The Golden Book of the Dutch Navigators

by Hendrik Willem Van Loon

To make a long story short, after a lawsuit of two years and a half the crown at last returned fifty per cent. of the goods to the merchants. The other half was retained for customs duty. Jan Huygen, who was an honest man, was asked to remain on the island and look after the interests of the owners while they themselves went to Lisbon to plead their cause before the courts. He now had occasion to study Portuguese management in one of the oldest of their colonies. The principles of hard common sense which were to distinguish Dutch and British methods of colonizing were entirely absent. Their place was taken by a complicated system of theological explanations. The disaster that befell these islands was invariably due to divine Providence. The local authorities were always up against an "act of God." While Jan Huygen was in Terceira the colony was at the mercy of the British. The privateers waited for all the ships that returned from South America and the Indies, and intercepted these rich cargoes in sight of the Portuguese fortifications. When the Englishmen needed fresh meat they stole goats from the little islands situated in the roads. Finally, after almost an entire year, a Spanish-Portuguese fleet of more than thirty large ships was sent out to protect the traders. In a fight with the squadron of Admiral Howard the ship of his vice-admiral, Grenville, was sunk. The vice-admiral himself, mortally wounded, was made a prisoner and brought on board a Spanish man-of-war. There he died. His body was thrown overboard without further ceremonies.

At once, so the story ran, a violent storm had broken loose. This storm lasted a week. It came suddenly, and when the wind fell only thirty ships were left out of a total of one hundred and forty that had been in the harbors of the islands. The damage was so great that the loss of the Armada itself seemed insignificant. Of course it was all the fault of the good Lord. He had deserted His own people and had gone over to the side of the heretics. He had sent this hurricane to punish the unceremonious way in which dead Grenville had been thrown into the ocean. And of course this unbelieving Britisher himself had at once descended into Hades, had called upon all the servants of the black demon to help him, and had urged this revenge. Evidently the thing worked both ways.

This clever argument did not in the least help the unfortunate owners of the shipwrecked merchandise. One fine day they were informed that they could no longer expect royal protection for the future. Jan Huygen was told to come to Lisbon as best he could. He finally found a ship, and after an absence of nine years returned to Lisbon. On his trip to Holland he was almost killed in a collision. Finally, within sight of his native land, he was nearly wrecked on the banks of one of the North Sea islands. On the third of September of the year 1592, however, after an absence of thirteen years, he returned safely to Enkhuizen. His mother, brother, and sisters were there to welcome him.

He did not at once rush into print. It was not necessary. The news of his return spread quickly to the offices of the Amsterdam merchants. They had been very active during the last dozen years and they had conducted an efficient secret organization in Portugal, trying to buy up maps and books of navigation and, perhaps, even a pilot or two. They knew a few things, and guessed at many others. A man who had actually been there, who knew concrete facts where other people suspected, such a man was worth while. Jan Huygen became consulting pilot to Dutch capital.

The Dutch merchants still found themselves in a very difficult position. They had to enter this field of activity when their predecessors had been at work for almost two centuries. These predecessors, judging by outward evidences, were fast losing both ability and energy. But prestige before an old and well-established name is a strong influence in the calculations of men. Those who directed the new Dutch Republic did not lack courage. All the same, they shrank from open and direct competition with the mighty Spanish Empire. Besides, there were other considerations of a more practical nature.

The Middle Ages, both late and early, dearly loved monopoly. Indeed, the entire period between the days of the old Roman Empire and the latter part of the eighteenth century, when the French Revolution destroyed the old system, was a time of monopolies or of quarrels about, and for, monopolies. The Dutch traders wondered whether they could not obtain a little private route to India, something that should be Dutch all along the line, and could be closed at will to all outsiders. What about the Northeastern Passage? There seem to have been vague rumors about a water route along the north of Siberia. That part of the map was but little known. The knowledge of Russia had improved since the days when Moscow was situated upon the exact spot where the ocean between Iceland and Norway is deepest. The White Sea was fairly well known, and Dutch traders had found their way to the Russian port of Archangel. What lay beyond the White Sea was a matter of conjecture. Whether the Caspian Sea, like the White Sea, was part of the Arctic Sea or part of the Indian Ocean no one knew. But it appeared that farther to the north, several days beyond the North Cape, there was a narrow strait between an island which the Russians called the New Island (Nova Zembla) and the continent of Asia. This might prove to be a shorter and less dangerous route to China and the Indies. Furthermore, by building fortifications on both sides of the narrows between the island and the Siberian coast, the Hollanders would be the sole owners of the most exclusive route to India. They could then leave the long and tedious trip around the Cape of Good Hope, with its perils of storms, scurvy, royal and inquisitorial dungeons, savage negroes, and several other unpleasant incidents, to their esteemed enemies.

VOYAGES OF LINSCHOTEN

The men who were most interested in this northern enterprise were two merchants who lived in Middleburg, the capital of the province of Zeeland. The better known of the two was Balthasar de Moucheron, an exile from Antwerp. When the Spanish Government reconquered this rich town it had banished all those merchants who refused to give up their Lutheran or Calvinistic convictions. Their wealth was confiscated by the state. They themselves were forced to make a new start in foreign lands. The foolishness of this decree never seems to have dawned upon the Spanish authorities. They felt happy that they had ruined and exiled a number of heretics. What they did not understand was that these heretics did not owe their success to their wealth, but to the sheer ability of their minds, and before long these penniless pilgrims had laid the foundations for new fortunes. Then they strove with all their might to be revenged upon the Government which had ruined them.

De Moucheron, one of this large group which had been expelled, had begun life anew in the free Republic and was soon among the greatest promoters of his day. Of tireless energy and of a very bitter ambition, none too kindly to the leading business men of his adopted country, he got hold of Jan Huygen and decided to try his luck in a great gamble. He interested several of the minor capitalists of Enkhuizen, and on the fifth of June of the year 1594 Jan Huygen went upon his first polar exploration with two ships, the Mercurius and the Lwaan. Without adventure the ships passed the North Cape, sailed along the coast of the Kola peninsula, where Willoughby had wintered just forty years before, and reached the Straits of Waigat, the prospective Gibraltar of Dutch aspirations. The conditions of the ice were favorable.