Nathaniel's nutmeg (34 page)

'I saluted them with three peeces,' wrote John Jourdain,
a merchant on the next English ship to arrive in the Indies,
'but noe awnswere nor signe of English coulours, neither
from the shipp nor from the towne.' Suspecting that the
ship had been captured by locals, 'I shott annother peece .
.
.
with determination nott to go a land untill I had certaine
notice from thence.' At length Jourdain 'perceived a prow
cominge from the shore, wherein came Edward Langley,
Christopher Luther, Nathaniel Courthope, and Thomas
Harwood, all of them like ghostes or men fraighted. I
demanded for the Generall and the rest of our freindes in
particuler; [but] I could not name any man of noate but
was dead to the number of 140 persons; and the rest which
were remayneinge, as well aland and aboard the Trade,
weare all sicke, these four persons beinge the strongest of
them, whoe were scarce able to goe on their leggs.'

Most of the men were in the final stages of illness.
Middleton himself was dead - some said of a broken heart
over the loss of his ship — and the
Trades Increase
had
miserably failed to live up to her name. Of her last days a
merchant named Peter Floris wrote: 'She was lying on the
ground without mast, with three and thirtie men, the
greatest part sicke, the ship being sheathed on one side and
not on the other. In her had deceased one hundred English
and more Chinese which wrought for wages, and eight
Dutch by some strange sicknesse.' Her final demise came all
too soon; a renegade Spaniard set fire to her timbers and
the once-great vessel, pride of the East India Company, was
rapidly reduced to ash.

The
Darling
had not fared much better; on arrival at
Patani on the Malay Peninsula she was inspected and
considered to be in too poor a condition to sail back to
England. She would end her days shuttling factors to and
from the islands of the East Indies. Only the
Peppercorn
survived the long voyage home, but even she was unable to
reach London and Downton suffered the ignominious fate
of having to hire a Frenchman to tow her into Waterford
in Ireland. There was no triumphal welcome and none of
the crowds that had cheered her off three and a half years
before. Instead, Downton stepped onto dry land in
October 1613, only to find himself arrested and charged
with piracy for his part in the Red Sea 'rommaging'. He
was eventually released, but it did little to boost his morale
and his diary ends in a mood of black despair. 'And so
concluded,' he wrote,'this tedious and out-tyring journey.'

chapter eight

The Banner
of
Saint George

He
had long been considering financing a new voyage
of exploration to the Arctic and, just a few months
previously, had reminded his committee 'that three yeares
since, this Companie did adventure £300 per annum for
three yeares towards the discovery of the North-West
Passage' - money that remained unspent. These were not
the only funds at his disposal: Sir Thomas was also governor
of the Muscovy Company whose merchants were growing
increasingly enthusiastic about searching for a northern
route to the Indies.

Two other men of importance attended the meeting
between Smythe and Hudson. Sir Dudley Digges was a
wealthy individual who would shortly write a book entitled
Of the Circumference of the Earth, or a Treatise of the North-West

Passage,
a turgid piece of prose that led one critic to remark
that 'many of his good friends say he had better have given
four hundred pounds than have published such a pamphlet.'
Nevertheless, Digges harboured a passion for discovery and
was in possession of a large enough fortune to indulge that
passion. The third man at the meeting was John
Wolstenholme, Farmer of Customs, who also had a long
record of promoting voyages to unknown lands.

All three had studied Hudson's reports of the area
around Manhattan and accepted that the mighty river did
not lead through to the Pacific Ocean. But there was one
last region of North America that held the possibility of a
North-West Passage to the Spice Islands — the mysterious
'furious overfall' described by John Davis. This treacherous
passage of water, later known as Hudson Strait, had been
attempted by many adventurers (George Weymouth was so
confident of reaching China via this route that he carried
a preacher equipped for converting the heathen spice
traders) and although none had been successful in their
quest, most had returned with tales of its certain existence.

With permission from King James sought and gained,
Hudson set sail in April 1610 on a mission 'to search and
find out a passage by the north-west of America to the sea
of Sur, comonly called the South Sea [intending] to advance
a trade' to the spice-producing islands of the East Indies. His
voyage through the 'furious overfall' was one of the utmost
difficulty for spring had yet to arrive and the water was
choked with icebergs. Many of the less-experienced crew
members began to fear for their lives while the sour-minded
Robert Juet, who had accompanied Hudson on his
previous voyage, jeered at his hope 'of seeing Bantam by
Candlemasse'. The captain was determined to prove Juet
wrong and, as he steered the ship into Hudson Bay,
pronounced himself 'confidently proud that he had won the
passage'. But as the first snows began to fall and the men
were forced to winter in desolate James Bay, their
enthusiasm plummeted and a handful of conspirators began
to whisper of mutiny. 'It was darke,' wrote crew member
Abacuk Prickett, 'and they in readinesse to put this deed of
darknesse in execution .
..
Now every man would go to his
rest, but wickednesse sleepeth not.'

Stepping out of his cabin, Hudson found himself seized
by two men, pinioned with a rope, and cast into the ship's
shallop along with seven of his closest supporters. The
mutineers then cut the cable and put up the sails, leaving
Hudson and his company 'without food, drink, fire,
clothing or other necessaries'. As their little boat drifted off
into the night, any lingering hopes of discovering a
North-West Passage to the Spice Islands seemed to have
died and Hudson, one of the great Arctic explorers, was
never seen again.

He was destined not to be forgotten, for some seven
years after being cast adrift a spirited captain by the name
of Thomas Dermer began a detailed study of all the
material relating to Hudson's earlier voyages. Dermer had
been obsessed since childhood with discovering a quick
route to the 'spiceries' and, after scouring the explorer's
charts, plans and journals, he confidently declared that
the elusive passage did indeed lie in the region around
Manhattan. How he reached this decision remains
uncertain, but he had sufficient evidence to persuade his
financiers and, soon afterwards, he set off on the first of two
voyages to the Hudson.

Sailing through Long Island Sound and its ever-
narrowing inlet, Dermer passed into Upper Bay where he
rowed ashore and got into conversation with a group of

Indians. To his immense satisfaction these men confirmed
everything that Dermer had earlier argued.'In this place,' he
wrote excitedly, 'I talked with many savages who told me of
two sundry passages to the great sea on the west [coast of
America], offered me pilots, and one of them drew me a plot
with chalke upon a chest.' The good news was tempered by
bad: 'they report one [passage] scarce passable for shoalds,
perillous currents; the other no question to be made of.'

Dermer was not prepared to allow their warning to
dampen his enthusiasm and, excited about the imminent
fulfilment of his life's dream, 'hastened to the place of
greatest hope, where I purposed to make triall of God's
goodnesse towards us, and use my best endeavour to bring
the truth to light'. But no sooner had he reached the
'passage' than the wind whipped up a storm and forced
him to turn and flee,'hardly escaping with our lives'.

Despite this temporary setback, Dermer was thrilled
with his discovery and dashed off a letter to Samuel
Purchas informing him of the historic news. He even drew
a map of the passage, 'yet dare not part with it for feare of
danger. Let this [letter] therefore serve for confirmation of
your hopes.' Purchas was sufficiently impressed to include
the letter in his anthology of exploration, but Dermer's
financiers in England were decidedly sceptical about the
'discoveries' of their quixotic adventurer and promptly
recalled him to England. Dermer refused, 'resolutely
resolving to pursue the ends he aymed at'.

As he sailed towards the mouth of the Hudson on his
second attempt, Dermer was surprised to see 'divers ships
of Amsterdam and Horna who yearly had there a great and
rich trade'. He was even more perturbed to find 'some
Hollanders that were settled in a place we call Hudson's
River, in trade with the natives'. Curtly informing them
that the land belonged to England, Dermer 'forbad them
the place, as being by his Majestie appointed to us'. The
Dutchmen apologised for their mistake and told him they
sincerely hoped 'they had not offended'. Nevertheless, they
made no effort to move themselves elsewhere, for the
trade in beaver pelts was more profitable here than any­where else on the coastline.

The news that the Dutch were settling the land around
Manhattan aroused considerably more interest in England
than had Dermer s supposed discovery of the North-West
Passage. King James was already fuming at the belligerence
of the Dutch in the 'spiceries' and was determined to
prevent them from repeating their successes in America. As
far as he was concerned, the American coastline belonged
to him by virtue of the discoveries of John and Sebastian
Cabot who had sailed in the service of King Henry VII
more than a century previously. Although neither one of
this intrepid duo had staked England's claim to the land,
Queen Elizabeth I had later argued that merely setting foot
in America implied sovereignty, a view championed by
Richard Hakluyt, author of
The Principall Navigations.

Despite this, England's merchants had been far too
preoccupied with the spice race to show much interest in
settling the American seaboard and it was not until 1606
that an ambitious merchant called Sir Ferdinando Gordes
petitioned King James for a charter for two new
companies, one based in London and one in Plymouth.
These were given the right to plant colonies 'in that part of
America commonly called Virginia', but were ordered to
remain one hundred miles apart, a fatal decision, for it was
into this gap — in the Hudson River region — that the
Dutch had neatly staked their claim.