Nathaniel's nutmeg (20 page)

The Company were incensed at this sudden loss of
their monopoly but not unduly surprised. Unlike his
predecessor, King James had failed to grasp the fact that
trade with the East Indies could only succeed if it was
carried out by a monopoly and with the full backing of the
Crown. He was also blind to the problem of the occasional
ship sailing into eastern waters, even when that ship was
captained by a loose cannon like Sir Edward. It was with
the King's sanction and blessing, therefore, that the
Tiger,
together with a pinnace christened the
Tiger's Whelp,
set sail
from the Isle of Wight on 5 December 1604.
The
Tiger
was a minuscule ship of just two hundred and
forty tons and the East India Company directors might
reasonably have hoped that she would be lost in the first
storm. But Michelborne had a trump up his sleeve.
Catching them unawares he announced that his chief pilot
was the hugely experienced John Davis, veteran of James
Lancaster's expedition and survivor of two difficult voyages
to the East Indies. The Company was most surprised to
hear this and wondered how Michelborne had managed to
seduce Davis on board. In fact, the intrepid navigator had
not needed much persuading for he was still angry at
having returned from Lancaster's expedition under a cloud.
Lancaster himself had complained about Davis, informing
the directors that he was 'not a little grieved' that his
navigator had been wrong about both the ease with which
pepper could be bought in Achin and also the price. Davis
was unfairly made a scapegoat and, offered the chance by
Sir Edward Michelborne to have his revenge, he promptly
signed up to join the
Tiger.

No sooner had they reached Bantam than the mayhem
began. Spotting a fully laden vessel on the horizon
Michelborne 'fell in fight with her' and she was captured.
She was a poor prize, a rice-laden cargo boat, and a
dismayed Michelborne recorded that she 'was not suffering
the worth of a penny to bee taken from them'. Other ships
were stopped and searched in the shallow coastal waters
around Bantam until the natives of one vessel, indignant at
this blatant act of piracy, set upon the Englishmen and
inflicted terrible injuries before leaping overboard and
'swimming away like water spaniels'.

Undeterred, Sir Edward next waylaid an Indian vessel of
eighty tons and ransacked her. Emboldened by his success
he now sailed into Bantam harbour where five enormous
vessels, all Dutch, were riding at anchor. Chuckling at his
own audacity he sent a message to each captain informing
them 'that hee would come and ride close to their sides,
and bad the prowdest of them all that durst to put a piece
of ordnance upon him'. There was a warning attached to
his message: if any ship so much as loaded a musket 'hee
would either sinke them or sink by their sides.'

The Dutch were most upset to find themselves at the
receiving end of such threats and complained to the King
of Bantam that all Englishmen were the same, 'being
thieves and disordinate livers'. Yet they steadfastly refused to
take up Michelborne's challenge, cowering below deck as
Sir Edward tacked up and down the harbour and, 'whereas
the Hollanders were wont to swagger and keep great stirre
on shore all the time before our being there, they were so
quiet that wee could scarcely see one of them.'

Sir Edward had so far been lucky; he had acted with
daring and bravado and no one had called his bluff. But he
was shortly to meet his match. As the ship drifted in calm
waters off the Malay Peninsula, a cry was suddenly raised
from the look-out. A mysterious ship was approaching, a
huge junk, whose decks were lined with more than eighty
men. They were strange-looking fellows: short, squat, and
with an almost total lack of expression on their faces. Sir
Edward despatched a heavily armed boat to discover if
these people were friend or foe and, after a brief exchange
in which the English learned that the vessel was 'a junke of
the Japons', they were invited on board and shown around.
When they enquired of the Japanese as to their line of
business the men made no bones about their trade. The
junk, like the
Tiger,
was a pirate ship and the men were
proud of her devastating progress through the waters of
South-East Asia. She had pillaged the coasts of China and

Cambodia, plundered half a dozen ships off Borneo, and
was now heading back to Japan laden with spoils.

When the English party were safely back on the
Tiger,
Sir Edward weighed up his options. Trusting to his previous
good fortune, he decided to ransack the junk and, to this
end, sent a second band of Englishmen on board to stake
her out. Although it was clear to the Japanese that
Michelborne's buccaneering sailors were assessing the
strengths and weaknesses of the vessel, they welcomed the
English with open arms and allowed them free access to
the ship's hold. They even pointed to the choicest items on
board, astonishing the crew of the
Tiger
who had never met
with such an odd race of men. 'They were most of them
too gallant a habit for sailors,' wrote one, 'and such an
equalitie of behaviour among them that they all seemed
fellows.' When they asked to visit the English vessel all
agreed that it would be impolite to refuse.

Here Michelborne's inexperience told for the first time.
He was unaware that the Japanese had the reputation in
the Indies for being a 'people so desperate and daring that
they are feared in all places' and was ignorant of the fact
that all eastern ports demanded that any Japanese sailor
coming ashore must first be disarmed. Davis, too, was
'beguiled by their humble semblance'. Not only was he of
the opinion that disarming them was unnecessary, he
offered them the run of the ship and let them freely
fraternise with the crew. As more and more Japanese
clambered aboard, beakers were raised and the two crews
joked and chatted among themselves.

In a flash everything changed: unbeknown to the
English, the Japanese had, in the words of Michelborne,
'resolved with themselves either to gaine my shippe or to
lose their lives'. The smiles vanished, the laughter died and
the Japanese suddenly transformed themselves into brutal
'rogues' who stabbed and slashed at their English
adversaries. The crew of the
Tiger
had never faced such
hostility and scarcely had a chance to resist before the deck
was swarming with Japanese wielding long swords and
hacking men to pieces. Soon they reached the gun room
where they found Davis desperately loading muskets. 'They
pulled [him] into the cabbin and giving him sixe or seven
mortall wounds, they thrust him out of the cabbin.' He
stumbled on deck but the sword wounds had severed one
of his arteries and he bled to death. Others, too, were in
their final death throes and it seemed inevitable that the
Tiger
would shortly be lost.

It was Michelborne who saved the day. Thrusting pikes
into the hands of his best fighters he launched a last-ditch
attack on the Japanese soldiers 'and killed three or four of
their leaders'. This disheartened the Japanese who slowly
found themselves at a disadvantage. Armed with knives and
swords, they were unable to compete with Michelborne's
pikemen and found themselves driven down the deck until
they stood en masse by the entrance to the cabin. Sensing
their predicament, they let out a terrific scream and dashed
headlong into the heart of the ship.

The English were at a loss as to know how to evict
them. Not one man volunteered to follow them into the
cabin for to do so would be to court certain death. It was
equally hopeless to send a large group down. The
passageway was low and narrow and the men would end
up wounding themselves rather than the Japanese.
Eventually, a bright spark on board had a simple but
devastating solution. Two thirty-two-pound demi-culverins
were loaded with 'crosse-barres, bullets, and case-shot' and
fired at point-blank range into the most exposed side of the
cabin. There was a deafening crash as the shrapnel tore
through the woodwork and 'violently marred therewith
boords and splinters'. A terrible shriek followed, a cry of
agony, and then there was silence. When the smoke cleared
and the dust settled, the cabin was entered and it was found
that only one of the twenty-two Japanese had survived.
'Their legs, armes and bodies were so torne, as it was
strange to see how the shot had massacred them.'

It was now time for Michelborne to have his revenge.
Training every last cannon on the Japanese junk, he fired
shot after shot into her sides until the men on board
begged for mercy. When this was refused they vowed to go
down fighting and the battle raged until all resistance was
quelled and the junk fell silent. Only one Japanese
attempted to surrender. Diving into the water he swam
across to the
Tiger
and was hauled aboard. When quizzed
by Sir Edward as to the motive for the attack he 'told us
that they meant to take our shippe and to cut all our
throates'. Having said this, and terrified by the crowd of
hostile onlookers, he told Michelborne that his one desire
was 'that hee might be cut in pieces'. Michelborne
preferred a less bloody method of execution and ordered
the man to be strung up at the yardarm. This sentence was
duly carried out but the rope snapped and the man
dropped into the sea. No one could be bothered to haul
him in and as the coast was not far away it was presumed
that he escaped with his life.