Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
of disease, and the forlorn spectacle of that barren coast had a dev-
astating effect on morale. During the passage, the vice admiral tried
to persuade Van Noort to turn back. When argument failed, he put
himself at the head of all the malcontents and tried to force his su-
perior's hand. He paid a terrible price for his unsuccessful mutiny;
he was marooned on that desolate shore. Van Noort had that strain
of brutality that both Drake and Magellan had possessed and which
was essential to success on these early voyages.
By February 1600, when he began to work his way up the South
American coast, he had already lost one of his ships and half his
men. In May he picked up the trade winds and crossed the Pacific. He
touched at the Marianas and the Philippines and, six months later,
reached Ternate. But his difficulties were far from over. He eventu-
ally reached Amsterdam on 26 August 1601 with one ship and a very
depleted company.
Thirteen years passed before the next serious attempt was
made. It was planned as a privateering-cum-commercial venture in
the style of Drake and Cavendish. George Spielbergen, a German in
the pay of the Dutch government, left the Texel on 8 August 1614
with six ships. Two had been lost by the time he reached Patagonia
but he successfully negotiated the straits and spent several months
raiding along the coast of Peru and Mexico before he braved the Pa-
cific crossing. Although he reached home on 1 July 1617 with only
two vessels the profits from looting and a cargo of spices more than
made up for his losses.
But the most important of these early Dutch voyages was the
one which began ten months after Spielbergen's. Ironically it was an
attempt by Dutchmen to escape restrictions imposed, not by Span-
iards or Portuguese, but by other Dutchmen. Having broken the
Hispano-Portuguese stranglehold on the Orient trade, the East India
Company became just as jealously monopolistic as the merchants
they had displaced. They proclaimed that the passage of Magellan's
