Closing the Sea - Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer - page 26

pore Strait. If Van Heemskerck couldn't acquire spices by purchase, he could get
them by seizure. The Santa Catarina was in transit between Macao and Malacca
with a load of gold and merchandise and over eight hundred crew and passengers
when the Dutch attacked. After a day's bombardment, carefully designed to inca-
pacitate the ship without sinking it, the Portuguese had no choice but to surrender.
Everyone on board was spared and sent on to Malacca unharmed, but the ship and
its cargo were taken back to Amsterdam. The profit on this seizure was enormous.
Portugal objected, and the seizure of the Santa Catarina became a case before
the Admiralty Court of Amsterdam. To no one's surprise, in September 1604 the
courtfoundinfavouroftheplaintiffs-thatis,VanHeemskerck andtheVOC.The
Company arguedthat theshipwaslegitimate bootytaken inajustwaragainst Por-
tugal. By the law of nations, both the Netherlands and Johor enjoyed the right to
enter into trade relations without being forced to submit to the interests of a third
party. By what was termed 'natural law', a sea captain such as Van Heemskerck
had the right to punish an offender in the absence of effective justice. Aware that
it had won the case on the basis of shaky legal logic, the VOC decided to get a
proper legal opinion as soon as the judgement came down. The younger brother
of one of the directors had been de Groot's room-mate at university, and this was
theconnection thatledtotheVOC'scommissioning ofdeGroottoproducealegal
brief on the company's behalf. Drawing on a mass of documentation that the VOC
made available to him, de Groot went way beyond his mandate and composed an
enormous legal manuscript entitled On the Law of Prize or Booty . Chapter 12 of
that manuscript dealt with the question of whether the sea was free, and therefore
whether the Dutch were justified in applying force against a third party that sought
to impair the movement of Dutch ships and interdict Dutch trade with indigenous
rulers. As competition with England for trade grew, that one chapter was leaked
into publication as The Free Sea .
James banned the topic as soon as it appeared in England, but he couldn't ban
the man. He got a taste of the young Dutchman's style four years later, in 1613,
whentheDutchsenthimtoLondonaspartofanofficialdelegationtodiscusstrade
disputes. De Groot's brilliant mind, excellent Latin and blithe self-confidence in
the face of those who disagreed with him - which the English found irritating in
one so young - made him the ideal official spokesman at the opening and closing
sessions of the negotiations, as far as the Dutch delegation was concerned. James
had a particular reason to attend those sessions: he was Scottish. Dutch fishermen
had been harvesting herring offthe east coast ofScotland fordecades, and noEng-