Page 21 - History of Portuguese in the Gulf_Neat

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xxxiv INTRODUCTION.
INTRODUCTION. XXXV
The other reference to Lancaster’s voyage occurs in a
Cornell's de Houtman, sailed out of the Texcl for the
royal letter to the Viceroy of India, written in Lisbon ;
Eastern Archipelago, carrying with them, for their
on March ist, 1594, one paragraph1 of which runs as
guidance, copies of Linschoten’s Sailing Directory, which
follows:— 1
was published in Amsterdam the same year, Of this r
And with respect to what you tell me, that an English ship put expedition,- which resulted in little but disaster3 and
into Titangone, six leagues from Mozambique,2 and that Dom * *
Jeronimo de Azevedo, who was stationed as captain of that disappointment,4 I find no mention in the Portuguese
fortress,3 prevented her taking in water,4 as she was doing, I records until the beginning of 15985 (although the surviving L
consider myself well served by the manner in which he proceeded ti
therein, and also by the order that you gave with a view to allay ships of the fleet had returned in August, 1597). The first
the excitement that might inconsiderately be created in that State reference occurs in a royal letter0 to the Viceroy of India, ;
by the news set about by that ship, of many others coming written from Lisbon on January 13th, 1598, in which the u v
thither; and since these corsairs have begun to go to those parts, <
it is very important that by every means you shall think of you King says :— k
shall cause great vigilance to be observed in this matter, in order v
to succeed in every way that is possible to you in capturing those
that shall put into the ports of that State, or to defeat them in 1 See Tiele’s Introduction to Hakluyt Soc. ed. of Linschoten, •r-
such a manner that not only will they not be able to proceed with p. xxxvi. \ ■■■
their designs, but that they will greatly regret having entertained * The first Dutch account of which appeared at Middelburg in
them, and will not dare to take them up again; as I feel confident 1597 (see Tide’s Memoire Bibliographique sur les fournaux des
that you will do. Navigateurs NIerlandais, pp. 116-136). An English translation by ff. V.
W. Phillip was printed in London by John Wolfe in 1598 under the 1
title The Description of a Voyage made by cert nine Ships of Holland ll
Lancaster’s voyage resulted so disastrously as to give
into the East Indies. See also J. K. J. de Jonge, op. cit., pp. 187-203, if
pause to English designs on the East;5 but another rival and 285-374 ; Prince Roland Bonaparte’s Les Premiers Voyages, etc., a
p. 6 ct seq. f
nation was now to appear on the scene.6 On April 2nd,
3 The small quantity of spices brought back was insufficient to pay 11
1595, a fleet of four Dutch vessels,7 under the command of the cost of the expedition. On January ist, 1597, the Amsterdam was
burnt, owing to its leaky condition and the lack of men, dead of
disease or killed by the natives. When the other three vessels set
sail homewards on February 26th, 1597, they carried, instead of the
1 Archivo Portuguez-Oriental, fasc. iii, pp. 430-431.
two hundred and forty-nine Hollanders that had left with the fiect, but r
3 See infra, p. xlvii.
eighty-nine, besides two Malabars, two Malagasy, a Chinese, a Malay,
3 I cannot find the date of his taking up this post, but it was and a Gujarati. 1
probably in 1590. From a royal letter of March ist, 1594, in Archivo
Portuguez-Oriental, fasc. iii (p. 421), it seems that while occupying 4 Sir Wm. Hunter, in his History of British India, vol. i, p. 230,
this position D. Jeronymo killed his wife for adultery (and her says Houtman returned in 1597, having lost two-thirds of his
paramour also, judging by a later letter), for which crime he was tried crews, done little in actual trade, but bringing back a treaty with the
and acquitted ; and in 1592 he appears to have returned to India and King of Bantam, which opened up the Indian Archipelago with
been appointed captain-major of the Malabar coast. Holland.” Apparently Hunter has here been misled by the autho­ ■
rities he refers to. The king of Bantam had recently been killed, and ■
4 This was not the fact (see infra, p. xlviii).
his successor was an infant. It was the governor and council at
6 See, however, Hunter, History of British India, vol. i, p. 234. Bantam that made the agreement with the Dutch (see de Jonge, op. 1
G For details of the early Dutch voyages, see Prince Roland Bona­ cit., vol. ii, pp. 197-198, 372-374 ; The Description of a Voyage, etc., r
parte’s Les Premiers Voyages des NIerlandais dans Plnsulinde (yjpj- pp. 15 and 16). '
1602), and especially J. K. J. de Jonge’s De Opkomst va?i het Neder- 6 Except the casual reference by the Goa Chamber in their letter of
landsch Gezag in Oost-Indie (ijqj-foio). Other works dealing with December 1597, quoted from below (p. xlvi).
these voyages are cited below.
1 They were the three ships Mauritius, Holla?idia and Amsterdam, c The only extant copy of which appears to be that forming No. 45 $
and the pinnace Duifken. in tom. i of the Collecqam de Or dens da India (British Museum Addit.
MS. 20,861).
d 2