Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Shortly after this Richard Morris-Adams arrived from London
with Monica Dixon and Simon Weaver from Barwell Sports Manage-
ment, a public relations firm representing Debenhams, the depart-
ment store giant. The four of us met on the yacht at the mooring under
the wood.
I took them on a quick tour of the boat; then while examining the
Blake's marine toilet installation adjoining my cabin, Simon made a
suggestion.
'What would you think about naming the yacht Debenhams,
John?'
I looked down at the toilet, and tried to imagine how twenty-five
thousand used one-pound notes would look piled up in it.
'It has a certain romantic ring to it,' I grinned, and the deal was
struck. The bank manager thought it was a good idea too
.
9
Even in the sixteenth century adventurers had to draw them-
selves to the attention of people who mattered. Such behaviour is of-
ten unpopular with lesser spirits who frown upon immodest display.
Cavendish was certainly misunderstood by some of his contempor-
aries who accused him of running through the profits of his voyage
and being compelled to organise another to recoup his wasted for-
tune: 'although his great wealth was thought to have sufficed him for
his whole life, yet he saw the end thereof within very short time'.
10
But Cavendish was not a wastrel. If he had been, his end would have
been little more than poetic justice - the fall that comes after folly
and pride. He was a passionate visionary, a restless adventurer who
could never again be content to return to his Suffolk acres or even to
the court of Gloriana.
He was, moreover, goaded onwards by the rivalry of other cap-
tains. During the years immediately after 1588 several voyages to
the East Indies (as India and the lands and islands beyond now
came to be called) via the Straits of Magellan or the Cape of Good
