Sailing from China - Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer - page 123

ingus.Ifwe'revictorious,weraisethesailsandreturnhome.Andifwe'renot,we
won't have to wait so long to die.' So they killed him, took over the ship and made
for Vietnam. The king's son, who was serving elsewhere in the Philippines, hur-
ried back to ensure his succession as soon as he heard the news rather than pursue
the campaign against Meiluoju. Much later, he would raise an even larger force to
realise his father's ambition.
This, at least, is how Zhang tells the story. Spanish sources relate this tale from
the other side. The king, Old Langleishi Bilixi, was in fact the Spanish governor of
the Philippines, Gómez Pérez Damariñas. He was indeed murdered by conscripted
Chinese seamen, and his son Luis Pérez did succeed his father as governor, racing
back to Manila to prevent the post from falling into the hands of the senior Span-
ish military commander. The problem with Zhang's account is that Damariñas was
murdered on 25 October 1593. Dutch ships were not yet prowling in these waters.
Zhang has mixed up his stories, weaving what he has heard about the Spanish and
theDutchatdifferenttimesintoasinglestory.HegoesontoexplainthattheDutch
went home every year and a new batch arrived the following year to take their
place. This made their presence intermittent, and while they were away, the Span-
ish moved in. As a result, control of the island of Meiluoju swung from the Dutch
to the Spanish and back again. The situation was stabilised not by the Europeans
but a Chinese trader sojourning on the island. To reduce tensions this merchant,
whom Zhang describes as crafty and good at persuasion, got the two European
parties to agree to divide the island between them. The line of division would run
through a mountain called Wanlaogao. North belonged to the Red Hairs, south to
the White Throats.
Zhang has most of the story right and some of it wrong. Gómez Damariñas in
1593 was on his way to the Spice Islands to drive the Portuguese out and take con-
trol of the tiny island of Ternate. The mutiny scotched that plan, although it would
take two more attempts before the Spanish were able to secure control of Ternate
in1606,carryingitssultan,SaidBarakat,backtoManilaasavirtualhostage.They
enjoyed dominance for only a year, for the Dutch arrived in 1607 to build them-
selves a fortified base. Zhang is right that the Dutch tried to impose a presence
earlier,in1600.Asithappened,theVOCcaptainwhoarrivedin1601totakethem
off was Jacob van Heemskerck, two years before he seized the Santa Catarina .
So is Ternate Wanlaogao? Their identity was clinched when I chanced upon a
1726DutchengravingofTernate.Theinsetintheupperleft-handcornershowsthe
ground-plan of the fortified Spanish settlement, there named Fort Gamma Lamma.