Nathaniel's nutmeg (11 page)

In stark contrast to the English expeditions, the Dutch
voyage was meticulously planned. The ships were equipped
with spare masts, anchors and cables and the begrudging
pilots were compelled to have lessons in navigation from
Petrus Plancius: 'five days a week, from Monday till Friday,
from nine in the morning until five in the evening'. But in
common with all the English voyages prior to that of James
Lancaster, save that of Sir Francis Drake, the Dutch
merchants made one critical mistake: they put unsuitable
and inadequate men in command.

One of these was Cornells Houtman, the very man
whose clandestine activities in Lisbon had helped get the
project off the ground. As a spy he was in his element; as a
leader of men he was a disaster. Houtman was given the
important post of chief merchant on the
Mauritius
which,
had it been his only job, would have limited his potential
to cause mischief. Unfortunately, he was also given a place
on the ships' council with a special status that allowed him
to speak first on any issue.

Setting sail in the spring of 1595, the expedition's four
vessels headed first for the Cape Verde Islands in the mid-
Atlantic and then set sail towards the equator. Here they
entered the doldrums, drifting across the ocean for almost
a month before the coastline of Brazil was sighted. From
here, the ships changed course with the trade winds and let
themselves be carried back towards southern Africa.

Many of the men were by now desperately sick and, as
the ships rounded the Cape, good hope proved elusive for
the seventy-one sailors who succumbed to scurvy. Worse
still, discipline broke down completely as simmering
discontent exploded into outright warfare. In normal
circumstances, such unruly behaviour would have been
treated with the utmost severity. According to a Dutch
code of discipline, any fight that drew blood would result
in the antagonist having one hand strapped behind his back
and the other nailed to the mast. There he would remain
until he tore himself lose. If the fight ended in death, the
man was bound to his victim and tossed into the sea. Even
pulling a knife in jest was a serious misdemeanour — the
offender would suffer three lengthy dunkings from the
yardarm. Refusing to obey the captain commanded the
death penalty; desertion was rewarded with flogging, and
the most serious offences were dealt with by keel-hauling
— a terrible punishment which involved being hauled
underneath the keel while the ship was moving. In the
majority of cases, the victim's head was ripped off.

None of these deterred the crew of this pioneering
Dutch expedition from indulging in the most violent and
brutal behaviour. The troubles began when the skipper of
the
Amsterdam
died of scurvy and the ship's chief merchant,
a hothead named Gerrit van Beuningen, assumed control.
The ships' council was furious and accused Beuningen of a
series of crimes, including an attempt on the life of
Cornelis Houtman, and demanded he be hanged from the
ship's mast without further ado. Others supported
Beuningen and vowed to defend him with force. Calmer
counsel eventually prevailed and the merchant was clapped
in irons instead. History has failed to record whether or not
he regretted his action, but he was certainly given time to
repent. When the
Amsterdam
finally arrived back in
Holland two years later, Beuningen was still in irons.

Discipline now broke down completely and it was only
when the ships reached Sumatra that the men called a
temporary truce and patched up their quarrels.
As
they
sailed through the shallow coastal waters, the natives rowed
out in dug-out canoes and exchanged rice, water-melons
and sugar-canes for glass beads and trinkets. Fresh food and
water helped, to heal the rifts but it was not long before
new quarrels began. On arriving at the wealthy port of
Bantam in Java, Houtman had hoped to buy spices for a
song and was incensed when he discovered the prices to be
sky-high. Worse still, all native authority in the town had
disappeared as rival traders bickered and courtiers fought
for possession of the throne.

Such an explosive situation was doomed to end in
disaster. Angered by the escalating price of spices, Houtman
lost his temper. 'And thus,' wrote one of the crew in a
terrifyingly matter-of-fact entry in his journal, 'it was
decided to do all possible harm to the town.' What followed
was an orgy of destruction that was to set the pattern
for the Dutch presence in the East Indies. The town was
bombarded with cannon fire and prisoners were sentenced
to death. A brief pause in the fighting allowed the Dutch
commanders to debate the different means of disposing of
prisoners (the choice was to stab them, shoot them with
arrows, or blow them from cannons
-
unfortunately, no
one recorded which method they settled for) and once this
thorny question was resolved the battering continued. At
one point the king's palace was hit; at another, a group of
newly captured prisoners were tortured. 'And after we had
revenged ourselves to the approval of our ship's officers,'
wrote the same crew member, 'we prepared to set sail.' The
ships proceeded to the nearby port of Sidayu where they
were surprised by a group of Javanese natives who boarded
the
Amsterdam
and hacked twelve men to death, including
the skipper, before finding themselves under attack. The Dutch 'then chased the natives back to the shore in our
own rowing boats and executed the Javanese who had
killed our colleagues'. Few paused to question why
everyone was acting with such brutality. The voice of
conscience is never loud in the journals of sixteenth-
century mariners but one crew member did wonder why
his fellow tradesmen had suddenly become such
bloodthirsty cut-throats. 'There was nothing missing and
everything was perfect except what was wrong with
ourselves,' he wrote.

Events were to prove that the killing had scarcely begun.
As the Dutch ships passed Madura, a low-lying island off
the Javanese coast, the local prince (not yet privy to the
events in Bantam) decided to put on a display of friendship,
welcoming the Hollanders with a little flotilla of native
prahus. The oarsmen rowed slowly and ceremoniously
towards the Dutch vessels and at the centre of their display
was a magnificent barge decorated with an elevated bridge
on which stood the local prince, smiling broadly.

The Dutch grew agitated as more and more natives
rowed out to the ships. Some whispered that it was an
ambush; others were convinced there was treachery afoot
and argued for a pre-emptive strike. Houtman agreed and,
relying on the time-honoured principal that the best
defence is attack, his ship 'opened fire and killed all on the
big boat'. It was the signal for a general massacre. Within
minutes, dozens of cannon were being fired into the
flotilla, sinking boats and slaughtering the welcome party.
No sooner had the floating parade been blasted out of the
water than the Dutchmen lowered their rowing boats and
concluded the day's business with hand-to-hand fighting.
By the end of the battle, all but twenty natives were dead,
among them the prince whose body was relieved of its
jewels before being returned to a watery grave. 'I watched
the attack not without pleasure,' admitted one Dutch sailor,
'but also with shame.'

The ships and crew were by now in a pitiful condition.
Rival factions were at each other's throats while the various
commanders — of whom Houtman was in the ascendant —
were scarcely on speaking terms. Hundreds of men had
died and those who were still alive were suffering from
tropical diseases picked up at Bantam. Worse still, the ships
themselves were in a sorry state of disrepair. Bearded with
marine growth and encrusted with barnacles, they looked
as if they had been raised from the depths of the ocean.
Many were honeycombed with teredos (shipworms)
which bored through the Dutch oak and allowed water to
filter through the holes. On deck the tropical sun had so
dried the timbers that the gaps between the planks were
more than half an inch wide.

Then there was the question of spices. Despite many
months at sea, Houtman had so far failed to buy any spices
apart from the tiny quantity acquired when his ships first
arrived in Sumatra. Having rejected trade with the
merchants of Bantam, the Dutch were fast running out of
suitable marketplaces.

A plan of action had to be made and a decision taken.
Houtman argued that they should sail east to the Banda
Islands where they were assured of a cargo of nutmeg at a
reasonable price. But the captain of the
Mauritius,
Jan
Meulenaer, disagreed. He said that the ships were virtually
unseaworthy and that to make such a long voyage would
be risking almost certain death. In the event, death came to
Meulenaer rather sooner than he expected. Just hours after
a particularly ferocious argument with Houtman he
collapsed on deck and expired. There could be no doubt
that there had been foul play. Two of the ships' on-board
barbers proclaimed in front of the council that Meulenaer
'was completely blue and purple; poisoned blood came not
only from his mouth but from his neck as well; and even
his hair fell out at the slightest touch. A child,' they
concluded, 'could tell he had been poisoned.'

A murder. A motive. And a body. It did not take long to
find the suspect. The crew of the
Mauritius
accused
Houtman of murder and promptly clapped him in irons.
They then summoned the ships' council to convene for a
second time and asked it to condemn him to death. But in
this last demand they were to be disappointed for the
council reasoned that there was insufficient evidence to
execute Houtman and he was released.