Samurai William: The Englishman Who Opened Japan (17 page)

Read Samurai William: The Englishman Who Opened Japan Online

Authors: Giles Milton

When this finally became clear to him and he realized the scale of the Dutch betrayal, he was furious. “Had I known that our English shippes hath trade in the Indies,” he later wrote to a friend, “I had long a-troubled you with writing, but the Hollanders have kept it most secret from me till the year 1611, which was the first newes that I heard.”
Adams now wrote a frantic letter to the small band of Englishmen based in the Javanese port of Bantam, informing them of all the adventures he had experienced during his eleven years in Japan. Since he had no idea to whom he was writing, he addressed his missive, rather forlornly, to his “unknown friends and countrymen.”
“I have emboldned myselfe to write these fewe lines,” he wrote, “desiringe the worshepfull company … to pardon my stoutness.” Aware that these traders would have no idea as to his identity, he informed them that his name was William Adams and
added, with more than a hint of pride, “I am a man not unknowen in Radcliffe and Limehouse.” He prayed that his countrymen would do their utmost to convey his letter back to England and provided them with a list of his old friends. “I doe know,” he wrote, “that compassion and mercy is so that my friendes and kindred shall have newes that I doe as yet live in this veil of my sorrowfull pilgremage.”
Adams also urged his countrymen to sail to Japan, informing them that this was one of the best countries in the world with which to do trade. “The people of the lande [are] good of nature, courteous out of measure and valliant in warres.” He added that there was little problem of crime and cheating, and that there was “not a lande better governed in the worlde by civil pollecy.” Aware that jealousy of the Dutch always provided a spur, he also informed them “that the Hollanders have here an Indies of monney.”
With the Portuguese and Spanish in disgrace, and the Dutch trading post seriously understaffed, Adams knew that there was never a better time for the English in Bantam to try their luck in Japan.
INTO UNKNOWN LANDS
N
IGHT ARRIVED SUDDENLY in Bantam. As soon as the fearsome equatorial sun slipped beneath the Java Sea, the sky melted into an inky black. For the next eight hours, the handful of Englishmen living in this treacherous port were in constant fear of coming under attack from native headhunters and cutthroats. Augustine Spalding, the head of the factory, was accustomed to bolt the fortified gate as dusk fell and pray that no fire-tipped arrows would be shot over the palisade fence in the middle of the night.
Bantam was England’s principal toehold in the Indies, a bustling port on the north coast of Java that attracted large flotillas of junks, dhows, and native prahus from as far afield as India, China, and Japan. It was one of the principal entrepôts of the East Indies—a place where hawkers and traders dealt in Moluccan nutmegs, Indian calicoes, Chinese porcelain, and—just occasionally—Japanese lacquerware.
A small English factory had been established in Bantam in 1603, when the veteran Captain James Lancaster, commander of the East India Company’s first voyage, left eleven men with orders to stockpile spices. Those men had been surprised to find themselves living among a cosmopolitan community. Bantam’s souks and spice markets, thronging with merchants, made for a colorful spectacle. The native Javanese dressed in pintado loincloths and velvet mandilions, while the wealthier merchants—who donned taffeta caps and calico cummerbunds—looked as if they were on their way to a courtly soiree. The Chinese merchants attired themselves with even greater panache. They sported long robes and gowns and often wore silken cauls on their heads, which only partially concealed their immensely long ponytails, bound into a greasy knot. The town’s governors wore menacing hooded cloaks, while the local priests had a strange habit of kissing the ground. Even more alarming were the bands of deranged soothsayers who, according to the English factor Edmund Scott, ran “up and downe the streetes like madmen, having swords drawne in their hands, tearing their haire and throwing themselves against the ground.” To make the local color complete, the town’s infant ruler liked to be drawn through the streets in a chariot pulled by a team of gleaming white buffalo.
Bantam was a good place to buy spices, but the worst possible place to settle men who were already suffering from acute dysentery after more than twelve months aboard a leaky and unsanitary vessel. Scarcely had those first English factors built their lodgings than they began to expire. The factory’s chief and deputy both died within a few months, while the other men were struck down with violent sicknesses and raging fevers. They quickly discovered that rotting, disease-ridden Bantam was one of the least hygienic places in the East. Typhoid and cholera were rife, while malaria was a constant fear, for the mudflats and swamplands provided a fertile breeding ground for mosquitoes. One captain labeled Bantam “that stinking stew.” Another noted wryly that “Bantam is not a place to recover men that are sick, but to kill men that come thither in health.”
SOUTH EAST ASIA
The English factory—a two-story wood and cane structure—was extremely flimsy and “all the upper-workes of our houses, by reason of the heat, are open.” It was frequently flooded by the monsoon rains, which cascaded through the roughly thatched roof and dripped all the way to the ground floor. In the heat of midday, the sun beat down on the men inside, while in the evening, clouds of mosquitoes descended on the place. Night was the worst time of all: the men hung flaming torches all around the perimeter fence, “otherwise, in the dark nights, they [the Javanese] being so blacke as they are, might have entred suddenly upon us as before we should descry them.”
It was impossible for the factors to get any sleep, for a criminal Javanese underclass terrorized them from dusk till dawn. “They began to practise the firing of our principall house,” wrote Scott, “with fiery darts and arrowes in the night.” On several occasions the cane roof crackled into flames and was doused only just in time. The men were constantly terrified by the thought of being burned alive in their warehouse. “O this word fire,” wrote Scott, “had it beene spoken near me, either in English, Mallayes, Javanese, or Chinese; although I had been sound a-sleepe, yet I shoulde have leaped out of my bed.” There was constant treachery and plots “to have us slaine in the night,” and continual fear of being tortured or killed by native headhunters. There were good reasons for moving the Bantam factory elsewhere, but the merchants lacked both the will and the motivation. After more than nine years in the same place, there was an air of semipermanence to the little trading post, and it had become the center of operations for all English merchants trading in the East.
On April 26, 1612, Bantam’s chief factor, Augustine Spalding, was overjoyed to spot an English vessel entering the bay. “There had been no English shipps heere,” he recorded, having dreamed of this moment for more than a year. Now—fearful that his eyes were playing tricks—he ran to the shoreline to check that it was true. It was indeed. The aptly named
Globe
had arrived in Bantam on the fourth stage of what was fast proving an extraordinary odyssey through the ports of Southeast Asia.
from Willem Lodewyckszoon’s Premier livre de l’histoire de la navigation aux Indes orientales, 1609
.
 
Bantam was home to a cosmopolitan community. Native merchants (top) wore
krises,
or curved daggers, in their belts. Foreign traders (bottom) wore colorful robes and looked even more exotic. These three—possibly spice dealers—are from Pegu (in Burma/Myanmar), Persia, and Arabia.
 
The
Globe
’s voyage had been the brainchild of two bold entrepreneurs, Peter Floris and Lucas Antheunis. These shadowy and dubious figures had turned up in London two years previously and headed straight to Philpot Lane, the home of Sir Thomas Smythe, governor of the East India Company. Smythe was immediately suspicious. The men admitted to being Dutch, but their backgrounds were mysterious and they appeared to have adopted pseudonyms in order to conceal their identities. Yet both had considerable experience of trade with the East, and the silken-tongued Floris was impressively eloquent when he spoke of how best to exploit the riches of the Orient. One of his compatriots later remarked that Floris knew “all secrets and designs, which would be exceedingly important for them [the English].”
Floris’s idea was daring in the extreme. He had grown increasingly concerned at the glut of spices on the markets of London and Amsterdam, and was aware that there were enormous and as yet untapped profits to be made in the East. His master plan was to shun the conventional spice trade and involve himself instead in the highly profitable internal trade of Southeast Asia, trafficking in luxury goods between Java, Indo-China, and Japan. Floris knew that only the rarest commodities fetched the highest prices, and his project would require a small band of adventurers to push deep into territories never before visited by Englishmen—the monsoon forests of Indo-China, the uncharted hinterland of Siam (modern Thailand), and the still-unknown land of Japan. Floris and Antheunis hoped to establish little warehouses throughout the East—from Java to Japan—and intended to settle men wherever possible.
Thomas Smythe had a passion for adventure—so long as it entailed profit—and was intrigued by Floris’s proposed voyage. He,
too, had long been concerned that the glut of spices had caused prices to tumble and had suggested that merchants branch out into other commodities such as silk, “wherewith these parts of Christendome have not been glutted.” He was even more enthusiastic when he learned that Floris and Antheunis were prepared to invest £1,500 of their own money in the enterprise, and he willingly gave the men permission to sail under the auspices of the East India Company.
King James I also gave his backing to the voyage, aware that the revenue from increased customs duties would help to fill his empty coffers. He wrote letters of introduction to a number of Eastern princelets and chieftains, one of which was addressed to the “greate king of Japan.” Its tone was flattering and obsequious. He told the Japanese “king” how impressed he had been to learn of his “princlie and favourable disposition” and explained that his reason for writing was his desire to “solicitt your freindshipp and amity.” He was diplomatic in concealing his desire to tap the country’s rumored riches, although he did inform the king that he was hoping for “interchange [of] such comodities as may be of most use to each other’s countreys.” He remained vague about these “comodities,” but few in England would have doubted his meaning. The king wanted the Japanese to buy English broadcloth and hoped that they would pay for it with large quantities of silver.
King James envisaged the establishment of a permanent trading post in Japan and asked the shogun for “your royall proteccion for the setllinge of their trade.” He said that he had ordered Floris and his men “to demeane themselves with all respects of courtesie and friendshipp towards your people” and prayed that they would remain on their best behavior during their stay in Japan. King James promised the Japanese “king” that any of his subjects who traveled to England would be provided with all “neede and necessities.” His letter ended with a prayer: “[that] Almightie God … preserve and prosper you, and … make you victorious against your enemies.”
Although both the king and Sir Thomas Smythe had high
hopes for the success of this mission, both men continued to express misgivings about the wisdom of sending two Dutchmen on what was, in part, an English diplomatic mission. Smythe took particular care when he came to choose a suitable captain for the expedition. Anthony Hippon was a man of “integritie [and] wisdome” whose leadership qualities were so impressive that he had earned himself the nickname “good shepherd.” Smythe also appointed a merchant—Robert Browne—who was known to him personally. Browne would have been a fine choice had it not been his misfortune to suffer from acute seasickness. After each hearty luncheon of salt pork and stale beer, he would vomit violently over the side of the vessel. Traveling ashore in the ship’s pinnace caused him even greater distress; it made him so nauseous that before long he had to “tarry aboarde.”
The rest of the merchants and mariners were healthy but unhelpful. Second-in-command, Thomas Essington, was quarrelsome and inexperienced. John Johnson, the master, was usually “so drunke that he coulde not well stande,” while John Skinner, the mate, was an inveterate gambler. Crew members Job Palmer and Richard Bishop would grow to hate each other with such passion that they would fight a duel, while many of the rest of the crew would mutiny at one point or another.

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