Nathaniel's nutmeg

by Giles Milton

  Drake arrived to a hero's welcome. Not only was his vessel, renamed the Golden Hind, laden with fragrant spices, she was also 'very richly fraught with gold, silver, pearls and precious stones', most of which had been pillaged from Spanish and Portuguese vessels. Men and women turned out in force to watch the arrival of the ship in Plymouth, and Queen Elizabeth herself came aboard the vessel at Deptford and conferred a knighthood on her gallant commander. Within days of his return, songs, sonnets, odes and poems were being composed in honour of his historic voyage.

  Drake's astonishing feat of seamanship fired the imagination of Elizabethan England and fuelled the belief that the East was a land of fabulous potentates. But Drake had sailed as a freebooter, not a trader, and although he had successfully bought large quantities of spices in Ternate, their value was nothing compared to the gold and silver he had stolen from Spanish galleons. Worse still, he brought back little practical information about the market-places of the East. The records of his voyage include no details of prices, no mention of weights and measures, no clues as to the goods most sought after for barter. Yet his triumphant return caused great excitement among the merchants of London and they began to cast around for a suitable candidate to open trading links with the East Indies. Drake himself was the obvious choice but he had set his sights on some old-fashioned piracy and the merchants were forced to look elsewhere for a commander. Showing the singular lack of foresight that they had manifested when choosing Sir Hugh Willoughby for their Arctic adventure, they now entrusted command to a Nottinghamshire landowner called Edward Fenton, a headstrong man with little ex­perience of seamanship.

  Fenton came from a prosperous family and, had he so desired, could have lived a life of ignominious ease. Instead he chose a different path: eschewing the comforts of his stately home he sold his patrimony and embarked on a swashbuckling career as a soldier of fortune, allowing himself to be carried to wherever there was the chance for adventure. His first major expedition saw him travelling in the company of Martin Frobisher in search of the fabled North-West Passage and it was while on this expedition that Fenton first learned that orders given in London could be safely ignored once at sea. Landing on Baffin Island and finding what appeared to be large deposits of gold ore, Fenton abandoned his search for the North-West Passage and set up an impromptu mining venture with the aim of getting rich quick.

  Fenton was a strange choice to lead a voyage to the East Indies: an incurable romantic, he had only a slim understanding of the responsibilities that befell a commander. His eccentricities had raised many an eyebrow before he even left England and there was con­siderable opposition to his appointment, but as the Earl of Leicester's preferred man he was duly entrusted with the post. When the merchants came to choose Fenton's second-in-command they plumped for a solidly depend­able captain named William Hawkins, a relative of his more famous namesake, who had served in Drake's voyage to the South Seas. But they continued to harbour doubts about the whimsical Fenton and set down in great detail their plans for the voyage, including the exact route that he was to follow. 'You shall go on your course by the Cape of Good Hope,' they wrote, 'not passing the Strait of Magellan either going or returning ... you shall not pass to the north-eastward of the 40 degree of latitude at the most, but shall take your right course to the Isles of Moluccas.'

  Such instructions fell on deaf ears for hardly had Fenton set sail than he cooled on the idea of sailing to the East Indies, a hazardous and tiresome voyage that would profit the merchants far more than him. As his ship plied its way southwards down the Atlantic, the 'gentelman' commander spent the long hours at the helm indulging his dream of a nobler and more glorious profession. It is unfortunate that the records of the expedition fall silent just at the point when it slides into farce. The most interesting account of the voyage — the journal belonging to William Hawkins — was partially destroyed by fire in the last century. But its disintegrating pages are sufficiently legible to allow for a reconstruction of the tumultuous events on board the Bear. Fenton, it seems, had long realised that the quickest way to riches was to plunder and ransack the Portuguese carracks that made their way up and down the African coastline. But as his ship drifted listlessly in the mid-Atlantic he was struck by an altogether more fantastic idea. On 25 September 1582, he summoned his lieutenants to a meet­ing in his cabin and told them of his plan to seize the island of St Helena 'and theire to be proclaimed kyng'.

  They could scarcely believe their ears. They were only too aware of Fenton's propensity for disregarding orders but this was an entirely unforeseen turn of events. Attempting to talk him out of this lunatic scheme only fuelled his desire and when the practical Hawkins became too vociferous in his arguments against the plan Fenton promised him 10,000 pounds of silver if he would change his mind, as well as great riches to 'all the well willers.'When news reached the on-board preacher he was horrified and 'fell down upon his knees and besought [Hawkins] that for God's sake he would not give his consent to this determination'. The crew had a similar reaction; they had no wish to spend the rest of their lives on the remote Atlantic islet that, two centuries later, would prove such an effective prison for Napoleon. Several pointed out the impracticalities of Fenton's plan, arguing that it would be almost impossible for them to defend the island against foreign vessels. Without mastery of the sea, King Edward of St Helena would be deposed before the year was out.

  Hawkins agreed and, deciding to 'tell [Fenton] my mind', stormed back to the commander's cabin. Unfortunately the next few lines of his journal are illegible but he must have eloquently argued his case for Fenton abandoned his mad scheme with as much haste as it had originally been conceived. Perhaps he realised that without Hawkins's help, he would not even have been able to locate the island. His romantic dream in tatters, Fenton locked himself in his cabin in a mood of black despair. 'He saide then he would go back agayne to the islands of Cape de Verde to fetch some wine,' which, noted Hawkins, 'was only a desire to pick and steale'.

  As his ship headed back towards England, Fenton awoke to the fact that he had done little to endear himself to London's merchants. He tried to silence Hawkins by clapping him in irons and threatening to kill him if he breathed a word about the more ludicrous episodes of the voyage. In the event, Hawkins survived but this final act completed Fenton's fall from grace and his name was conspicuously absent from any future expedition to the East. The detailed plans and orders laid down by the expedition's financiers proved to be entirely in vain: the 1582 expedition to the Spice Islands never even left the Atlantic.

  The merchants of London now realised that the best way forward was for one of their own — a sober and hard- nosed businessman — to travel east to investigate the practicalities of trade. The man they chose to conduct this research was Ralph Fitch, a practically minded merchant of the Levant Company who left London in 1583 accompanied by four partners. The journal he compiled while travelling was filled with facts and figures about the ports and cities of the Indies and although it is not the most exciting of reads, its importance lies in the fact that it marked England's entry as a serious player in the spice race.

  Fitch tells how he set off with four companions-in- trade - Messrs Newberry, Eldred, Leedes and Story - in the winter of 1583. After travelling by ship to Tripolis in Syria the small party teamed up with a caravan as far as Aleppo, then continued to the Euphrates on camel-back. Here they pooled their resources, bought a boat, and floated downstream to the Persian Gulf. Newberry had travelled this way once before and returned with stories about huge-breasted ladies with 'great rings in their noses and about their legs, arms and necks iron hoops'. Suffering from the stinking heat of midday, he had watched in amazement as they unblushingly 'threw their dugs over their shoulders'. Such a colourful tale would never have found its way into Fitch's journal; as Newberry eyed up the local ladies, his colleague was busy noting how their boat was constructed, the exact cost of the journey, and the weights and measures in use.

  No soone
r had the party of Englishmen arrived in Hormuz than the town's Portuguese authorities grew suspicious. Arrested and clapped in jail, they were eventually shipped to Goa to be dealt with by the Portuguese viceroy. Here, the men had a stroke of luck. One of the Jesuit fathers in the town was an Oxfordshire man named Thomas Steven who had arrived in Goa four years previously, earning himself the distinction of being the first Englishman ever to visit India. Hearing that a group of his compatriots were incarcerated in the town's 'fair stronge prison', Steven immediately provided sureties for them and the men were allowed to go free.

  Once out of prison they went their separate ways. Story promptly locked himself up in a monastery to pursue his new-found vocation as a monk. Newberry found Goa to his liking and settled in the town, Eldred discussed trade with the local merchants, while Leedes entered the service of the Emperor Akbar and was never heard of again. But Fitch was not to be swayed from his original plans. In transporting him to Goa the Portuguese had unwittingly aided his project by dropping him behind enemy lines. Before they had the chance to re-arrest him he fled the town in disguise and, after years on the road, eventually arrived in Malacca. Fitch shows no triumphalism in having finally reached his goal; he records his arrival with the same methodical detachment that marks the rest of his journey, compiling a dossier of information about commodities and prices.

  After no less than eight years of painstaking research into the spice trade, Fitch decided it was time to return home. When he finally reached London, he was surprised to discover that he had become something of a celebrity and that his journal was eagerly sought after by the bards and playwrights of London. One who was particularly interested in his story was a young writer called William Shakespeare who adapted the opening sentence of Fitch's account for his new play Macbeth. Fitch had written: 'I did ship myself in a ship of London, called the Tiger, wherein we went for Tripolis in Syria, and from thence we took the way for Aleppo.' In Macbeth this is echoed in the words: 'Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' th' Tiger!

  While Fitch laid the groundwork for the first serious trading venture Sir Francis Drake was taking more practical measures to ensure its success. As King Philip of Spain's massive Armada sailed up the English Channel, Drake attacked the fleet, wreaking chaos on the would-be invaders. Each day he picked off straggling ships until, at the end of July 1588,'the winds of God blew.' Surveying the destruction he had caused, Drake declared that none of the Spanish commanders 'will greatly rejoice of this day's service'.

  The psychological effects of victory were to change England forever. For decades the high seas had been the exclusive preserve of Spain and Portugal but now there was a new power to be reckoned with. Within months, news of England's naval prowess had reached the kings and princes of the East Indies, rulers who had never before heard of England. In a region where military strength counted for everything, the local potentates of Java and Sumatra awaited their first glimpse of this newly victorious power, and when the first English mariners finally pitched up at the court of Sultan Ala-uddin of Achin — the most powerful ruler in Sumatra — they found that the Sultan knew every detail of the historic victory. So anxious was he to make an impression on this new naval power, and so keen to strike up a trading alliance, that he sent a train of elephants magnificently decked with streamers to meet them.

  In the congratulatory letter that he sent to Queen Elizabeth I he was most efiusive in his greetings. Imagining her as victorious ruler of vast swathes of Europe, he addressed his letter to the Sultana of England, France, Ireland, Holland and Friseland. Even good Queen Bess must have blushed at that.

  chapter two

  Wonderfully Unwholesome Climes

  Two months after Sir Francis Drake’s spectacular success against the Armada, London Merchants heard rumours that an English vessel was sailing up the Channel after an adventurous voyage to the East Indies. The captain of this ship was Thomas Cavendish, the second Englishman to circumnavigate the globe, who was returning from his expedition laden with rich merchandise. On his home-bound journey he had attacked the huge Spanish galleon, Great St Anne, along with a staggering nineteen other vessels, and he arrived back in England to a rapturous welcome, a welcome that was heightened by reports that his sailors wore silken doublets and that his top sails were trimmed with gold.

  Scarcely had Cavendish set foot on land than he was writing to his old friend, the Lord Chamberlain, urging him to promote an English expedition to the Spice Islands without delay. 'I sailed along the islands of the Moluccas,' he wrote, 'where our countrymen may have trade as freely as the Portugals if they themselves will.'

  There was by now a pressing need to send a successful trading mission to the East Indies for, ever since King Philip II had acceded to the throne of Portugal in 1580, the markets of Lisbon had been closed to English shipping. Not only had this dramatically reduced the quantity of spice arriving in England, it had also closed an important export market for English broadcloths and woollens. The old argument against an English expedition to the Spice Islands - that the Portuguese had exclusive rights over the eastern sea routes — was no longer valid. The papal bull that had divided the world between the Catholic powers of Spain and Portugal was openly scorned in England and Queen Elizabeth I personally challenged its legality, famously arguing that 'it is as lawful for my subjects to sail [around the Cape] as the Spanish, since the sea and air are common to all men.' The voyages of Drake and Cavendish had demonstrated to the sceptics that English ships, though small, could indeed go anywhere they chose and when Drake captured a massive carrack in the eastern Atlantic it proved once and for all that such ships 'were no such bugs that they might be taken'. This particular bug was a rich prize indeed: its hold was filled with more than £100,000 of treasure.

  In 1591, after years of vacillating, the merchants of London acted upon Cavendish's advice. They petitioned Queen Elizabeth for a licence to trade in the East Indies and, on gaining her consent, began searching for a suitable commander. This time they paid heed to their mistakes of the past and plumped for James Lancaster, an experienced merchant seaman who had fought bravely against the Spanish Armada.

  Little is known of Lancaster's early life. His will relates that he was born in Basingstoke in 1554 or 1555 and died when he was well into his sixties. Known to be 'by birth of gentillity' he was despatched to Portugal at a tender age in order to learn the language and business of trade. Lancaster himself recorded only the briefest outlines of his years in

  the country. 'I have been brought up among these people,' he later wrote,' and have lived among them as a gentleman, served with them as a soldier, and lived among them as a merchant. 'What else he did in Portugal remains uncertain, but it seems likely that he, like many other English living there, espoused the cause of Don Antonio in the struggle for the Portuguese throne and fought on his behalf. With the victory of Spain his days were numbered and he fled back to England as a virtual refugee, losing all his property and money in the process. But his knowledge of Portuguese was to stand him in good stead for by 1587, the year before the Armada, he was once again trading, this time from London.

  An oil painting of James Lancaster has survived to show the manner of the man. Magnificently attired in buttoned doublet and flamboyant ruff he looks the typical Elizabethan, stiff and rigid with one hand resting on sword and the other fingering a globe. His journals and writings add flesh to what remains an archetypal Elizabethan portrait, revealing that Lancaster was a mixture of gruff sea dog and stern moraliser. A strict disciplinarian, he was a keen advocate of daily prayers on board ship and forbade any sort of gaming. He particularly abhorred bad language and instituted severe penalties 'against the blaspheming of the name of God and all idle and filthy communication'. Yet his disciplinarian nature was always tempered by compassion. When his vessel was in danger of sinking, he was at first furious that the accompanying ship ignored his orders to leave them to their fate. 'These men regard no commission,' he growled darkly; yet no one was punished
when he later learned that they had remained alongside because of their love for him. The respect he showed for his crew was also a new departure: Lancaster did everything in his power to save the weak and, unlike many other captains, was genuinely horrified to watch helplessly as dozens of his crew succumbed to illness and death.

  The vessel that Lancaster had captained against the Armada, the Edward Bonaventure, was not a warship; rather, she was one of the many London merchant vessels that sailed down the English Channel to aid in the defence of the realm. She was also destined to become, under Lancaster's skilful command, one of three ships to set off on the long 1591 voyage to the East Indies.

  The merchants who financed this expedition viewed it as a reconnaissance mission rather than a trading venture and little cargo was loaded on board the ships. Instead, all available space was converted into living space for the large number of men on board, a necessary feature of long voyages into the unknown. Many would die on the outward trip and for those that survived there was a cornucopia of tropical diseases awaiting them on their arrival in the East.

  Decked with streamers and bunting, the Edward Bonaventure, Penelope and Merchant Royal sailed from Plymouth on a warm spring day in 1591. A large crowd had assembled to bid the ships farewell and many families wept openly as they pulled away from the shore. Lancaster himself took the helm of the flagship, leading the other vessels into the choppy waters of the English Channel. His bullish optimism was not mirrored by the crowd gathered to see him off. The chances of them seeing their loved ones again were slim, and many were already questioning the wisdom of putting to sea so late in the season.