Image of Iyeyasu
From Official History of Japan
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.