Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
terioration of Cavendish's character as conditions worsened and the
expedition fell apart.
He transferred his flag to his old ship, the
Desire,
because he re-
garded the men of the
Galleon Leicester
as 'the most abject minded
sensible course would now have been to winter at Port Desire but
Cavendish insisted on sailing for the Straits immediately. If Davis and
the other experienced mariners protested, as surely they must have
done, the commander overrode them. His independence of judge-
ment was rapidly turning to a paranoiac suspicion of anyone who
opposed him. His firm leadership was deteriorating into a combina-
tion of fanatical raving, bullying and threats. The success of the ex-
pedition had now become an obsession. Anything that challenged
that success was deliberate, personal persecution from the hand of
either man or God.
We know all this because of a remarkable document in Caven-
dish's own hand written towards the end of the voyage. It is a tragic
attempt at self-vindication and blame-shifting. Nothing illustrates as
clearly as the following extracts the strains that a long sailing voyage
could put upon a man's mind.
The ships battled through the Straits of Magellan against con-
trary winds for four weeks:
At length being forced by the extremity of storms and the narrow-
ness of the strait, being not able to turn to windward any longer, we
got into a harbour where we rode from the 18th day of April till the
10th of May, in all which time we never had other than most furious
contrary winds, and after that the month of May was come in nothing
but such flights of snow and extremity of frosts, as in all the time of my
life I never saw none to be compared with them. This extremity caused
the weak men in my ship only to decay, for, in 7 or 8 days in this ex-
