Sailing from China - Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer - page 118

March that the chief of the merchants ended up murdering the crew's ringleader.
Thentherewastheweather,whichrefusedtocooperate.Whenitwasfair,thewind
blew at their faces from the south-west. As soon as the wind swung round to the
north-east, the weather turned foul again. The crew descended into disorder, theft
and rape. Wickham was fighting with Adams, as Cocks feared he might, and the
Ryukyuan officials were desperate to get the Sea Adventure off their beach. By the
time it was possible to launch the ship, on 21 May 1615, it was too late to sail to
Siam and hope to return on the monsoon winds. There was nothing to do but sail
back to Hirado.
Adams tried again the following December. The journey began in foul weather,
although this time the hull did not leak and the winds were with them. The ship
madeexcellentheadway.Insevendaysthe Sea Adventure stoodoffQuanzhou,and
six days after that it was off the coast of Vietnam. Three weeks later Adams and
Sayers were in Siam. Business was good. Sayers was able to acquire so much for
the Hirado factory that he had to hire a second vessel in Bangkok to ferry it all
back. Will Adams set off on the Sea Adventure on 5 June 1616 just in time to ride
the north-westerly monsoon, and reached Hirado on 22 July.
No such luck for Sayers. He left Bangkok only one day later, but the winds
changed and it took him twelve days to clear the bar at the anchorage beyond
Bangkok. By the time he was out on the South China Sea the wind had died. The
junk got as far as the coast of Fujian by the end of the month and then was unable
to go any further. By then the winds had turned and blew in their faces out of the
north-east. The captain shifted the junk helplessly from one offshore anchorage to
another, unable to make any headway. The Buddhists threw little Siamese pagodas
overboard on 9 August to seek divine help. The Chinese captain sacrificed to the
Empress of Heaven three days later. The Japanese Christians held their own cere-
mony. The wind finally swung round to the south on 22 August, but by this time
over half of the crew was sick with scurvy. The men started to die, including the
captain.SayersfinallygotthejunkbacktoJapan,althoughwhentheaccountswere
cleared, Cocks discovered that two of the Chinese officers had fiddled the topics
andcheatedtheCompanyofmuchoftheprofititmighthaverealisedfromthetrip.
Adams bought Sayers's junk on his own account, renamed it the Gift of God
and took it on a successful winter run down to Vietnam. The Sea Adventure also
sailed that winter under a Japanese captain and two English pilots but faced even
worse luck than it had suffered the previous year, losing thirty-four crewmen be-
foreitcouldgetbacktoHirado.Adamssoldthe Gift of God attheendof1617,but