Cavendish took two years and two months to complete the round of the globe, and the Pacific had hardly settled down again after the trouble caused by this corsair when, in early 1594, Richard Hawkins, son and grandson of fine mariners, came through the Strait. An acute observer, he noted the handsome Winter’s Bark trees of the southern channels, finding the seeds like good pepper and the bark “very stomachic and medicinal.” On the West Coast Hawkins was unlucky, encountering a strong Spanish fleet which captured him in June, 1594. He was taken to Lima, sent prisoner to Spain, and after eight years of captivity was released to return to his Devon home.
In 1598 the Dutch appeared, in the person of Captain Oliver Noort, piloted by one Melis, an Englishman who had sailed with Cavendish. Noort traversed the Strait, sailed north to Mocha Island, where he drank chicha for the first time and found it “somewhat sourish,” and nearby seized a Spanish ship. Off Arica his ships encountered terrible “arenales” (sand-laden winds) and two strayed from touch with the flagship. Bad weather persisted until June 13, when “the Spanish pilot was for ill demeanures, by publike sentence, cast overboard. A prosperous wind happily succeeded.”
The exploit of Noort brought many of his countrymen into the Pacific, and from the beginning of the seventeenth century Holland sent out scores of fine navigators. Spilbergen came through the Strait in 1615, and it was a Dutchman, Willem Cornelius Schouten of Hoorn, sailing here in the same year, with Jacob Le Maire of Amsterdam, who found and named many islands south of Tierra del Fuego, as Staten, Maurice, Barnvelt, as they also named Cape Hoorn and Le Maire’s Strait. The famous Jacques l’Hermite came through and up the coast in 1623–4; and by these southerly passages also came five ships of a Dutch expedition in 1642–3, of which Hendrick Brouwer or “Brewer” left an account.
The Narborough Expedition
In 1669 it occurred to the English Crown that better information concerning Patagonia and Chile was desirable, and the experienced Sir John Narborough was sent out with two ships in 1669. The Sweepstakes, of 300 tons, had 36 pieces of artillery; the Batchellor, pink of 70 tons, had four pieces; the crew totalled one hundred. They were well provisioned and carried plenty of beads, hatchets, etc., to trade with the natives of the southerly channels, the design of the voyage, which was at the king’s private cost, being “to make a discovery both of the seas and coasts of that part of the world, and to lay the foundation of a trade there.” Narborough was enjoined not to go ashore before he got south of the Plate River, and not to interfere with any Spanish settlements; Port Desire he considered beyond Spain’s jurisdiction, formally taking possession in the name of Charles II. He thought better of Patagonia than Darwin, nearly two hundred years later, for he recorded that the soil was marly and good, that in his opinion it might be made excellent corn-ground, being ready to till, and that “tis very like the land on Newmarket Heath.” He noted that the Indians seen in this region had dogs with them, with grey coats and painted red in spots.
Reaching the eastern entrance of the Strait on October 22, he anchored just outside the first Narrow at night, and passed the white cliff of Cape Gregory next morning; when he went ashore at Elizabeth Island natives came to him, but did not recognise the gold and copper he showed; and although “my Lieutenant Peckett danced with them hand in hand” and obligingly exchanged his red coat for one of their skin-coverings, while Narborough showed them “all the courteous respect I could,” shortly afterwards he had reason to suspect them of planning to sink his skiff. They too had dogs, but no other domestic animal, and the sailor decided that they were but brutish, and gave up hope of friendship or trade. He passed “Sandpoint,” named Freshwater Bay, and six leagues to the south reached “Port Famen,” where driftwood lay as thick as in a carpenter’s yard.
“A little within land from the waterside grow brave green woods, and up in the valleys large timber-trees, two foot throughout and some upwards of 40 feet long, much like our Beech-timber in England; the leaves of the trees are like green birch-tree leaves, curiously sweet ... there are several clear places in the woods, and grass growing like fenced fields in England.” He caught plenty of fish, noticed the spicy Winter’s Bark and used it to stew with his food, but could find no traces of minerals in the soil. The Indians here took the knives and looking-glasses Narborough gave them “to gain their loves,” but, he records, refused brandy. Sounding and taking careful observations as he went along, he named Desolation Island, passed out by Cape Pillar, and noted the Four Evangelists (calling them the “Islands of Direction”) as guides for the western end of the Strait.
On November 26 he lay off the island of Socorro, in 45° south latitude, and on the 30th found and named Narborough’s Island, taking possession “for his Majesty and his Heirs.” By this time all the ship’s store of bread was exhausted, everyone eating pease; they proceeded to No Man’s Land, a small island at the south of Chiloé, and by December 15 anchored at the entrance to Valdivia Bay. Here they sent a Spaniard of the crew ashore, with bells, tobacco, rings and jew’s-harps to trade with the natives, and an undertaking to burn a fire at night as a signal. No fire was seen and apparently Narborough was never able to discover what became of him. The lieutenant gathered green apples from the thick woods close to the water’s edge. Next morning the lieutenant in his boat, rowing by the shore, came suddenly upon the Spaniards’ small fort of St. James, was invited to land by the Spanish soldiery, and noted that the fort was strongly palisaded against Indian raids, and that the Spaniards used “very ordinary” match-lock musquetoons. The officers received the English sailors courteously, sitting “on chairs and benches placed about a table, under the shade, for the sun shone very warm, it being a very fair day,” the captain calling for wine in a silver bowl and firing five of his guns in salute. He asked for news of wars in Europe, said they had much trouble with the valiant and barbarous Indians, who fought on horseback and infested the camp so closely that the Spaniards never entered the thick woods nor went more than a musket-shot’s distance from the palisades. A fine dinner was served upon silver dishes, and it was suggested that four Spaniards should go back to the English ship with the lieutenant, and pilot her into the port. But Narborough remembered the old tale of “treacherous dealings with Captain (John) Hawkins at St. Juan de Ulloa,” and although he listened attentively while they talked of the gold they found here and troubles with the natives, and the great trade the Pacific coast had with the Chinese by way of the Philippines, he declined to take his ship in, and said he only wanted wood and fresh water. On December 17 he sent eighteen men ashore to barter merchandise with the Spaniards, many courtesies being exchanged. Four of the Spaniards’ wives, “very proper white women born in the kingdom of Peru of Spanish parents,” who had never been in Europe, insisted on sitting down in the ship’s boat, “to say that they had been in a boat that came from Europe.” Other Spaniards had Indian wives, all being finely dressed in silks, with gold chains and jewelled earrings. The English were then asked to go to Fort St. Peter, two miles inside the bay, where the Governor of Valdivia received Lieutenant Armiger and his companions politely, accepting their presents and offering them wine; but when they asked for a cask of water he sent soldiers and seized the boat, also taking the Englishmen prisoners, saying he had orders from the Captain General of Chile. A letter from Armiger to Narborough, sent next day, stated that “myself and Mr. Fortescue are kept here as prisoners, but for what cause I cannot tell; but they still pretend friendship and say that if you will bring the ship into the harbour you shall have all the accommodation that may be. Sir, I need not advise you further.” This was the last we hear of him, for Narborough could not obtain his release and sailed away a few days later. Three men were with Armiger—John Fortescue, Hugh Cooe the trumpeter, and Thomas Highway, a Moor of Barbary, who spoke good Spanish. Returning through the Strait, the expedition reached home in the middle of 1671, sighting the Lizard on June 10.
Narborough’s careful and seamanlike observations, his sailing directions, record of soundings, etc., as well as his acute notes upon South Chile, were the first explicit details published in England of the condition of this region in the seventeenth century; the book was the manual used seventy years later by the crew of the Wager’s longboat.
Narborough thought that advantageous trade might be made in South Chile if “leave were granted by the King of Spain for the English to trade freely in all their ports and coasts; for the people which inhabit there are very desirous of a trade: but the Governors durst not permit it without orders, unless ships were to go thither and trade per force and not take notice of the Governors.” And as Spain continued to follow the policy of exclusion, and open hostilities recurred, this was what happened, until before another fifty years had passed the authorities were either taking part in the smuggling that went on or trying to shut their eyes to it.