THE ATTACK UPON THE WEST COAST OF AMERICA
This is the story of another expedition which tried to get possession
of the Indian route by way of the Strait of Magellan. It was a sad
business.
[Illustration]
Oliver Van Noort, although he met with many difficulties, managed
to bring one ship home and added greatly to the fame of the Dutch
navigators. But the second expedition, equipped by two of the richest
men of Rotterdam and sent out under the best of auspices, proved to be
a total failure. The capital of half a million guilders which had been
invested was an absolute loss. Most of the participants in the voyage
died. The ships were lost. Perhaps everything had been prepared just a
trifle too carefully. Van Noort, with his little ships, knew that he
had to depend upon his own energy and resourcefulness; but the captains
of the five ships which left Rotterdam on the twenty-seventh of July,
1598, with almost five hundred men were under the impression that half
of the work had been done at home by the owners. Perhaps, too, there is
such a thing as luck in navigating the high seas. One fleet sails for
the Indies and has good weather all the way across the ocean. When the
wind blows hard it blows from the right direction. The next squadron
which leaves two weeks later meets with storms and suffers from one
unfortunate accident after the other; everybody gets sick, and when the
sailors look for relief on land they find nothing but a barren desert.
And so it goes. It is not for us to complain, but to recite faithfully
the sad adventures of the good ships the _Hoop_, the _Liefde_, the
_Geloof_, the _Trouwe_, and the _Blyde Boodschap_, all of which tried
very hard to accomplish what Van Noort had been allowed to do with much
less trouble.
The ships, as we said, left Rotterdam in July, and after two months
they reached the Cape Verde Islands. There they found a couple of
ships from Hamburg, for the Germans at the early period of exploring
and discoveries were very active sailors. A few years later, however,
the Thirty Years' War was to destroy their seafaring enterprises for
centuries at least.
Near these islands the Hollanders had their first encounter with the
Portuguese. The stories of such meetings between the early Dutch
navigators and the Portuguese owners of African and Asiatic islands
always read the same way. The Hollanders ask for leave to go on
shore to get fresh water and to buy provisions. This leave is never
granted. Then the two parties fight each other. In most cases the
Hollanders are victorious, though they still have too much respect for
the traditional power of the Portuguese to risk a definite attack upon
their strongholds. Very slowly and only after many years of experiment
do they venture to drive the Portuguese out of their colonies and take
possession of this large, but badly managed, empire.
When our five Dutch ships reached the island of San Thome they sent a
messenger to the Portuguese commander and asked him, please, to give
them some fresh water. The Portuguese told the Hollanders to wait. But
they could not wait, for the water on board the ships had all been used
up. Therefore they landed with one hundred and fifty men and charged
the hill upon which the Portuguese had built a fortress. The garrison
was forced to surrender. Before any more fighting took place the
Portuguese offered to treat the Hollanders as welcome guests if they
would sail to the next harbor of San Iago, where there was an abundance
of stores and where general provisions were for sale at reasonable
prices. This proposal was accepted. The sailors went back to their
ships and made for San Iago. The wind, however, was not favorable, and
they did not reach their destination until the hour appointed to meet
the Portuguese officials had passed. When they arrived near the shore
they noticed that the soldiers on land were very active and had placed
a number of cannon in an ambush from which they could destroy the Dutch
ships as soon as they should have dropped anchor. This, of course, was
a breach of good faith. So back they went to their first landing-place.
They landed, filled all their water-tanks, took the corn stored in a
small storehouse, killed several Portuguese, caught a large number of
turtles for the sick people on board, and hoisted sail to cross the
Atlantic Ocean.
And then the bad luck which was to follow this expedition began. The
admiral of the fleet, Jacques Mahu, died suddenly of a fever and was
buried at sea. Two weeks later so many men were desperately ill with
the same fever that the ships were obliged to return upon their own
track and establish a hospital upon one of the islands off the coast
of Guinea. All this time the wind blew from the wrong direction. When
at last they saw land, they found that they were near the coast of
Lower Guinea. They sent a boat to the shore to discover some native
tribe which owned cattle. But the natives, who feared all white men as
possible slave-dealers, ran into the bushes and carefully took their
possessions with them. Fortunately, after a few days another Dutch
ship appeared upon the horizon, and the first mate of this vessel, a
Frenchman by birth, knew the language of the negroes. Through him a
message was sent to the king of a small tribe, and when it had been
proved that the Hollanders were not slave-dealers, but honest merchants
on their way to the Indies and willing to pay money for whatever they
bought, their newly elected commander, Sebalt de Weert was received in
state and invited to dine with his Majesty.
[Illustration]
This dinner, much to the regret of the hungry guests, was a poor
affair. The negro chieftain tried to be very civil to his guests. In
their honor he had powdered himself white with the ashes of a wood
fire, but the food was neither abundant nor very good. The Hollanders
decided to invite his Majesty to one of their own dinners as a good
example and a hint. From among the few supplies which were left on
board they arranged so excellent a dinner that his royal Highness ate
everything on the table and then fell fast asleep in his chair. But
when the next day the Hollanders tried to buy the fresh provisions
which they expected to get, they found that the domains of the king
produced nothing but one single goat, a lean goat at that, and four
puny chickens.
The coast of Guinea, sometimes called the "dry Gallows," gets its
agreeable reputation from the fact that the malarial fevers of this
swampy region usually kill all the white people who venture to settle
there. The new commander of the expedition caught this malaria, and
was sick in his bed for over two months. Sixteen of his sailors died,
and finally the expedition was obliged to flee to the healthy islands,
which of course belonged to the Portuguese. Early in December they
sailed toward Annabon. Once again the Portuguese refused them both
water and food. A troop of men were landed to take by force what they
could not obtain through an appeal to Christian charity. The Portuguese
did not await this attack, but surrendered their fortress and fled
toward the mountains. From there they arranged sniping expeditions
which killed many Hollanders. As a punishment, Admiral de Weert burned
the white settlement and the church. He took all the provisions which
were stored in the little town, and on the second of January of the
year 1599 he tried once more to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
This time the wind was favorable. Soon the ships had passed out of the
hot equatorial regions. The sailors who had suffered from scurvy and
malaria began to feel better in the colder climate of the Argentinian
coast. They recovered so fast and they had such a great appetite after
their long-enforced fast that many of them threatened to die from
over-feeding. And one poor fellow who was so hungry that he stole bread
at night from the ship's pantry was publicly hanged to stop further
theft of the meager supplies. When the ships were near the coast of
South America things went wrong once more. First of all the sailors
were frightened by the sudden appearance of what they supposed to be
blood upon the surface of the ocean. As far as the eye could reach,
the water was of a dark-red color. This phenomenon, however, proved
to be caused by billions of little plants. They made the water look
quite horrible, but they were entirely harmless. A few days later one
of the men, an Englishman, while at dinner suddenly uttered a dreadful
scream and fell backward, dead. The next day another one of the sailors
suddenly became insane and tried to scratch and bite everybody who
came near him. After three days his condition improved somewhat, but
he never recovered his reason. When he was put to bed at night he
would not allow himself to be covered up. One very cold night both his
feet were frozen and had to be amputated. That was the end of the poor
fellow. He did not survive the operation.
It was a sad expedition which at last reached the Strait of Magellan
on the sixth of April of the year 1599. Happily the weather near the
strait was fine. There was plenty of fresh water on the shore. The men
killed hundreds of birds, caught geese and ducks, and found a large
supply of oysters. But when finally the day came on which they tried
to enter the strait, the wind suddenly veered around, and during four
months the ships were forced to stay in their little harbor. They had
enough to eat and they had found wood to keep warm, but much valuable
time was lost, and when the winter at last came upon them with sudden
violence they were entirely unprepared for it. The reports of the
expeditions of Magellan and Drake and Cavendish had shown that an
expedition around the world was apt to suffer from too much heat, but
rarely from too much cold. Except for the few miles of the Strait of
Magellan, the ships sailed in tropical or semi-tropical regions all
the time. Therefore the Dutch ships had not brought any heavy clothes
or furs, which would have taken up a lot of room, and the food which
had been put up for them in Holland had been prepared with the idea
of supporting men who did their work under a blazing sun. When they
were obliged to live for a long time in a raw, cold climate and work
hard, hunting and fishing and gathering wood amid snow and icy winds,
the sailors did not get sufficient nourishment. From sheer misery and
exposure one hundred and twenty men died within less than four months.
Among them was the captain of the _Trouwe_. He was the second officer
to perish before his ship had reached the Pacific Ocean.
[Illustration]
But illness was not the only enemy of this expedition. The natives of
the south coast joined the terrible climate in its attack upon the
Hollanders. They murdered Dutch sailors when these had gone on shore
to look for fire-wood or to examine their traps. They killed several
men and they wounded more. Being wounded was almost as bad as being
killed outright, for the spears of the natives were made with nasty
barbs which caused very bad wounds. When they once had penetrated into
a man's arm or hand, the only way to get them out successfully was by
pushing them through until they came out again at the other side, or
cut away all the flesh, in both cases a very painful operation.
At last, on the twentieth of August, the wind turned, and the ships
were able to enter the strait. The joy of the men did not last very
long. The next day there was no wind at all, and once more the fleet
anchored. To keep his few remaining men busy, the commander arranged an
expedition on shore. It was the first time that a Dutch fleet had been
in this part of the world, and the event must be properly celebrated.
A high pole was planted in a conspicuous spot on shore, and the
adventures of the expedition and the names of the leaders were carved
on the pole. Near this pole a small cemetery was made where two sailors
who had died the night before were buried. In the evening all went
back to their ships. When they returned the next morning, they found
that the natives had hacked the monument to pieces and the corpses of
the dead Hollanders had been dug out of the earth and had been cut
into little bits and were spread all over the shore. This humiliating
experience was the last one which they suffered in the strait. The wind
at last turned to their advantage and on the third of September the
ships reached the Pacific Ocean.
[Illustration]
The good weather lasted just seven days. A week later, in the night
of the tenth of September, a severe storm attacked the little fleet,
and the next morning the ships had lost sight of one another. They
came together after a short search, but during the next night there
was another gale, and in the morning three of the five ships had
disappeared. Only the _Trouwe_ and the _Geloof_ were apparently saved.
During three weeks these two ships floated aimlessly about, driven
hither and thither upon the angry waves of the Pacific Ocean. They had
few supplies left, and they could not repair the damage that was done
to their masts because both ships had sent their carpenters to one
of the other vessels which had been in need of a general overhauling
and which was now lost. A month went by, and then they discovered
that they had been driven back into the strait. The admiral discussed
the situation with his chief officers. Did they advise going back
to Holland without having accomplished anything, or would they keep
on? The sailors all wanted to return to Holland. They did not have
any faith left in the results of this unhappy voyage. Many of them
were ill. Others pretended that they were too weak to work. Others
murmured about a lack of provisions. There was ground for this talk.
The supply-room was getting emptier and emptier in a very mysterious
way. At last the admiral decided to investigate this strange case. He
discovered that an unknown member of the crew possessed a key to the
bread-boxes and stuffed himself every night while his comrades were
kept on short rations. It was a gross breach of discipline. Apparently
the expedition was going from bad to worse. On the afternoon of the
tenth of December Admiral de Weert paid a call to the _Trouwe_ to talk
over the situation. The next morning the _Trouwe_ had disappeared.
De Weert never saw her again. He was all alone, and his safe return
depended upon his own unaided efforts. His first duty was to get enough
food. On a certain Sunday afternoon the few men of his ship who could
still walk were on shore looking for things to eat when they had an
encounter with a large number of natives who had just arrived in three
canoes. The natives fled, and hid themselves among the cliffs. One
woman and two small babies could not get away and were brought back to
the ship. The woman was kept a prisoner for forty-eight hours while the
Hollanders studied the habits and customs of the wild people of Tierra
del Fuego. The subject of their study refused to eat cooked food, but
dead birds which were thrown to her she ate as if she had been a wild
animal. The children did the same thing, tearing at the feathers with
their sharp teeth. After two days the mother and one of the children
were sent back to the shore with a number of presents. The other
child was kept on board and was taken back to Holland, where it died
immediately after arrival. On the sixteenth of December a last attempt
was made to find the _Trouwe_. A blank cartridge was fired, and a few
minutes later a distant answer was heard. Soon a ship came sailing
around a nearby cape. It was not the _Trouwe_, but the ship of Oliver
van Noort, who at the head of his expedition had just entered upon the
last stretch of his voyage through the strait. Van Noort had a story to
tell of a fairly successful voyage, plenty to eat, and little illness.
The hungry men of De Weert looked with envy at the happy faces of Van
Noort's sailors. The latter had just caught several thousand penguins
on a little island not far away. The starving crew of the _Geloof_
asked that they be allowed to sail to this island and catch whatever
Van Noort had left alive. De Weert, however, refused this request.
Here was his last chance to get to the Indies in the company of the
squadron of Van Noort, and he meant to take it. The next morning he
joined the new ships on their westward course. But his sailors, weak
and miserable after more than a year of illness, could not obey their
captain's commands as fast as those who were on the other ships. Soon
the _Geloof_ was left behind. The next morning, when Van Noort entered
the Pacific, De Weert was helplessly blown back into the strait. It
seemed impossible to do more than he had tried to accomplish against
such great odds. He called all his remaining sailors together to hear
what they wanted him to do. They all had just one wish, to get home
as fast as possible by way of Brazil and Africa. The Pacific, so they
argued, offered nothing but disappointment. De Weert promised to give
his final decision on the next day, which was the first of January of
the year 1600. When the morning came, he found himself once more in
the company of other ships. Van Noort had reached the Pacific, but the
Western storms had been too much for his strong ships. For the second
time the Hollanders were all united in a cold little harbor inside the
Strait of Magellan.
[Illustration]
Van Noort now paid a personal visit to De Weert and asked what he could
do to help him. De Weert was much obliged for this offer, and asked for
bread enough to last him another four months. Unfortunately Van Noort
could not do this. He had still a very long voyage before him, and did
not dare to deprive his own men of their supplies. He advised De Weert
to go to the island of the penguins and to fill his storeroom with the
dried meat of these birds. Meanwhile, much to his regret, he must leave
De Weert as soon as possible, for he was in a hurry.
[Illustration]
The next day they said farewell to one another for the last time. De
Weert took the precautions to leave instructions for the captain of
the lost _Trouwe_. He wrote a letter which was placed inside a bottle,
and this bottle was buried at the foot of a high tree. On the tree
itself a board was hammered, and on this board a message was painted
telling in Dutch where to look for an important document at the foot
of the tree. Then the ship sailed to the penguin island, and the
thirty men who could do any work at all hunted the fat and lazy birds
until they had killed several thousand. It was easy work. The penguins
obligingly waited on their nests until they were killed. But the trip
to the island almost destroyed the entire expedition. There was only
one boat left, and in this boat the men who were not sick had rowed to
the shore. They had been careless in fastening her, and a sudden squall
caught her and threw her on the rocks. She was badly damaged and could
not be used without being repaired, but the men on shore had no tools
with which to do any repairing, while those on the ship were so ill
that they could not swim to the shore with the necessary hammers and
saws. Two entire days were used to get that boat into order with the
help of one ax and some pocket-knives, and during those two days the
men lived out in the open on the cold shore and lived on raw penguin
meat.
The island, among other things, contained material evidences of Van
Noort's presence. A dead native, with his hands tied behind his
back, was found stretched out upon the sand. In a little hollow in
the rocks they discovered a woman who had been wounded by a gunshot.
They took good care of the woman, bandaged her wounds, and gave her
a pocket-knife. To show her gratitude, she told De Weert of another
island where there were even more penguins. The next week was spent
on this island, and now the men had plenty of food. But the ship was
without a single anchor and had only one leaking lifeboat. With the
certainty that he could not land anywhere unless boats were sent for
him from shore De Weert decided to return to the coast of Guinea and
try to reach home. On the eighteenth of January the _Geloof_ went
back upon her track. Two months later the vessel reached the coast
of Guinea. This trip back was not very eventful except for one small
incident. One of the sailors who was a drunkard had broken into
the storeroom and had stolen a lot of rice and several bottles of
wine. Theft was one of the things which was punished most severely.
Therefore, the man had been condemned to death and was to be hanged.
But while he was sitting in the rigging and waiting for somebody to
push him into eternity the other members of the crew felt sorry for him
and asked their captain to spare his life. At first he refused, but
finally he agreed to show clemency if the men would never bother him
again with a similar request. The prisoner was allowed to come down
from his high perch, and to show his gratitude he broke again into the
storeroom that same night. He was a very bad example. As such he was
hanged from the yardarm of the highest mast, and his body was dropped
into the sea.
The crew, however, were so thoroughly demoralized by this time that
even such drastic measures did no good. They continued to pillage the
storeroom, and when at last four of them had been detected and had been
found guilty, their comrades were so weak that nobody could be found to
hang the prisoners properly and they had to be taken home.
[Illustration]
In July of the year 1600 the _Geloof_ reached the English Channel, and
on the thirteenth of that month she entered the mouth of the Maas.
There, within sight of home, one more sailor died. He was number
sixty-nine. Only thirty-six men came back to Rotterdam. They were
ill and had a story to tell of constant hardships and of terrible
disappointments. The great expedition of the two courageous merchants
and all their investments were a complete loss. None of the other ships
ever came back to Holland. But year after year stragglers from the
other four ships reached home and told of the fate of the other three
hundred sailors who had taken part in the unfortunate voyage. Some of
these reports have come down to us, and we are able to give a short
account of the adventures of each ship after that day early in the year
1600 when the Pacific storms had separated them from one another.
First of all there was the _Trouwe_, which had remained faithful to
De Weert after the other three vessels had disappeared. The wind had
blown the _Trouwe_ out of the strait into the Pacific Ocean. For many
weeks her captain had lost all track of his whereabouts. Through
sheer luck he had at last reached a coast which he supposed to be the
continent of South America and after a search of a few days he had
found some natives who were friendly. The natives told the Hollanders
that this was not the American continent, but an island called Chiloe,
situated a few miles off the Chilean coast. The Dutch ships had been
made welcome. They were invited to stay in the harbor as long as they
wished. Meanwhile the natives told their captain about a plan of their
own which undoubtedly would please him. It seemed that the inhabitants
of Chiloe had good reason to hate the Spaniards, who were mighty on
the near-by continent and who recently had built a strong fort on the
island, from which they exercised their tyrannical rule over all the
natives and made them pay very heavy tribute. Perhaps, so the natives
argued, the Hollanders could be induced to give their assistance in a
campaign against the Spaniard. De Cordes, who commanded the _Trouwe_,
was a Catholic, but he was quite ready to offer his services in so good
a cause and was delighted to start a little private war of his own
upon the Spaniards. He made ready to sail for that part of the coast
where, according to his informants, the Spaniard had fortified himself.
Meanwhile the natives were to proceed on shore toward the same Spanish
fortress. An attack was to follow simultaneously from the land and the
sea. On the way to the fortress all Spanish houses and plantations,
storerooms and churches, were burned down and at last the fortress
itself was reached. The commander of the fortress, however, had heard
of the approach of this handful of Hollanders, and he sent them an
insulting message telling them that he needed a new stable boy, anyway,
and would bestow this high office upon the Dutch captain as soon as he
could have the necessary arrangements made. But when the Dutch captain
actually appeared upon the scene with a well-armed vessel and a band of
native auxiliaries and informed the Spaniard that the new stable boy
had come to take possession of his domain, the commander changed his
mind and offered the Hollanders whatever they wished if they would only
leave him alone. De Cordes, however, attacked the fort at once. He took
it, and the garrison was locked up in the church as prisoners. Then the
Chilean natives in their rage attacked the church and killed several of
the Spaniards. This was not what De Cordes wanted to be done. He did
not mind if a Hollander killed a Spaniard, but it did not look well for
one white man to allow a native to kill another while he himself stood
by. Therefore he returned their arms to the Spaniards and together they
then drove the natives away. When the natives, however, told the Dutch
sailors that the fort contained hidden treasures of which the Spaniards
had made no mention, the former allies attacked each other for the
second time, and the Spanish prisoners were sent on board the Dutch
ship. The story which we possess of this episode of the voyage is not
very clear. It was written many years later by one of the few sailors
who came back to Holland. His account of these adventures was so badly
printed and the spelling of the original pamphlet was so extraordinary
that a second scribe was later hired to turn the booklet into more or
less readable Dutch. The present translation has been made from this
second version. Everything is a bit mixed, and it is not easy to find
out what really happened. A common and ignorant sailor of the year 1600
was not very different from the same sort of fellow who at present is
fighting in the European war. They both remember events in chunks, so
to speak. They have very vivid impressions of a few occurrences, but
they have forgotten other things of more importance because at the
time these did not strike their unobservant brain as being of any
special interest. But we have no other account of the adventures of the
_Trouwe_. We must use this information such as it is.
[Illustration]
The booty found in this small settlement had not been of great value.
The expedition felt inclined to move toward a richer port. They did
not have food enough for their prisoners, and fourteen of the nineteen
Spaniards who were locked up in the hold were thrown overboard. This
sounds very cruel, but it was the custom of the time that these two
nations rarely gave each other quarter. Whosoever was made a prisoner
was killed. The Spaniards started this practice in the middle of the
sixteenth century because the Hollanders as heretics deserved no better
fate. The Hollanders reciprocated. On this distant island of the
Pacific both parties obeyed the unwritten law. The Hollanders drowned
their prisoners. When Spanish reinforcements reached Chiloe and retook
the fort, they killed the Dutch garrison, for such was the custom of
the time.
The _Trouwe_ after this famous exploit was in a difficult position, all
alone in the heart of the Pacific, with enemies on every side and a bad
conscience. The idea of attacking some other Spanish harbor in Chile
and Peru was given up as too dangerous. Near the harbor of Truxillo a
Spanish ship loaded with grain and wine was captured, and provided with
new supplies, De Cordes decided to risk the trip across the Pacific. On
the third of January, 1601, he reached Ternate in the Indies, where Van
Noort had been the year before, and where they found a Dutch settlement
commanded by that same Van der Does whose account of Houtman's first
trip to India we have given in the fourth chapter of this little book.
Van der Does warned De Cordes not to visit the next island of Tidore.
There were only twenty-four Hollanders left on board the _Trouwe_.
It was too dangerous to visit an unfriendly Portuguese colony with a
damaged ship and so small a crew. But De Cordes, who seems to have
been a reckless sort of person, went to Tidore all the same. Much to
his surprise he was very cordially received by the commander of the
Portuguese garrison and the governor of the town. They both assured him
that he might trade in their colony as much as he wished. If, however,
he would let them know what he wished to buy, they would give orders
that provisions and a cargo of spice should be got ready for their
distinguished visitors. They invited him to come on shore the next
morning. They wanted to make him a present of an ox for the benefit
of his hungry crew and entertain him personally, and, then after a
few more days further arrangements for the purpose of a mutually
profitable trade might be made. The next morning the Dutch captain
and six men went ashore to get their ox. The ship itself was left in
the care of the first mate. Soon a Portuguese boat rowed out to the
_Trouwe_ and asked the mate to come on shore, too, and have breakfast
with his Portuguese colleagues. The mate was suspicious and refused the
invitation. He suggested that the Portuguese officer come on board the
_Trouwe_ and breakfast with him. But the officer said that he was too
heavy a man to climb on board so high a ship, and he did not care to
take this exercise so early in the morning. So the mate left the ship,
together with the ship's carpenter, to see what a Portuguese kitchen
served for breakfast. The moment the two men landed a loud outcry was
heard from the _Trouwe_. The mate at once jumped into the sea and
looked for his comrade. The carpenter was dead and his head, hacked
from his body, was used as a football by the Portuguese. The mate swam
out to the ship, but when he reached it he found that the Portuguese
had jumped on board the moment he had left for his breakfast party.
He swam back to the shore, was made a prisoner, and was locked up in
the fortress. With six other men he escaped the general murder which
had taken place as soon as he landed. De Cordes himself had been killed
with a dagger. The six men who had accompanied him on shore had heard
the noise of the attack upon the _Trouwe_ and had rowed away from shore
in a boat, trying to get back to their vessel. But the _Trouwe_ was
already in the hands of the Portuguese, and since the Hollanders had
no arms, they surrendered after the Portuguese had given their oath
not to hurt them and to spare their lives. They were taken on board
a Portuguese ship. As soon as they were on deck they had been placed
in a row, and a soldier had been ordered to take his sword and hack
their heads off. He had killed four men when the other two managed to
jump overboard. One of these was drowned. The other was fished out of
the water and was sent to the fortress with the mate and five sailors
who had put up such a desperate fight on board the _Trouwe_ that the
Portuguese had promised to treat them with clemency if only they would
surrender.
The six men were afterward taken to Goa. Gradually one after the other
they had managed to escape and find their way back to Holland. Two of
them returned to Rotterdam in the autumn of 1603. Another one we find
mentioned in later years as commander of an Indian trader. As for the
_Trouwe_, Van Neck on his second voyage to India found the vessel being
used by the Portuguese as a man-of-war.
Of the other ships, the _Blyde Boodschap_ also had a very sad career
and met with extraordinary adventures. This small vessel was commanded
by a certain Dirck Gerritsz, a native of Enkhuizen, a fellow-citizen
of Linschoten. As a matter of fact the two men had heard of each
other many years before. While Linschoten was in Goa he was told of a
Hollander who was a native of his own city and who had traveled not
only in the Indies, but who also had visited Japan and China. We know
very little of the man. Some information of his travels in Asia have
been printed in a general hand-book on navigation of that time, though
he did not follow Linschoten's example and print a full account of
his adventures. When the city of Rotterdam sent this expedition to
the Strait of Magellan, Dirck Gerritsz had been engaged as first mate
of the _Blyde Boodschap_. When her captain died he had succeeded him.
The ship of Gerritsz had suffered from the same storm which had driven
the _Trouwe_ out of her course. An attempt had been made to reach the
island of Santa Maria, but the maps on board proved to be faulty, and
the little island could not be found. With only provisions enough for
another week Gerritsz had finally reached the harbor of Valparaiso.
Of his original crew of fifty-six men, twenty-three were left, and of
these only nine were strong enough to sail the ship. Therefore he had
been forced to surrender himself and his vessel to the Spaniards. The
Dutch sailors were forced to take service in the Spanish navy. From
that moment on we lose sight of all of them. A few reached home after
many years of strange adventure. Others died in the Spanish service.
Of the fate of the ship we know nothing. As for Dirck Gerritsz, rumor
has it that he found his way back to Enkhuizen.
There were two other ships, the _Hoop_ and the _Liefde_. Of these the
_Liefde_ had reached Santa Maria, and after leaving the island had
landed at Punta Lapavia, where an attempt had been made to find fresh
water. Unfortunately, the captain and twenty-three of his men had been
murdered by natives who mistook them for Spaniards and had carried
their heads in triumph to the Spanish town of Concepcion, where they
were shown to the garrison as a promise of what was in store for them
should the settlement ever fall into the hands of the enraged native
population. The rest of the sailors had saved their ship by fleeing
to Santa Maria, where they met the _Hoop_. The _Hoop_ had suffered a
similar calamity. Her captain and twenty-seven of his men had been
murdered on another island. Of the officers of both ships hardly a
single one was still alive.
New officers were elected from among the men, and the ships continued
their northward course apparently without a definite idea of what they
intended to do. They could not go back through the strait, and they
were obliged to cross the Pacific. They decided to avoid all Spanish
and Portuguese settlements and to make for Japan, where they might be
able to sell their cargo, and where a peaceful couple of ships might
find it possible to do some honest trading without being attacked by
wild natives or lying Spaniards. On the twenty-seventh of November
the island of Santa Maria was left, and soon the ships passed the
equator. They kept near the land, and lost eight more of their men when
these had gone to the shore to get fresh water and were attacked by
natives. On the twenty-third of February, during a gale, the ships were
separated from each other. The _Liefde_ was obliged to make the voyage
to Japan alone. On the twenty-fourth of March of the year 1600 the
first Japanese island was reached.
The people of Japan were very kind-hearted and very obliging. The sick
Hollanders were allowed to come on shore, and the others could trade
as much as they liked. But Japan for many years had been a field of
successful activities for Portuguese Jesuits. These Jesuits smiled
pleasantly upon the Dutch visitors, but to the Japanese they hinted
that the Hollanders were pirates and could not be trusted. Holland
was not a country at all, and these men were all robbers and thieves.
They advised the Japanese authorities to let these dangerous people
starve or send them away from their island, which would mean the same
thing. But the news of the arrival of some strange ships had reached
the ears of the Emperor of Japan. He sent for some of the crew to come
to his court. An Englishman among the sailors by the name of William
Adams was chosen for this dangerous mission. He not only represented
to his imperial Majesty the sad state of affairs among the shipwrecked
Hollanders, but he made himself so useful at the imperial court that he
was asked to remain behind and serve the Japanese state. He had a wife
and children at home in England, but he liked this new country so well
that he decided to stay. He lived happily for twenty years, married a
Japanese woman, and when he died in 1620 divided his fortune equally
among his Japanese and his English families.
Without the assistance of Adams, who seems to have been the leader of
the remaining sailors on the _Liefde_, it was impossible to accomplish
anything with the big ship. Of the twenty-four men who had reached
Japan only eighteen were left. The ship, therefore, was deserted, and
all the men went on shore. Except for two, the others all disappeared
from view. They probably settled down in Japan. But in the year 1605,
in the month of December, two Hollanders came to the Dutch settlement
of Patani, on the Indian peninsula. They had made the voyage from Japan
to India on a Japanese ship, and they brought to the Dutch company
trading in that region an official invitation from the Emperor of Japan
asking them to come and enter into honorable commerce with the Japanese
islands. This invitation was accepted. In the year 1608 one of the two
Dutch messengers returned to Japan with letters announcing the arrival
of a Dutch fleet for the next summer. He continued to live in Japan
until his death in 1634. The other sailor found a chance to go back
to Holland on a Dutch ship, but near home he was killed in a quarrel
with some Portuguese. The net result of this unfortunate voyage of the
_Liefde_ was the establishment of a very useful trade relation with
Japan--a relation which became more important after the Portuguese had
been expelled, and which lasted for over two centuries.
Finally there was the ship called the _Hoop_, which had become
separated from the _Liefde_ on the coast of South America in February
of the year 1600. It went down to the bottom of the ocean with
everybody on board.