed isle was supposed to be situated somewhere between the Azores and the Canary Islands, but nearer to the Canaries. As late as 1721 expeditions were fitted out to search for the famous spot upon which the Irish abbot of the sixth century had located the promised land of the saints. Together with the recital of another mysterious bit of land consisting of the back of a gigantic fish, this story had been duly chronicled by a succession of Irish monks, and when Jan Huygen visited these regions he was told of these strange islands far out in the ocean where the first travelers had discovered a large and prosperous colony of Christians who spoke an unknown language and whose city could disappear beneath the surface of the ocean if an enemy approached.

Once in the roads of Terceira, however, there was little time for theological investigations. Rumor had it that a large number of British ships were in the immediate neighborhood. Strict orders had come from Lisbon that all Portuguese and Spanish ships must stay in port under protection of the guns of the fortifications. Just a year before that the Armada had started out for the conquest of England and the Low Countries. The Invincible Armada had been destroyed by the Lord, the British, and the Dutch. Now the tables had been turned, and the Dutch and British vessels were attacking the Spanish and Portuguese colonies. The story of inefficient navigation is here supplemented by a recital of bad military management. The roads of Terceira were very dangerous. In ordinary times no ships were allowed to anchor there. A very large number of vessels were now huddled together in too small a space. These vessels were poorly manned, for the Portuguese sailors, whenever they arrived in port, went ashore and left the care of their ship to a few cabin-boys and black slaves. The unexpected happened; during the night of the fourth of August a violent storm swept over the roads. The ships were thrown together with such violence that a large number were sunk. In the town the bells were rung, and the sailors ran to the shore. They could do nothing but look on and see how their valuable ships were driven together and broken to splinters, while pieces of the cargo were washed all over the shore, to be stolen by the inhabitants of the greedy little town. When morning came, the shore was littered with silk, golden coin, china, and bales of spices. Fortunately the wind changed later in the morning, and a good deal of the cargo was salved. But once on shore it was immediately confiscated by officials from the custom-house, who claimed it for the benefit of the royal treasury. Then there followed a first-class row between the officials and the owners of the goods, who cursed their own Government quite as cheerfully as they had done their enemies a few days before.