John Saris and the China Captain - Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer - page 70

taels into the deal at a charge of 2 per cent a month, allegedly to match another
1,500 of Li Dan's own money, 'to procure free trade into China', with the assur-
ancethat,ifthedealcollapsed,theChinaCaptainwouldrepaythefullamountwith
interest. Li did bring Cocks 2,000 taels in December 1622, saying he had intended
touseittopaydownpartofhisdebt,butthathehadtogiveittothelordofHirado
to keep him happy. Every promise seemed to compensate for the one before it and
buoy up the prospects of the one to follow. The bet never paid out.
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Readers over the centuries have loved the tales of Captain John Saris, Factor
Richard Cocks and the stranded English pilot Will Adams. James Clavell thought
Adams good enough material from which to write the novel Shogun . Historians
have been less generous over what these adventurers actually did. They look at the
labour and waste of the Hirado factory and regard it as a case of lost opportun-
ity rather than of any real achievement. What everyone agrees on is that the Ch-
ina Captain took Cocks for a ride. I'm less sure. True, when the East India Com-
pany shut down its factory in Hirado in 1623, it was left holding debts amount-
ing to 128,218 taels, of which 6,636 taels were debts that Li Dan had racked up.
Cocks was strongly censured by the Company when he got to the regional office
in Batavia, although Batavia left final judgement on his service to headquarters in
London.
It was a judgement that never came. Cocks died at sea on 27 March 1624, en
route back to England, in agony but of unstated causes. The EIC wrote off the
lossesandclosedtheaccountofhispersonalestate,whichwasvaluedat£300.This
was a meagre showing for a merchant. Cocks had warned London as early as 1620
that the Japan outpost was unlikely to turn a profit and that he himself would gain
nothing by it. As he put it rather bluntly, if 'other occasion amend it not, I shall,
as I came a pore man out of England, retorne a beggar home, if your Wor[ships]
havenoeconsiderationthereof'.WhentheCourtofDirectorsmeton24November
1626 to consider a petition from Cocks's brother to inherit his estate, the directors
feltthattheCompanyowednothingonCocks'saccount:'TheCourtrelatedthede-
baust [debauched] carriage of his brother and the evill service performed by him at
Japan,wherehehadlivedlongcontrarietotheCompaniesmindandhadexpended
40,000 pounds, never returning anything to the Comp. but consuming whatsoever
came to his hands in wastfull unnecessarie expences.'