Nathaniel's nutmeg (42 page)

The seas around Bantam had become equally dangerous. In November 1617, the English pinnace
Speedwell
was met by three Dutch vessels carrying a Dutch dignitary from Bantam to Jakarta. She was ordered to lower her flag and submit to a search by Dutch troops but before she had a chance to comply (according to the English report) she was 'shot through and through, and lastly entered and taken, having one man wounded and one killed'. Her crew were manacled and the vessel towed towards Bantam in triumph, 'and it was verily thought they [the English and Dutch] would have fought together in the Road, for the General of the Hollanders had brought thither fourteen great ships ready to fight, where the English had nine, which they fitted for defence; but they fought not, for the Governor of Bantam forbade them to fight in his Road, and threatened them that if they did fight, contrary to his command, he would cut the throats of all their men that he should find upon the land.'

The English, still fuming over the seizure of the
Swan
and the
Defence,
now had the
Speedwell
to add to their list of grievances. They sought all possible means to recover the ships, as Coen recounted in a gleeful letter to Amsterdam. 'It caused a great to-do,' he wrote. 'One day they threaten to sail to Banda in force and take revenge, and the next they say they will attack our ships at sea. They expect to get even by reprisals in the Channel at home and they are going to break our heads. Daily they come up with new threats which clearly shows that they are quite confused.'

All the time that these arguments were raging in Bantam, Courthope had been maintaining his dogged stand on Run. Although he and his men were plagued by a constant lack of supplies, the occasional junk broke through the Dutch blockade and landed rice and arak on the island, to everyone's great relief. Many were suffering from malnutrition and dysentery - a result of their bland diet and the putrid and infected water. But after more than fifteen months of hardship, 'the captain' learned from a passing trader that help was on its way. In the spring of 1618, three English ships were despatched to Run with orders to relieve Courthope and develop trade with the rest of the islands. The crew were bullish and ready to fight, believing their force sufficient to scatter any Dutch ships sent to intercept them.

As one of the ships, the
Solomon,
neared the Banda Islands a cheer went up from the little force of besieged Englishmen on Run. It was a moment of great excitement and they scrambled up Run's cliffs for a better view of the vessel. She was 'some five leagues from Polaroon [Run],' wrote Courthope in his journal, 'comming from the westwards with the very last of the westerly windes'. She was a large ship and was heavily laden with hundreds of tons of rice, fish and 'six hundred jarres of arack'. With the wind blowing a stiff westerly they confidently predicted that she would make the harbour in less than an hour.

Four Dutch vessels had been despatched from Neira to monitor the
Solomons
progress but these were unable to reach Run due to the wind, a cause of much mirth to Courthope's men. But their jeering was brought to an abrupt halt when the wind suddenly changed direction and the sails of the Dutch ships 'were taken with an easterly'. The Hollanders were now able to give chase and the

Englishmen watched in horror as the unequal forces prepared to do battle.

'The fight was in sight of Polaroon [Run],' recorded a nervous Courthope, 'some three leagues off.' Stuck on his island prison, he could only hope that the
Solomon
would score an early success and send the Dutch ships scurrying back to Neira. But almost from the beginning the English found themselves at a massive disadvantage for the
Solomon
was so deeply laden with supplies that she was unable to use her lower tier of ordnance, dramatically reducing her ability to fight. The crew put up a valiant resistance, answering 'shot for shot all that afternoone, but our powder was naught, and could not carrie the shot home'. The Dutch, meanwhile, 'plyed their great ordnance upon us, killing three men and hurt thirteene or fourteene others'.

For almost seven hours the ships did battle, peppering each other with shot until they were 'almost board and board' and the rival soldiers were engaged in hand-to-hand combat. The English captain, Cassarian David, soon found himself within shouting distance of the Dutch commander who ordered him to take in his colours, strike his sails, and come aboard to negotiate. Perceiving his situation to be hopeless the Englishman agreed, descending into the commander's cabin for discussions.When several hours had passed and Cassarian did not return the crew assumed that he had been taken prisoner.

It was during this lull in the fighting that a party of warlike Bandanese had rowed out to the
Solomon.
To them, surrender was both shameful and unthinkable and the English feared that if these fighters learned that their captain was negotiating a truce they would go on the rampage, killing everyone irrespective of nationality. Muttering vaguely about a cease-fire they disarmed the
Bandanese of their weapons, taking special care to relieve them of their deadly
kris
daggers. It was a wise precaution for when the Dutch finally came to take possession of the ship, eight Bandanese who had managed to conceal their daggers hurled themselves at the invaders. 'They played their parts excellently,' wrote one of the crew, 'for they drove the Flemings overboord, by fortie at once; some up into the foure shrouds, some one way, and some another, that they had scoured the deckes of them all. I thinke that if the Bandanese had had them upon plaine ground, they would have put the Flemmings to the sword, every man of them.' After wreaking havoc on the Dutch, the Bandanese were overpowered and all but seven were killed.

Courthope was exasperated as he watched these events from the cliffs of Run. In a letter to the directors in London he informed their worships that rather than yielding in the disgraceful way that the
Solomon
s captain had done he 'would have sunke downe right in the sea first'. It was a characteristically defiant attitude and doubtless Courthope meant every word. He was bitterly disappointed by his continued misfortune and speaks of'the hard fortune fallen to our ships bound thither this year.' He placed much of the blame on the authorities in Bantam who sent the ships so close to the monsoon that they invariably did not even get within sight of Run.

I much marvel you sent this year with so weak forces, you seeing they use all the means possible they can to bar us of all trade in these parts ... Therefore, if you mean the Company to have any trade with these islands, or the Moluccas, it must not be deferred any longer, but to send such forces the next westerly monsoon to nainain that we have

else all is gone, and not to be expected hereafter any more trade this way

This year I have withheld it from them with much difficulty, without any relief or aid ... not so much as one letter from you to advise me what course you intend to take in this business, I having but 38 men to withstand their force and tyranny, which is a very weak strength to withstand their unruly odds of forces. Our wants are extreme; neither have we any victuals or drink, but only rice and water, which had not God sent in four or five junks to have relieved us with rice I must have been fain to have given up ourKing's and Company's right for want of relief, which relief is weak. Therefore I pray you consider well of these affairs, and suffer us not to be forced to yield ourselves into such tyrants hands ... I am determined to hold it out until the next westerly monsoon, in despite of them, or else we are determined all to die in defence of it. At present they have eight ships here, and two gallies, and to my knowledge all fitted and ready to come against us; so I look daily and hourly, and if they win it, by God's help I make no doubt but they shall pay full dearly for it with effusion of much blood.

Courthope's position had never been weaker. His small force had been decimated by sickness and his supplies were almost non-existent. With just a couple of sacks of rice left in their storehouse, his beleaguered garrison was now forced to subsist on the revolting sago porridge, supplementing their diet with the occasional fish caught in the waters surrounding Nailaka. 'Had not foure of five Javafnese] junkes come in,' he wrote in his diary, 'for want of victuals we must have given up; and still [we] live on rice only, with a little fish, which in foule weather is not to be found.' Worse still, they were 'daily expecting an assault from the Hollanders' and had to keep a constant watch from the battlements. Such threatened attacks rarely materialised, but the fear of assault wearied the men who were already suffering the effects of prolonged hardship and starvation. Yet Courthope continued to exert a powerful influence over both his own men and the local islanders and when the Dutch attempted a landing on Run some weeks after the
Solomon's
capture, the invading force was crushed by a group of Bandanese warriors.

Courthope managed to stay in close contact with the English prisoners; both those from the
Swan
and the
Defence,
and also the survivors from the
Solomon.
Under the cover of darkness, his Bandanese troops repeatedly put to sea and smuggled letters to and from the English held on Ai Island and Neira. One of the first replies he received was from Cassarian David whose decision to surrender the
Solomon
had earned him good treatment at the hands of the Dutch. Ignorant of Courthope s anger about the manner in which he submitted, he wrote to the English commander gleefully explaining that 'my selfe with one English boy to attend me remayne on Pooloway, where the Generall and his Councill doe abide, at whose hands I doe daily find much favour and kind usage.'

The same could not be said of the other English prisoners. Most had been incarcerated in Fort Revenge on Ai Island from whose dungeons there was no hope of escape. Chained together by the neck and with nowhere to relieve themselves, conditions soon became intolerable. The Dutch made life even less bearable by their routine humiliation of their captives. 'They pissed and **** upon our heads,' wrote Bartholomew Churchman, 'and in this manner we lay, untill such time as we were broken out from top to toe like lepers, having nothing to eat but durtie rice, and stinking rainewater.' That they were still alive at all, he writes, is thanks to a Dutch woman 'named Mistris Cane, and some poore blackes, that brought us a little fruit'.

Others had similar complaints. 'We were very hardly and inhumanely used,' wrote one, 'being fettered and shackelled in the day time, and close locked up at nights.' 'They keep many of us fast bound and fettered in irons,' recorded another, 'in most loathsome and darke stinking dungeons, and give us no sustenance, but a little durtie rice to eat ... many have dyed, who were fetcht out of the dungeons and so basely buried, more like dogges than Christians.' Those that dared to complain were given an even harsher regime. Churchman found himself 'clapt in irons and [placed] in the raine and the cold stormes of the night, and in the day time where the hot sunne shone upon him, and scorched him, without any shelter at all'. All this was because he berated a Dutchman for insulting King James Is wife. Others would be set in the sun until they were blistered with sunburn, then chained below the sewers 'where their ordures and pisse fell upon them in the night'.

Courthope was even more horrified to learn that the English prisoners were being used as pawns in a nasty game of propaganda played out by the Dutch governor- general. 'Lawrence Reael ... caused grates and cages to be made in their ship, and did put us therein, and carryed us in them bound in irons from port to port amongst the Indians, and thus in scornfull and deriding manner and sort spake unto the Indians as followeth: "Behold and see, heere is the people of that Nation, whose King you care so much for." '