Nathaniel's nutmeg (8 page)

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 sooner 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.

At first all went well; the ships arrived safely at the
Canary Islands before setting off with the wind in their sails
for Cape Verde and the equator. Here, they had the good
fortune to capture a Portuguese caravel laden with sixty
tons of wine, a thousand jars of oil and numerous barrels of
capers. Despite this unexpected revictualling men began to
die. Two expired on the
Edward Bonaventure
before she had
even crossed the equator whilst others soon 'tooke their
sicknesse in those hote climates, for they be so wonderful
unwholesome'. Worse, the weather was on the turn. No
sooner had the ships entered the southern hemisphere than
'we had nothing but tornadoes, with such thunder,
lightening and raine that we could not keep our men drie
three houres together which was an occasion of the
infection among them.' With provisions running low, the
ships followed the trade winds to Brazil before turning in
the direction of the Cape of Good Hope.

The crew had by now been at sea for more than three
months without eating any fresh fruit. Stuck in the
doldrums and with nothing but 'salt victuals' and biscuits
on board, they began to fall sick. Failure of strength and
persistent breathlessness were the first signs that the body
was beginning to weaken and many could no longer climb
the rigging. Next, their skin turned sallow, their gums
tender and their breath rank and offensive. 'The disease
that hath consumed our men hath bene the skurvie,' wrote
Edmund Barker, one of the on-board chroniclers of the
expedition. 'Our soldiers, which have not been used to the
sea, have best held out, but our mariners dropt away;
which (in my judgement) proceedeth of their evil way of
living at home.'

Most of Lancaster's men were soon suffering from these
early signs of the sickness and it was not long before the
scurvy took on a more dramatic form. Their teeth dropped
out and purple blotches sprouted all over their bodies.
Eating salted meat did nothing to assuage their condition;

indeed, it only seemed to make matters worse. As their
muscles swelled and their joints stiffened, thin streams of
blood began to trickle from their eyes and noses. By the
time the ships staggered towards the Cape of Good Hope
many were also suffering from acute diarrhoea, as well as
from lung and kidney troubles.