Page 42 - History of Portuguese in the Gulf_Neat

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lxxvi INTRODUCTION.
same year, 1598, dispatched two fleets thither by the
south-western route. The first of these consisted of five
ships, under the command of Jacques Mahu and Simon de
Cordcs, the pilot of one being the Englishman, William
Adams.1 Except that it led to the opening up of Japan
to Dutch trade, this expedition, which left Rotterdam on
June 27th, 1598, resulted in utter disaster. Details of the
voyage have been given by various writers ;2 and I there­
fore confine myself to quoting what Couto {Dec. XII,
Liv. v, cap. ii) says3 on the subject:—
In this year 1600, of which we are treating, about this same
time there arrived4 a Dutch ship5 at the Islands of Japrio, at the
port of Xativai6 in the kingdom of Bungo; and as at that time it
was not the monsoon for ships to come from China, nor from the
Filippinas, it appeared to the fathers of the Company, who reside
there, that it might be some ship going from New Spain to the
Lusdes, that through some storm had been driven out of her course.
They sent word to the king of Bungo, in order that he might send
help, lest some disaster should befall her; which he at once did.
And at this same time two fathers of the Company who resided
near Xativai, seeing the ship, went with some boats to assist her;
and coming near to her, and discovering her to be Dutch, they
turned back again. Some Portuguese that were in Naganzaque, as
soon as they heard of the ship, sent advice by letters to Tirazava,
governor-general of those realms on the western side, of how that
ship was one of Lutheran corsairs, enemies of the Portuguese and
1 For his history, see Dictionary of National Biography.
2 See De Jonge, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 218-222 ; O. Nachod’s Die
Beziehungert der Nicderlandischcn Osti?idischen Kompagnie zu Japan,
p. 93 et seq.; Purchas, vol. i, Bk. 11, pp. 73,78-79; Rundall’s Memorials
of the Empire of Japon (Hakluyt Soc.), pp. 18-24, 33-39 ; Satow’s
Voyage of Captain John Saris (Hakluyt Soc.), Introduction, pp. xlvii-
xlviii ; Dictionary of National Biography, vol. i, p. 104.
3 The following details given by the great historian of Portuguese
India seem to have been overlooked by all writers on the dawn of
Dutch and English commerce in Japan. Couto, who wrote this
Decade in 1611 (the date of Adams’s first letter), appears to have
obtained his information from the Jesuit fathers.
4 On April 19th, 1600. 6 The Licfde.
6 According to Sir E. M. Satow (op. cit., Introduction, p. xlviii),
“ she anchored about a league off the capital of Bungo, now called
Oita, in Beppu Bay, North latitude 33* 15'.”
INTRODUCTION. lxxvii
of all Christians.1 On receiving this message, and having already
had letters from the king, Tirazava hastened to the kingdom of
Bungo, and ordered the ship to be brought into port,2 and laid
hold of the Hollanders, and their goods, of which an inventory
was made, and what was found therein was the following :3
Eleven great chests of coarse woollen cloths, a box with four
hundred branches of coral and as many of amber, a great chest of
glass beads of divers colours, some mirrors and spectacles, many
children’s pipes, two thousand cruzados in reals, nineteen large
bronze pieces of ordnance and other small ones, five hundred
muskets, and five thousand balls of cast-iron, three hundred
chain-shot, fifty quintals of powder, three great chests of coats of
mail, three-fourths having breastplates and pectorals of steel,
three hundred and fifty-five darts, a great quantity of nails, iron,
hammers, scythes and mattocks, and other various kinds of
implements, with which it would seem they were coming to con­
quer and inhabit. They confessed that in the past years of 1598
and 1599 there set out from the States of Holland fifteen ships
to go to Sunda and Maluco, regarding which they gave no satis­
factory account whatever; and in order that something may be
known of them, we shall give an account of those of which we
have learnt, and of what happened to them.
! In the year that we have mentioned4 there left Rotterdam these
* fifteen ships,5 which kept together as far as the coast of Guinea,
where they divided into three squadrons. One of these soon
passed the Cape of Good Hope, and took its course for Sunda,
where three ships separated themselves, and the other two pro­
ceeded to put into the port of Achem, of whom 1 shall have
more to say presently.0 To the other squadron we have not
learnt what happened. The third, the captain of which was one
Balthazar da Corda,7 went privateering for some time on the coast
1 Cf. what Adams says in his letters (Rundall’s Memorials of the
Empire of Japo?i, pp. 23, 25, 38).
2 At Sakai, according to Satow, loc. cit. (sec also footnote infra,
and Rundall’s Memorials of the Empire of Japon, p. 27).
3 Couto here apparently quotes from an official document sent to
Goa by the Portuguese in Japan. Compare this list with that given
by Fernao Guerreiro in the footnote infra.
4 The years 1598 and 1599 had been mentioned ; but it is evident
that now Couto is speaking of 1598 only.
6 The “fifteen ships” are apparently the eight of C. van Neck, the
two of C. de Houtman, and the five of J. Mahu ; but it will be seen
that Couto’s account is, as regards some of them, very confused and
inaccurate.
6 See supra, pp. Ixiv-lxvi.
7 The actual commander was Jacques Mahu, on whose death Simon
de Cordes assumed command. Balthazar de Cordes, whose relation­
ship to Simon I cannot discover, was, after the death of Juriaan
Bockhout, appointed captain of the Trouw.
I