Nathaniel's nutmeg (9 page)

The usual port of call for ships rounding the Cape was
Table Bay, a sheltered watering place first discovered by the
Portuguese in 1503. Here the English ships dropped anchor
and sent an advance party ashore where they were met by
'certaine blacke savages, very brutish, which would not
stay'. This first meeting between Lancaster's Elizabethan
hosed and doubleted seamen and the natives of southern
Africa must have made for a strange sight. Never had the
English crew seen such a primitive and barbarous people
and they watched the savages with a mixture of awe and
disgust. 'They wear only a short cloake of sheepe or seale
skinnes to their middle, the hairie side inward, and a kind
of rat's skinne about their privities.' So wrote Patrick
Copland, the priest on a later voyage who was unamused
by the titillating behaviour of their womenfolk. 'They
would lift up their rat skinnes and shew their privities.'
Mealtimes were an occasion for even greater disgust. One
Englishman watched in horror as a band of natives
ravenously munched through a pile of stinking fish entrails
that had lain for more than two weeks in the tropical heat.
As the 'savages' smacked their lips and sucked their fingers
he concluded that 'the world doth not yield a more
heathenish people and more beastly', adding that their
meals smelt so foul 'that no Christian could abide to come
within a myle of it'. The jewellery worn by the women was
equally offensive: 'Their neckes were adorned with greasie
tripes which sometimes they would pull off and eat raw.

When we threw away their beasts' entrails, they would eat
them half raw, the blood lothsomely slavering.'

For three weeks Lancaster's crew were disappointed in
their search for fresh fruit. They managed to shoot geese
and cranes with their muskets, and gathered mussels on the
foreshore, but found it difficult to acquire food in sufficient
quantities to feed all their company. But eventually they
had some luck. After capturing a native and explaining in
sign language their need for meat and fruit, he set off up
country and returned eight days later with forty bullocks
and oxen, as well as several dozen sheep. The men could not
believe how cheap these animals were. One knife bought a
bullock, two secured an ox, and a broken blade was all that
was needed to buy a sheep. While the crew bartered on the
foreshore, a small party set off around the bay in a small
pinnace and returned with a huge number of seals and
penguins. Lancaster even managed to shoot an antelope.

Despite all the fresh meat many of the men remained
desperately sick. A health check revealed that less than two
hundred men were 'sound and whole' and fifty were too ill
to work. A decision was taken: the
Penelope
and
Edward
Bonaventure
would continue eastwards while the
Merchant
Royal
'was sent home for England with diverse weake
men'. The expedition was now down to two ships, both of
which were dangerously undermanned.

It was only a matter of days before the expedition met
with disaster. No sooner had the two remaining vessels
rounded the Cape of Good Hope than a tremendous storm
sank the
Penelope
with the loss of all hands:

We encountered with a mighty storme and extreme
gusts of wind, wherein we lost our General's
companie [the
Penelope]
and could never heare of him
nor his ship any more, though we did our best
endeavour to seeke him ... Foure dayes after this
uncomfortable separation, in the morning, toward ten
of the clocke, we had a terrible clap of thunder, which
slew foure of our men outright, their necks being
wrung in sonder without speaking any word, and of
94 men there was not one untouched; whereof some
were striken blind, others were bruised in their legs
and arms, and others in their brests, so that they
voided blood two dayes after; others were drawne out
at length, as though they had been racked. But (God
be thanked) they all recovered, saving only the foure
which were slaine outright. Also with the same
thunder our main mast was torn very greviously from
the head to the deck, and some of the spikes, that
were ten inches into the timber, were melted with the
extreme heate thereof.

Lancaster's vessel, the
Edward Bonaventure
, was now alone, a
dangerous situation for a ship about to enter uncharted
waters. Worse still the ship's master, William Mace, was
killed by natives while making a sortie for water on the
shores of Mozambique. Luckily help was at hand. When a
Portuguese merchant-ship sent a message to Lancaster by
way of a negro in a canoe, 'we took the negro along with
us, because we understood he had been in the East Indies
and knew somewhat of the countrie.'This became a regular
practice among the English captains and the only sure way
of finding the remote and isolated Spice Islands.
Unfortunately, this particular 'negro' proved a disaster.
Allowing the ship to be blown hopelessly off course, he
missed the Laccadive Islands in the Arabian Sea where
Lancaster had intended to revictual and decided to head to
the Nicobar Islands instead. 'But in our course we were
very much deceived by the currents,' and these islands also
eluded the ship so that by the time she reached Penang off
the coast of Malaysia the crew were once again in a
desperate condition. Only thirty-three men were left alive,
and eleven of these were so sick that they were unable to
man the ship. After cruising the coastline for a few days,
Lancaster spotted a large Portuguese ship sailing from Goa.
To attack her was a great gamble but Lancaster was
prepared to take the risk. Ordering the men to prime their
cannon, he 'shot at her many shot, and at last shooting her
maine-yard through, she came to anker and yielded'. The
captain and crew escaped in little rowing boats leaving the
English to ransack the vessel. She was loaded with a
hotchpotch of cargo, including sixteen brass cannon, three
hundred butts of Canary wine and a good supply of raisin
wine 'which is verie strong', as well as red caps, worsted
stockings and sweetmeats. As soon as these had been
transferred onto the
Edward Bonaventure
Lancaster set sail in
order to escape the danger of reprisals.

Sailing north-west towards Ceylon — and lost in the
vastness of the Indian Ocean — the crew now decided that
they had had more than enough adventure. With their
captain languishing in his cabin, 'very sick, more like to die
than to live', they refused to obey his orders and decided to
head for England. Lancaster was reluctantly forced to agree. Short of food and plagued with cockroaches, they safely
rounded the Cape of Good Hope and, with the wind in
their favour, headed straight to the island of St Helena
where a group of men rowed ashore. Ever since the failure
of Edward Fenton's mad scheme to proclaim himself king
the island had been deserted. Ships occasionally stopped at
the island to stock up on the 'excellent good greene figs,
oranges, and lemons very faire', and the crew of one passing
vessel had seen fit to construct a makeshift chapel on the
island; but for the greater part of the year the island was
uninhabited. It was with considerable surprise, therefore,
and not a little fear, that Lancaster's men heard a ghostly
chant emerging from the chapel. Kicking open the door,
'we found an Englishman, a tailor, who had been there 14
months.' His name was John Segar and he had been cast
ashore the previous year by the captain of the
Merchant
Royal
who, realising he was at death's door, reasoned that he
stood a greater chance of survival on land than aboard the
ship. But although the months on the island had cured his
body, the loneliness, boredom and heat had begun to addle
his mind. 'We found him to be as fresh in colour and in as
good plight of body to our seeming as he might be,' wrote
one witness, 'but crazed in mind and half out of his wits, as
afterwards we perceived; for whether he were put in fright
of us, not knowing at first what we were, whether friends
or foe, or of sudden joy when he understood we were his
olde consorts and countrymen, he became idle-headed,
and for eight days space neither night nor day took any
naturall rest, and so at length died for lacke of sleep.'

The journey home should have been almost over but as
the crew set sail for home the wind dropped once again
and they spent six weeks drifting helplessly in the mid-
Atlantic. At last the breeze stiffened and Lancaster, who had
by now recovered, suggested they let the winds carry them
to the West Indies where they could obtain much-needed
provisions. A chance encounter with a French ship enabled
them to replenish their supplies of wine and bread but it
was to be their last stroke of good fortune. A sudden storm
arose which grew so fierce that 'it carried not only our
sailes away, but also made much water in our shippe, so that
wee had six foote water in holde'. The ship limped towards
the outpost island of Mona and, relieved to have reached
land, all but five of the crew rowed ashore. It was the last
they would ever see of the
Edward Bonaventure:
at around
midnight the ship's carpenter cut the moorings and, with a
skeleton crew and a good measure of self-confidence, sailed
off into the night leaving Lancaster and his men stranded.

Almost a month passed before a French ship was spotted
on the horizon. Hastily lighting a bonfire to attract her
attention the crew were eventually picked up and offered
the passage home. By the time Lancaster and the pitiful
remnants of his crew arrived back in England they had
been away for three years, six weeks, and two days.