Samurai William: The Englishman Who Opened Japan (7 page)
Read Samurai William: The Englishman Who Opened Japan Online
Authors: Giles Milton
Hakluyt had high hopes that the English would be invited ashore, enabling them to indulge in a spot of espionage. “Take a speciall view of their navy,” he wrote, “the sailes, the tackles, the ankers, the furniture of them, with ordinance, armour and munition.” The English were to procure some gunpowder to test its efficacy, to note the quality of Japanese armor and to study the strengths “of the walls and bulwarks of their cities.” But Hakluyt’s concerns were not just military ones. He asked the captains to bring home seeds “of strange herbs and flowers” and acquire “some old printed booke” to enable someone to study the language. He even suggested that they should bring back to England “one or other young man” who could be taught English and reveal the secrets of his land.
The two captains decided to push on regardless of the risk, dodging icebergs and drifting pack ice until they found their passage blocked. “Here were pieces of ice so great,” records the ship’s log, “that we could not see beyond them out of the toppe.” After almost a week of inactivity, the crews decided to attempt to force their way out. But it was not easy: “We were much troubled with the ice,” wrote Pet. No sooner had they freed themselves than the George struck an iceberg with such force that her timbers shuddered and her anchor was twisted into a tangle of metal. They soon found themselves striking other icebergs, and with each collision they heard a hollow boom resonate from the deep bowels of the vessel. “Many other great blowes we had against the ice,” wrote Pet, “[so] that it was marveilous that the ship was able to abide them.” The damage to the
William
was considerable, while her little boat had been smashed to pieces. Worse still, both vessels were soon locked into the ice and were caught in a severe blizzard that blanketed the decks in snow. The men’s safety was now in serious doubt and, as their resolve faltered, they began to scale down
their expectations of reaching the Far East. Indeed, there was no longer any talk of sailing to Japan or China. Now, they prayed that they might simply escape the pack ice and return to England before their ships were crushed and they succumbed to starvation.
William
was considerable, while her little boat had been smashed to pieces. Worse still, both vessels were soon locked into the ice and were caught in a severe blizzard that blanketed the decks in snow. The men’s safety was now in serious doubt and, as their resolve faltered, they began to scale down
their expectations of reaching the Far East. Indeed, there was no longer any talk of sailing to Japan or China. Now, they prayed that they might simply escape the pack ice and return to England before their ships were crushed and they succumbed to starvation.
Photo used with kind permission from Okura Shukokan Museum, Tokyo
.
.
Richard Hakluyt urged adventurers to information on Japanese weaponry. The English would later be astonished by the quality—and devastating effectiveness—of samurai swords, which were finely wrought by master craftsmen.
For once, those prayers were answered. The ice sheet parted slightly and the men seized on their advantage, hoisting their sails and slipping out through a small gap. By nine o’clock, they reached the edge of the ice that had imprisoned them and suddenly
found themselves in open water, “whereof we were most glad, and not without great cause, and gave good the praise.” They now had a very real chance of saving their lives and their ships, and they grasped the opportunity, racing directly to the northern cape of Norway. At Trondheim, the two captains bade farewell to each other, for Jackman—whose quest for adventure was not yet sated—was keen to sail on to Iceland. Pet had no intention of following him. He was already dreaming of candlelit taverns and Southwark strumpets. He steered his ship south for London, arriving back in the Thames on December 25, “being the Nativity of Christ.” The men fell to their knees in prayer, as they gave thanks to God “for our safe returne.” The crew of the
William
was not so fortunate. They were never heard of again.
found themselves in open water, “whereof we were most glad, and not without great cause, and gave good the praise.” They now had a very real chance of saving their lives and their ships, and they grasped the opportunity, racing directly to the northern cape of Norway. At Trondheim, the two captains bade farewell to each other, for Jackman—whose quest for adventure was not yet sated—was keen to sail on to Iceland. Pet had no intention of following him. He was already dreaming of candlelit taverns and Southwark strumpets. He steered his ship south for London, arriving back in the Thames on December 25, “being the Nativity of Christ.” The men fell to their knees in prayer, as they gave thanks to God “for our safe returne.” The crew of the
William
was not so fortunate. They were never heard of again.
Captain Pet’s expedition had been a complete failure. He had singularly failed to negotiate the ice-choked waters that lapped the shores of northern Russia and could give little encouragement to any future expedition to the North. His men had hoped to return with doublets made of Chinese silks and jerkins stuffed with Japanese silver. Instead, they had arrived back in London with frostbite and missing toes. As if that were not enough, Pet’s ignominious return was totally overshadowed by the triumphant return of Francis Drake, who had just completed his voyage around the world. Drake had nudged his vessel, the
Golden Hind
, into Plymouth harbor in September 1580, where he was feted as a hero, not just because he was the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe, but because he was returning with an astonishing quantity of booty. He had rifled from the Spanish a staggering one and a half million pesos of plunder, including five huge crates of gold, twenty tons of silver, and so many coins and pearls that it would take many weeks to count them all.
Golden Hind
, into Plymouth harbor in September 1580, where he was feted as a hero, not just because he was the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe, but because he was returning with an astonishing quantity of booty. He had rifled from the Spanish a staggering one and a half million pesos of plunder, including five huge crates of gold, twenty tons of silver, and so many coins and pearls that it would take many weeks to count them all.
Queen Elizabeth was overjoyed. When Drake finally arrived in
London, she honored him with a private audience that lasted for six hours. It was not just the vast quantity of treasure that delighted the queen. Drake’s voyage had been a dazzling feat of seamanship that shattered forever the myth that the southern oceans were the exclusive preserve of the Spanish and the Portuguese. English adventurers had tried repeatedly to smash their way through the northern ice pack, believing that to sail south would be suicidal. Now, Drake had proved that the Indian and Pacific Oceans were no longer out of bounds. Indeed, he had demonstrated that English mariners could go where they chose and were more than able to play cat and mouse with their Catholic rivals. The queen would famously justify the future voyages of her sea dogs by pronouncing that “the sea and air are common to all men.”
London, she honored him with a private audience that lasted for six hours. It was not just the vast quantity of treasure that delighted the queen. Drake’s voyage had been a dazzling feat of seamanship that shattered forever the myth that the southern oceans were the exclusive preserve of the Spanish and the Portuguese. English adventurers had tried repeatedly to smash their way through the northern ice pack, believing that to sail south would be suicidal. Now, Drake had proved that the Indian and Pacific Oceans were no longer out of bounds. Indeed, he had demonstrated that English mariners could go where they chose and were more than able to play cat and mouse with their Catholic rivals. The queen would famously justify the future voyages of her sea dogs by pronouncing that “the sea and air are common to all men.”
She chose to ignore Captain Pet’s Arctic failure, condemning him to return to the obscurity from which he had briefly escaped. Preferring to back a winner, she prepared a lavish celebration in honor of Drake’s triumph in the tropics. She decreed that the
Golden Hind
should be placed in a dock at Deptford as a lasting memorial to his historic voyage and proposed an onboard banquet. Held on April 4, 1581, it was a splendid affair—the most ostentatious celebration since the reign of old King Henry. The vessel was bedecked with flags and bunting while the shoreline at Deptford was adorned with colorful banners. The queen herself was in fine humor, aware, perhaps, that Drake’s success marked a turning point for England’s merchant adventurers. As she stepped aboard the newly scrubbed
Golden Hind,
she showed Drake her gilded sword and joshed that she had come to chop off his head. But he knew that she had come to do no such thing. She commanded him to kneel, then handed her sword to her guest of honor, Marquis de Marchaumont, and ordered him to knight her gallant explorer. Sir Francis repaid the honor with magnificent presents, all of which had been filched from the Spanish. There
were five huge emeralds, a “baskett of silver,” and a magnificent golden globe whose oceans were made from green enamel. It was those oceans that Elizabeth’s adventurers now hoped to traverse.
Golden Hind
should be placed in a dock at Deptford as a lasting memorial to his historic voyage and proposed an onboard banquet. Held on April 4, 1581, it was a splendid affair—the most ostentatious celebration since the reign of old King Henry. The vessel was bedecked with flags and bunting while the shoreline at Deptford was adorned with colorful banners. The queen herself was in fine humor, aware, perhaps, that Drake’s success marked a turning point for England’s merchant adventurers. As she stepped aboard the newly scrubbed
Golden Hind,
she showed Drake her gilded sword and joshed that she had come to chop off his head. But he knew that she had come to do no such thing. She commanded him to kneel, then handed her sword to her guest of honor, Marquis de Marchaumont, and ordered him to knight her gallant explorer. Sir Francis repaid the honor with magnificent presents, all of which had been filched from the Spanish. There
were five huge emeralds, a “baskett of silver,” and a magnificent golden globe whose oceans were made from green enamel. It was those oceans that Elizabeth’s adventurers now hoped to traverse.
The banquet grew raucous as night descended, and the noise of viols and tabors could be heard up and down the great river. As the evening wore on, more and more curious spectators gathered to witness the historic scene. At one point, so many people had assembled on the bridge that linked the ship to the shore that the timbers began to creak and groan. Suddenly, there was a tremendous crack and a hundred or more people were plunged into the muddy river. Wiser heads might have seen this as a warning that Elizabethan technology did not always match its enthusiasm.
Not everyone had been invited to share in Drake’s triumph. Just upstream from Deptford was Limehouse, the land of the living poor, where an Elizabethan underclass was packed like herrings into squalid and unsanitary tenements. Limehouse lay outside the walls of London, a sprawl of shacks and dwellings that had been roughly built to contain a population that had already reached bursting point. The antiquary John Stowe bemoaned the fact that there had been a great deal of new building in recent years and that “shipwrights and … other marine men have builded many large, and strong houses for themselves, and smaller for sailers.” The city was indeed growing too fast, and there were many complaints about the number of houses being erected. In the same year as Drake’s return, Queen Elizabeth had issued a royal proclamation prohibiting the construction of any new buildings within three miles of the city gates. Limehouse was particularly infamous for its “dissolute, loose and insolent people,” but not all its inhabitants were thieves and petty criminals. Many mariners and carpenters also lived there, as well as the navigators and shipwrights who built and manned the vessels of the great gentlemen adventurers. The Thames was “the principal storehouse and staple of all commodities within this realm,” whose banks were a confusion of wharfs and jetties. This was where
crews gathered to tout for work and offer their services for voyages into unknown seas.
crews gathered to tout for work and offer their services for voyages into unknown seas.
One of these men was William Adams, a youth of seventeen years when Drake was knighted. He had been born in the Kentish town of Gillingham, a haunt of fisherfolk, and was baptized on September 24, 1564, probably a day or two after his birth. He came from humble and impoverished stock who left few traces of their existence. Young William would also have been lost to history, but the wheel of fortune raised him up and provided him with a spectacular new life on the farthest side of the globe.
His childhood would have remained a mystery, had it not been for a letter that he wrote—many years later—when he was feeling homesick and melancholic. An Elizabethan physician would have recognized his symptoms as an excess of black bile and would have prescribed a large dose of thistle to “comforteth the brain.” Adams preferred to cure himself by writing to his long-lost friends, reminding them of his identity. “I am a Kentish man,” he informed them, “borne in the towen called Gillingham, two English miles from Rochester [and] one mile from Chatham.” He proceeded to tell them that from the age of twelve, he had been “brought up in Limehouse near London.”
The letter reveals a haphazard education and a happy-go-lucky attitude to life. His spelling is folksy and phonetic, while his turn of phrase is delightfully piquant. The Elizabethans obeyed few rules when they set quill to paper; William Adams obeyed none, and both his syntax and spelling are decidedly eccentric. He speaks of “drisslling rayne” and “veri ffayr wether,” of “spiss” [spice] and “ollefantes teeth.”
There are no surviving portraits of Adams, unless his likeness is hidden somewhere among the European faces on the Japanese
byobu
, or picture screens. But his letters reveal a chimerical character whose recklessness and arrogance combined with a quiet charm that could weave its magic in a foreign and alien land. In later years, he would stun his compatriots by addressing Eastern
princes and potentates in the same abrupt manner that he employed with the lowliest cabin boy. They were no less shocked at the adroitness with which he would shed his old skin and adopt foreign customs.
byobu
, or picture screens. But his letters reveal a chimerical character whose recklessness and arrogance combined with a quiet charm that could weave its magic in a foreign and alien land. In later years, he would stun his compatriots by addressing Eastern
princes and potentates in the same abrupt manner that he employed with the lowliest cabin boy. They were no less shocked at the adroitness with which he would shed his old skin and adopt foreign customs.
He must have been a bear of a man—tough as salt pork and bred to survive hardship. While others wilted and died, laid low by scurvy, poisoned arrows, or the “blody flux,” Adams remained in rude health. He munched his way through joints of raw penguin to keep himself alive and, when he had sucked the bones until the marrow ran dry, he gnawed the salt-toughened leather that surrounded the mast ropes. Yet there was another, more complex side to William Adams. Sometimes he was aloof and detached. At other times he was disarmingly honest. His fellow countrymen would confuse his brusque manner with arrogance and accuse him of being haughty. They failed to realize that this was the very quality that had enabled him to survive—and thrive—in the most desperate circumstances.
Adams trained as a pilot and shipwright under the famous Nicholas Diggins. To have had such a tutor was a stroke of fortune, for Diggins was a skilled shipwright who built many of the vessels used by London’s gentlemen adventurers. He taught Adams how to construct the small, fast, caravel-built ships that had become popular with English captains and also gave him instruction on how to shape a ship’s frame and clad it with planking. These lessons would one day save his life.
However, the young Adams was less interested in building ships than in sailing them, and he spent much of his time on the river or at sea. No sooner had he completed his apprenticeship, in 1588, than he was given command of the
Richard Duffield
, a supply ship that was charged with carrying victuals and ammunition to the English fleet doing battle with the Spanish Armada. As Lord Howard and Sir Francis Drake tussled with the enemy, Adams ferried supplies to sick and dying mariners.
Richard Duffield
, a supply ship that was charged with carrying victuals and ammunition to the English fleet doing battle with the Spanish Armada. As Lord Howard and Sir Francis Drake tussled with the enemy, Adams ferried supplies to sick and dying mariners.
A few months after King Philip II’s fleet had been trounced,
Adams married his sweetheart, Mary Hyn, in the parish church of St. Dunstan in Stepney, just to the east of the Tower of London. It was a marriage in which Mary was to find herself alone for long periods, for Adams had made a mistress of the sea. He gained employment with the London Company of the Barbary Merchants, and for the next ten years he sailed back and forth to the wild shores of North Africa. It was dangerous work, for the Barbary ports were controlled by unscrupulous Turkish governors or rapacious warlords who treated the English merchants with contempt. When one ship, the Jesus, had the misfortune to be seized by Turkish janissaries, the crew was shown no mercy. “They searched us and stript our very clothes from our backes,” wrote one of the captains, “and brake open our chests and made a spoile of all that we had.” Several men were hanged, while the rest were “violently shaven,” then chained together and made galley slaves.
Adams married his sweetheart, Mary Hyn, in the parish church of St. Dunstan in Stepney, just to the east of the Tower of London. It was a marriage in which Mary was to find herself alone for long periods, for Adams had made a mistress of the sea. He gained employment with the London Company of the Barbary Merchants, and for the next ten years he sailed back and forth to the wild shores of North Africa. It was dangerous work, for the Barbary ports were controlled by unscrupulous Turkish governors or rapacious warlords who treated the English merchants with contempt. When one ship, the Jesus, had the misfortune to be seized by Turkish janissaries, the crew was shown no mercy. “They searched us and stript our very clothes from our backes,” wrote one of the captains, “and brake open our chests and made a spoile of all that we had.” Several men were hanged, while the rest were “violently shaven,” then chained together and made galley slaves.
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