10. The King David of 360 tons and seventy-nine men, with sixteen pieces of brass cannon, captain John Thomason.
11. The Griffin of 320 tons, and seventy-eight men, with fourteen iron cannon, captain Peter Cornelison Hurdloop.
The whole of this fleet of eleven sail, carrying 294 pieces of cannon, had 1637 men, of whom 600 were regular soldiers, divided into five companies of 120 men in each. The East India Company contributed largely to the expence, but does not appear to have equipped any ships on this occasion.
SECTION I.
Incidents of the Voyage from Holland to the South Sea.
This armament, usually called the Nassau fleet, was by far the most considerable that had hitherto been sent against the Spaniards in the new world, and none so powerful has since navigated along the western coast of America in an hostile manner. It sailed on the 29th April, 1622, from Goeree roads, all but the Orange, which joined next day.
On the 7th June, while chasing a Barbary corsair, a Christian slave, who happened to be at the helm, ran the corsair on board the Dutch vice-admiral, and immediately he and other slaves took the opportunity of leaping on board to escape from slavery. The captain of the corsair, who happened to be a Dutch renegado, followed them, and demanded restitution of his slaves; but the vice-admiral expostulated so strongly with him on the folly and infamy of deserting his country and religion, that he sent for every thing belonging to him out of the corsair, and agreed to go along with the fleet, to the regret of the Turks, who thus lost their captain and seventeen good men.
On the 5th July the fleet anchored in the road of St Vincent, which is extremely safe and commodious, where they procured refreshments of sea-tortoises, fish, goats, and oranges. The islands of St Vincent and St Antonio are the most westerly of the Cape Verds, being in from 16° 30' to 18° N. latitude, and about two leagues from each other. The bay of St Vincent, in which they anchored, is in lat. 16° 56' N. and has a good firm sandy bottom, with eighteen, twenty, and twenty-five fathoms water. The island of St Vincent is rocky, barren, and uncultivated, having very little fresh water, though they found a small spring which might have served two or three ships. By digging wells they procured plenty of water, but somewhat brackish, to which they attributed the bloody flux, which soon after began to prevail in the fleet. The goats there, of which they caught fifteen or sixteen every day, were very fat and excellent eating. The sea-tortoises which they took there were from two to three feet long. They come on shore to lay their eggs, which they cover with sand, leaving them to be hatched by the heat of the sun. Their season of laying eggs is from August to February, remaining all the rest of the year in the sea. They caught every night great numbers of these animals while ashore to lay their eggs, and the sailors found them wholesome and pleasant food, eating more like flesh than fish.
This island is altogether uninhabited, but the people of St Lucia come here once a year to catch tortoises, for the sake of an oil they prepare from them; and to hunt goats, the skins of which are sent to Portugal, and their flesh, after being salted and dried at St Jago, is exported to Brazil. There are no fruit-trees in this island, except a few wild figs in the interior; besides which, it produces colocinth, or bitter apple which is a very strong purge.[134] This island has a very dry climate, except during the rainy season, which begins in August and ends in February, but is not very regular.
[Footnote 134: Cucumis Colocynthis, a plant of the cucumber family, producing a fruit about the size of an orange, the medullary part of which, when ripe, dried, and freed from the seeds, is a very light, white, spongy substance, composed of membranous leaves, excessively bitter, nauseous, and acrid.]