Samurai William: The Englishman Who Opened Japan (5 page)

Read Samurai William: The Englishman Who Opened Japan Online

Authors: Giles Milton

The Jesuits were aware that Dom Bartolemeu’s actions were less inspired by Christian charity than business acumen. He did it, they recorded, “because he would thus ensure always having the Great Ship in that port, which would bring him great renown and make him a great lord through the duties and profits he would derive therefrom.” He soon offered them an even more important concession. On June 9, 1580, he ceded them the port of Nagasaki, ostensibly so that they would have the necessary money to finance their mission. But Dom Bartolemeu himself was also a beneficiary. He would continue to receive all taxes and dues, and would be allowed to use Nagasaki as a place of refuge in time of danger.
So long as the Portuguese could keep their monopoly over Japan, they would reap rich rewards. What they did not know was that in the docks of Limehouse in London, preparations were under way for a voyage to the Land of the Rising Sun.
ICEBERGS IN THE ORIENT
T
HE WHARVES of Limehouse presented a forlorn sight at low tide. Their blackened timbers dripped and creaked and, in the half-light of dawn, the dockside looked like the skeletal frame of a wrecked galleon.
The church of St. Dunstan could be seen from the piers, while the Tower of London was visible to those on the river. Just a stone’s throw upstream was Execution Dock, where crowds gathered to gawk at corpses hanging stiffly from the riverside gallows, whose water-blown bodies had been left as a grim warning. These were the remains of corsairs and filibusters who had been caught ransacking galleons and cargo vessels. If they were condemned and convicted, their punishment was terrible: they would be strung up and left “at the low water marke, there to remaine till three tides had overflowed them.”
On normal days, the wharves did not come to life until first light, but on the morning of May 20, 1580, there was an unusual
amount of activity in the hours before dawn. Limehouse was already busy as watermen and stevedores occupied themselves in preparation for the imminent departure of two tiny vessels. Their destination was unknown, but the cargo for these craft was so extraordinary that it was already drawing comment from the workers. In their holds were fine crystal goblets and pewter flagons, Venetian looking glasses and ivory combs. This was not the usual cargo of ships heading for strange and barbarous lands.
The vessels were owned by two of Elizabethan England’s more extraordinary entrepreneurs. Sir George Barne was a serial adventurer who had been involved in “the discovery of new trades” for almost thirty years. His earliest venture—back in the 1550s—had been to Africa. He had subsequently dispatched several expeditions to Guinea, and on one occasion his men had returned with the head of an elephant and five black slaves. These slaves proved decidedly ungrateful at being separated from their families and complained, not without justification, that England was a land of perpetual drizzle. “The colde and moiste aire doth somewhat offend them,” wrote the expedition chronicler. Now, after years spent expanding his trade network, Sir George had set his sights on the distant continent of Asia.
His partner, Sir Rowland Heyward, was also experienced in mounting expeditions to unknown lands. One of the founders of the Muscovy Company, which had opened trade with the vast realm of Ivan the Terrible, Sir Rowland had been granted extensive trading rights—not just to Moscow, but to such far-flung places as Astrakhan, Novgorod, and Kazan, the great Tartar city on the Volga. Sir Rowland had further petitioned the tsar, asking him for a building concession throughout his empire. A bemused Ivan duly obliged: “We have granted leave to the English merchant … to builde houses at Vologda, Colmogro [Kholmohovy] and the seaside; at Ivangorod, at Cherell [Karelia], and in all other places in our dominions.” Even this did not satisfy the insatiable Sir Rowland. Within a few years, he was touting for trade with
Persia, persuading Queen Elizabeth to introduce herself to the “emperor” and ask for trading rights to his empire.
Now, these two merchants had turned their attentions to the farthest East, to China and Japan, which were rumored to be lands of astonishing wealth. Sir Rowland knew that if he could be the first to stake his claim to these kingdoms, then fortune and fame would follow. He was undeterred by the logistical difficulties of such a voyage and undaunted by the distances involved. Together with Sir George, he began gathering all the available information, planning his project with his customary enthusiasm and gusto.
The two men soon found that much of the hard work had been done for them. Less than three years earlier, in 1577, an English enthusiast called Richard Willes had stumbled across two hitherto unknown documents that contained descriptions of both China and Japan. Aware that almost nothing was known about either nation and that he had laid his hands on gold dust, Willes decided to publish the information in a book entitled
A Historye of Travaile.
The report on China had come into his hands by way of a Portuguese merchant who had been captured and imprisoned by mandarins of the Ming imperial court. It revealed that China was ruled by a powerful sovereign who meted out cruel and terrible punishments and that the population of this vast nation was expanding at an unsustainable rate. “The countrey is so well inhabited,” recorded Willes, “that no one foote of grounde is left untilled.” A large population meant a large potential market, and that was the best possible news for the London merchants. The eating habits of the Chinese were rather less appealing. They were reputed to munch their way through anything that moved, and Willes was astonished to learn that “frogs are solde at the same price that is made of hennes … as also dogs, cats, rats, snakes and all other uncleane meates.”
The report on Japan was a great deal more optimistic. Willes had acquired a handful of private letters about “the Japonish nation,”
written by the Jesuit padre Luis Frois. These letters had been written to fellow Jesuits and were not intended to be studied—still less published—by “hereticke” Protestants. But Willes quickly realized their value and proceeded to translate them “word for word, in such wise as followeth.”
The resulting publication caused considerable excitement among London’s adventurers, for it revealed that Marco Polo had been right all along. Japan was a “glorious island among so many barbarous nations and rude regions” and was so fabulously wealthy that it had the means with which to pay—rather than barter—for trade goods. Although there was little gold—as Polo had promised—there was a “great store of silver mines,” which produced thousands of tons annually. Even better news was the fact that the Japanese were quite unlike the savages and cannibals said to inhabit most of the islands of the East. The population was “tractable, civill, wittie, courteous [and] without deceit,” and Willes could assure his readers that English merchants would be welcomed by a civilized nation who, “in virtue and honest conversation,” outclassed any other people in the eastern hemisphere.
There were, of course, pitfalls to this enchanted kingdom. The coastline was extremely treacherous and there were rumors of “great piracie” in the waters around Japan. The weather, too, was said to be unendurably harsh. Willes recorded that “there falleth so much snow that the houses being buried in it, the inhabitants keep within doores.” He informed his readers that the snow was often so deep and compacted that when the Japanese wished to venture outside, they had to “breake up the tiles” on the roofs of their houses. But even the bad news was tempered by good: a chill climate meant a huge potential market for English woollens.
Although the Japanese were said to be courteous and without deceit, they showed an alarming propensity for violence and brutality. They frequently strangled their own children—so as to avoid wasting precious food supplies—and had a strangely melancholic disposition. Ritual suicide—
seppuku
—was commonplace
and often extremely bloody. Any man intent on taking his own life would dress in his finest silken costume, unsheathe an enormous curved sword, and, “lancing his body acrosse, from the breast downe all the belly, murthereth himselfe.”
Although the inhabitants of the principal island of Japan were held to be extremely cultivated, the population of the wild northerly provinces—where Barne and Heyward’s expedition was likely to make its first landfall—came from altogether more barbarous stock. The island of Hokkaido was said to be inhabited by “savage men, clothed in beasts skinnes, rough-bodied, with huge beards and monstrous muchaches.” These mustaches were so big that they were said to be propped up with special forks during their customary drinking bouts.
When the two entrepreneurs learned of the potential riches of these Eastern realms, they decided to press ahead with their voyage without further ado, petitioning investors and gathering information. The most obvious route was to sail down the African coastline, round the Cape of Good Hope, and across the Indian Ocean. But this was fraught with danger. Portugal’s merchant adventurers had been sailing this course for almost a century, controlling many of the best harbors and watering holes en route. They were not likely to welcome England’s heretic mariners into harbors that they considered to be their own. The second option—sailing around the southern tip of South America and across the empty expanse of the Pacific—was scarcely more appealing. The rocky Straits of Magellan presented a formidable challenge to even the most talented of pilots, while the Pacific was as unpredictable as it was unknown. Worse still, the first landfall was likely to be the Philippines, which were firmly in the grasp of King Philip II of Spain.
Sir Rowland and Sir George decided that both these routes presented too great a risk. They were more familiar with the frosty North than the tropical South and argued that a voyage across the top of Russia, although undeniably dangerous, had the
advantage of being relatively short. After consulting with the great expert on Elizabethan exploration, Richard Hakluyt, they came up with a plan that was as bold as it was simple. They would build a base on one of the Arctic’s many islands—perhaps Vaygach Island, at the entrance to the Kara Sea—which could be used as a depot. Such a base could prove a lifesaver in the long winter months and could, in time, become a great trading entrepôt between England and the farthest East. It was an uncomplicated, straightforward idea that had the advantage of avoiding any clash with the Portuguese or Spanish. It would also help to avoid a disaster on the scale of Sir Hugh Willoughby’s expedition of 1553.
from Arnoldus Montanus’s Atlas Japannensis, 1670
.
Richard Willes’s readers were astonished to learn about
seppuku
—Japanese ritual suicide. The perpetrator would slice open his stomach with a curved sword, “from the breast downe all the belly.”
Sir Rowland and Sir George knew that previous undertakings had failed because of “want of skill in the cosmographie and the
arte of navigation.” They decided, right from the outset, to hire the very best captains they could find. After a lengthy search, they settled on two hardy and dependable mariners, Arthur Pet and Charles Jackman, both of whom had already made lengthy voyages into Arctic climes. Jackman had taken part in two of Sir Martin Frobisher’s voyages in search of a Northwest Passage, while Pet had considerable experience of the extreme north of Russia. Both men jumped at the opportunity to take part in yet another dangerous but exhilarating venture, and were joined by the London merchant Nicholas Chancellor, who hoped to be the first Englishman to make his fortune in the Far East.
Finding a crew proved rather more difficult. When Sir Rowland and Sir George mooted their project around the Thameside dockyards, they were met with a distinctly lukewarm response. Just thirteen men and two boys signed up. Although they had little prospect of enticing any more would-be adventurers onto their rolls, the two merchants decided to push on regardless. The exploration expert Richard Hakluyt was alarmed at the lack of men and warned that a few deaths could scupper the entire enterprise. “You must have great care to preserve your people,” he advised, “since your numbers is so small and not to venture any one man in any wise.”
Sir Rowland and Sir George hired two diminutive vessels, the
George
and the
William,
which were anchored “in the river of Thames against Limehouse.” Next, they set to work on the detailed planning, beginning with a formal commission of employment for their two captains. The principal aim of the voyage was the “search and discoveries of a passage by sea … to the countries or dominions of the mightie prince, the emperour of Cathay, and in the same unto the Cities of Cambalu [Peking] and Quinsay [Hangchow].” Aware that the journey would push the crew to the extremes of endurance, they were instructed “to joine in friendship together, as most deere friends and brothers … to the furtherance and orderly performing of the same voyage.” They were
to love each other, pray for each other, and “bend yourselves to the uttermost of your powers to performe the thing that you are both employed for.”

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