Page 64 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

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64 EARLY ENGLISH ADVENTURERS IN THE EAST

perhaps, a not unsuitable ending to one of the most extra­
! ordinary episodes in which an English ship was ever
involved in Eastern seas.
A somewhat Cadmean victory was that which Michel-
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borne had won in this encounter. The enemy had been
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annihilated, but at the cost of a number of the crew and
with the loss, in Davis, of the one indispensable man on
the ship. After a period of indecision, in which he met the
Dutch fleet of five ships, under Admiral Warwyck, which
I was then on a voyage eastward, he elected to abandon his
expedition to China and return immediately home, lie
eventually reached England towards the close of 1606, a i
disappointed and discredited man. History has no
further concern with his career beyond the evil influences
created by his voyage. These were serious in their effect,
not merely as they operated on trade, but by the unplea­
sant impression they gave to the people of the Middle
East of the English character. It is doubtful whether
for a generation the disagreeable idea that the English
were a nation who made free with other people’s propert)r
at sea was removed. Indeed, more than anything else
the piratical raids of Michelborne tended to the discom­
fiture of the English in their earliest efforts to make their
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footing good in the spice region.

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