Page 149 - Dutch Ships in Tropical Waters

keep their seamen on the job the VOC sometimes employed unorthodox measures. Jacob Coper had been given permission to return to Batavia with his men to crew a retourschip to return to Europe. The directors in Batavia were afraid that the blockade would become inefficient after his departure so they decided to: ‘ order \[Coper\] to stay with his fleet and to prevent his arrival here he can stay with his wife whom we will send from here, which the Honourable Gentlemen believe to be the biggest occa- sion for him to long to stay there’ (Colenbrander , p. ). Now in the company of his wife, Jacob Coper ran a successful campaign in Malacca against the Iberian enemy. Spice Islands (Areas ,  and ) This region encompasses Ambon and Ceram, Banda, and the Moluccas. In this analysis the destinations and stopovers on the route to the Spice Islands are also considered. This route stretches from East Java and Bali (Area ), the Lesser Sunda Islands (Area ) to and Sulawesi (Macassar, Area ). The central pivotal point was Ambon, the location where almost every vessel sailing in this part of the region would pass. The area east of the Banda islands, with destinations around the Arafura Sea (Area ) is also included in this region. Table .: The activity levels of the various types of VOC vessels in the Spice Islands region per  year period to  As the waters to and in this region were sheltered and there were good anchorages near the various destinations, in principle there were no limitations of a nautical nature such as strong monsoons or hurricanes. Nevertheless, it did take the Dutch time to discover the best an- chorages; in the first period they lost the ships China (ID:) and Walcheren (ID:) and in the second, various ships missed Banda. Every rate of vessel from an open sloop to the biggest retourschip had access to these waters. The only serious limitation was caused by the monsoon system, so this region was only accessible during that season. Although some experiments were  Dutch Ships in Tropical Waters