The Honourable Company

Four months later the long bluff of Table Mountain hove above the horizon. Already sixty of the Red Dragon’s men were down with scurvy including Middleton. ‘Perusing their pitiful complaint and looking out his cabin door where did attend a swarme of lame and weake diseased cripples’ he decided to ignore orders and succumb to the temptation of fresh fruit and red meat. They spent nearly five weeks in Table Bay. The sick recovered and Middleton began to exhibit that spirited conduct which would characterize his later career. He organized a rather amateurish ambush of the Saldanian herdsmen and very nearly came to grief in an epic struggle with a mother whale. Thence, without stopping at Madagascar, the fleet made straight for Bantam, arriving, once again crewed by ‘diseased cripples’, on 22 December 1604.

‘They had hardlie fiftie sound men in theire foure ships’ noted Edmund Scot who came aboard from the Bantam factory. His ‘extraordinarie great joye’ at the prospect of relief after nearly two years marooned in Java quickly evaporated. Middleton was again on the sick list and, as Scot knew only too well, Bantam was no place for convalescence. Here, unlike at the Cape, the sick died and the healthy sickened. An equatorial haze hung over the mud flats and marshes which passed for a coastline and across which the tide oozed its way towards the city’s brimming sewers. During the four hot months men longed for the drenching rains and during the eight wet months they longed for the unbearable heat. Neither was remotely agreeable and even the nights brought no relief. Sweat seeped from ever-open pores, soaking bedding and clothing alike and blistering the skin with prickly heat. This did not deter the mosquitoes which rose in clouds from the marshes and sought out the palest flesh on offer. Malaria was unavoidable; so was dysentery. Typhoid came and went – only to be replaced by cholera. Within a matter of decades Bantam would be abandoned to the undergrowth and insects which to this day smother its unhappy ruins.

To men who had already spent nine months at sea it can have been little comfort to be told that their only hope of survival lay in again putting to sea as quickly as their business permitted. Yet Scot’s account of life at Bantam left them no choice. He had been one of eight factors left behind by Lancaster. Now he was one of two. (The other survivor, Gabriel Towerson, must have been blessed with a constitution of concrete for he would outlast all his contemporaries only to succumb, twenty years later, to the cruellest cut of all.) Times had been hard in Bantam. The factory, a compound consisting of a timber warehouse with adjoining living quarters surrounded by a high palisade of stakes, had been in a state of siege for most of the two years, Scot’s visit to the Red Dragon being only his second outing since the previous summer. ‘My feare was so great’, he explained, ‘because I thought all would be burnt before I could come back againe.’ Indeed there had been so many attempts to set the place on fire that he had become quite paranoid on the subject.

Oh this worde fire! Had it been spoken in English, Malay, Javan or Chinese, although I had been sound asleep, yet I should have leapt out of my bedde, the which I had done sometimes when our men on watch had but whispered to one another of fire; insomuch that I was forced to warn them not to talke of fire in the night except they had great occasion.

Sometimes it was just the danger of those general conflagrations that raged in all the wood-built cities of the tropics whenever a dry wind blew. At other times it was more personal. In the dead of night a shower of flaming arrows would come arcing over the stockade or a gang of Javanese arsonists would rush the gate. Once some Chinese managed to tunnel under the fence, across the compound, and up under the floor of the warehouse. Here their attempt to burn a hole through the floorboards went disastrously wrong. There was an almighty blaze and although the thieves got away with nothing, precious bundles of calicoes were destroyed. The stench of burnt pepper hung about for days.

Hearing their story Middleton must have found it hard not to sympathize with the beleaguered Bantam factors. In the suffocating heat of their West Javan hell-hole they fought their fires and buried their dead, filled their ledgers and said their prayers, all with a clear conscience and three cheers for the Company. Yet they were no innocents abroad and, if one may judge by their penal code, their ideas of civilized conduct fell short of those of their Javanese hosts. In an otherwise beguiling narrative Scot cheerily announces the capture of the Chinese tunnellers. Instantly the Honourable Factors of the Worshipful Company turn demon torturers. Out come the pincers and the bone screws. The smell of burnt pepper gives way to that of burnt flesh. They collect white ants to tip over open wounds and at last despatch their victims with a brutality worthy of Tyburn. ‘Now a worde or two concerning the Dutch shipping,’ continues Scot’s breezy narrative, ‘and shortly after into fyre and troubles againe.’

At the root of these troubles lay the failure of the Javanese to distinguish between Dutchmen and Englishmen. The former, now organized into the United East Indian Company (V.O.C.) with Bantam as its eastern headquarters, were a formidable presence. Their fleets shuttling between the Moluccas and Europe regularly disgorged into the city unruly mobs of red-faced sex-starved sailors while their merchants became increasingly high-handed in their dealings with the local authorities. The Dutch were deservedly unpopular and this unpopularity rubbed off on to the English. Hence, thought Scot, the endless fires and raids.

But at this stage there could be no question of denouncing the Dutch. Their presence was actually some comfort to the English. ‘Though we were mortal enemies in our trade’, wrote Scot, ‘yet in other matters we were friends and would have lived and died for one another.’ In Europe the English had championed the cause of Dutch independence; there was no shame in Englishmen now accepting a measure of Dutch protection in the East. All that was needed was some way of showing the Javanese that there was a difference. A solution of dazzling simplicity was proposed by Gabriel Towerson. They would mount a parade. Mastering his ‘fear of being counted fantasticall’ Scot agreed and, as 17 November approached, ‘the which we held to be our coronation day’, the factors and their servants ‘suited ourselves in new apparel of silk and made us all scarves of red and white taffeta (being our country’s colours) and a flag with the redde cross through the middle’.

Our day being come, we set up our banner of St George upon the top of our house and with drum and shot we marched up and down within our grounde; being but fourteen in number, we could march but single one after another, plying our shot and casting ourselves in rings and S’s.

The commotion duly attracted a goodly audience to whom it was explained that they were celebrating their Queen’s coronation (‘for at that time we knew no other but that Queen Elizabeth was still lyving’). In the afternoon Scot took a calculated risk and dismissed his whole company with instructions to roam the town. ‘Their redde and white scarves and hatbands made such a shew that the inhabitants of these parts had never seen the like.’ And to every enquiry as to why ‘the Englishmen at the other factory’ were not also celebrating, it was emphatically pointed out that ‘they were no Englishmen but Hollanders and that they had no king but the land was ruled by governors’.

Ever after that day we were known from the Hollanders; and manie times the children in the streets would runne after us crying ‘Oran Engrees bayck, Oran Hollanda jahad’ which is ‘The English are good, the Hollanders are nought’.

Vigilance was necessary but Scot and Towerson were no longer held responsible for the riotous conduct of every drunken Dutchman. They were free to sell their calicoes and, blissfully unaware of trends in the London market, to amass substantial stocks of pepper.

These stocks, and the need to withdraw from Bantam as quickly as possible, soon persuaded Middleton to ignore the Company’s instructions once again. Within two months the Hector and the Susan were loaded with pepper and sent to England. Even this speedy turnaround proved too slow for most of the sick, the Hector losing its captain, its master and its master’s mate not to mention ‘common men’. Matters stood no better on the Susan and after recruiting local seamen both ships were still woefully undermanned. They left Bantam on 4 March 1605. What happened thereafter is unrecorded. We know only that the Susan with a crew of forty-seven was never seen again; and that of the Hector’s crew of fifty-three only fourteen reached the Cape, where they were discovered ineffectually trying to beach their ship to save her cargo.

Meanwhile Middleton, with the Red Dragon and the Ascension, was at last exploring the Moluccas. His first port of call was Ambon (Amboina), a well populated island off the coast of Ceram with some clove plantations and much to recommend it as the key to the Spice Islands. On the south shore of a deep inlet which nearly severs the island, the Portuguese had erected an impressive fortress whence troops could be dispatched north to the clove kingdoms of Ternate and Tidore or south to the nutmeg isles of Banda. But the Dutch were also aware of its importance and were already planning the replacement of this Portuguese garrison with one of their own. A large fleet had assembled at Bantam for precisely this purpose. To win time for Middleton, the breezy Scot arranged a send-off party at which the Dutch consumed so much ‘likker’ that they were sick for a week. Middleton therefore got there first. On 10 February he concluded an agreement with the Portuguese to load his ships with cloves but on 11 February five Dutch ships entered port and proceeded to pound the Portuguese into surrender. Not wishing to get involved, the English withdrew from Ambon. Thus, inauspiciously, the Company’s direct involvement with the Spice Islands began at the very fort where – within a couple of decades – it was to end so catastrophically.

Anxious to stay ahead of the Dutch fleet the Ascension was now sent post-haste to the Bandas. There Captain Colthurst renewed contacts with the remote outposts of Run and Ai, and secured a good cargo of nutmegs. When the Dutch ships eventually anchored beneath the smoking mass of Gunung Api, relations were strained but not openly hostile. Indeed the two commanders dined amicably together; if they could share the same chicken pie they could surely share the nutmeg harvest.

Middleton in the Red Dragon was also successful up to a point. Sailing north for the twin volcanoes of Ternate and Tidore he unwittingly entered another war zone in which the Dutch were allied with the Sultan of Ternate against the Portuguese and the Sultan of Tidore. To Middleton, a choleric commander with no head for niceties, it was all Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Even supposing it had been self-evident which party it was politic to support he had neither the authority nor the ships to engage in hostilities. For what it was worth he did exploit the situation, accepting a load of cloves at Tidore and the promise of permission to settle a factory at Ternate. But once it was clear that he had no intention of lending either side his active support, he was no longer welcome.

With the English looking on, the Dutch at last stormed Tidore. Middleton was permitted to negotiate the Portuguese surrender and then, on the suspicion that he had supplied the Portuguese with arms, was peremptorily ordered away. It was Dutch policy, he was informed, to allow no other nation to trade with their island subjects. Middleton left in a black rage. ‘If this frothy nation [he meant the Dutch] may have the trade of the Indies to themselves (which is the thing they hope for) their pride and insolencie will be intollerable.’ He headed back to Bantam, was there joined by the Ascension, and reached the Cape in time to save the Hector from being beached by her depleted crew. Together the three ships returned to England in May 1606.

To Middleton, who would prove anything but battle-shy, and to most of those Englishmen who followed him to the Moluccas, the Company’s insistence on ‘a quiet trafficke’ would seem dangerously naive. The Portuguese had boasted of their Estado da India. From strongly fortified havens they had policed the sea lanes and overawed the coastlines. Now the Dutch, although less bothered with the sea lanes, were pursuing a no less ruthless policy of acquisition in respect of the spice-producing islands. As befitted an emergent nation sensitive about foreign rule, they gave their eastern adventures a gloss of international respectability by signing treaties of protection with the islanders. But the treaties were often exacted under duress and enforced by brutal reprisals against any dissenters. The forts supposedly built to protect the islands against the ‘Portingall’ were as often used to subdue the islanders. And any trade that the islanders held with other than the Dutch was regarded as treason.

By contrast the English Company would build no forts east of Sumatra and would rarely land any guns. It deployed no troops in the East Indies and its objectives there would remain purely commercial. Unlike the Portuguese, the English were not as yet conscious of fulfilling some Christian destiny and unlike the Dutch they were not proudly investing in their nation’s future. However patriotically inclined, they served the Company not the King, and put profits – their own as well as the Company’s – before power.

Every man in the Company’s employ, whether factor or deckhand, expected a financial reward commensurate with the risks he faced; and since salaries were notoriously miserly, he devoted most of his energies to realizing it through private speculation. The Court of Committees took every possible precaution against this infringement by exacting a bond, often for as much as £500, from their factors and by taking great care in their initial selection. Applicants, besides being of blameless character, were expected to have some particular aptitude ‘in navigation and calicoes’ like Nathaniel Courthope, or ‘in Merchant account and arithmetic’ like John Clark. Others spoke Turkish, Portuguese, Arabic or some other relevant language. Many, and nearly all the more senior factors, had some previous experience of working overseas either with the Levant Company or the Merchant Adventurers. In such regulated companies individual merchants were often involved in the syndicate they served or at least received some form of commission from it. They expected to share in any corporate profits and the East India Company at first acknowledged this fact by remunerating their appointees with a small amount of stock in the voyage to which they were attached.

In 1609 this was replaced with a system of fixed salaries ranging from £5 to £200 per year. There were also allowances for outfit and for a small quantity of private trade goods. But neither the stick of censure nor the carrot of concessions made much difference. Entrusted with vast stocks, surrounded by tempting opportunities, and a world away from the day of reckoning, the Company’s overseas factors followed their entrepreneurial instincts to the full. At the top of the scale a Bantam factor might become a very rich man indeed. Judging from the Company’s records the squabbling in Bantam over the personal estates of those who succumbed to the climate was almost as bitter as the actions brought against those who returned home to enjoy their fortunes. Even the conscientious Scot would be involved in lengthy recriminations with his employers.

Yet the majority of the Company’s shareholders subscribed to no loftier principles. Their expectations of a quick and handsome profit were tempered only by their acute anxiety to keep the expenses of eastern trade to a minimum. With each voyage representing a separate investment on which the profits were of interest only to its subscribers, there was little incentive for ensuring long-term profitability. And it was the same overseas where factors from different voyages would soon be openly competing for trade. Under these circumstances, to secure a loading of, say, cloves, while the Hollanders’ back was turned was thought wonderfully clever. It was as good as Drake singeing the King of Spain’s beard. The English positively relished their role of underdogs.

ii

‘They had privie trade with the island people by night and by day were jovial and frolicke with the Spaniards’, wrote the Reverend Samuel Purchas, not without relish, of the next English vessel to visit the Moluccas. The ship, the Consent, at 150 tons little more than a pinnace, was even less capable of asserting an English presence than the Red Dragon. David Middleton, the third of the brothers and now commander of the Consent, was aware of the problem. In an unofficial capacity he had accompanied his brother Henry aboard the Red Dragon and had been back in England a mere nine months before being assigned to the Company’s Third Voyage (1607). Nothing if not impatient he left ahead of the rest of the fleet and never in fact joined it. With a healthy crew and favourable winds he saw no reason to delay – which was just as well, the Third Voyage proving the slowest on record. By the time it reached the Moluccas the Consent would be back in England.

Putting into Table Bay and St Augustine’s Bay (Madagascar) the youngest Middleton took just eight months from Tilbury to Bantam. There the indestructible Towerson had taken over as chief factor, Scot having returned with Henry Middleton. ‘We found the merchants in verie good health and all things in order’, noted David Middleton. Unlike his brother, he would invariably find things in order and he would make a point of leaving them so.

Continuing east he reached Tidore in early January 1608 and again found a pleasant surprise. The Portuguese had received assistance from their Spanish allies in the Philippines and had thus managed to evict the Dutch and their Ternate friends. Not that this made the English any more welcome. Again they were expected ‘to do, or seeme to doe, some piece of service’ – like sailing against the Dutch – ‘which our Captain absolutely refused, being against his commission’. Trading rights were therefore withdrawn and hence that necessity for ‘privie trade by night’. By the time they were ordered to sea the Consent had obtained perhaps half a loading of cloves.

She sailed south-west for one of Sulawesi’s (Celebes) many tentacles and there established excellent relations with the rulers of Butung and Kabaena. These two islands, though densely forested, produced no spices. However, like Macassar on Sulawesi’s next tentacle, they were of considerable importance as free ports and safe harbours in the native trade of the Archipelago. At Butung, or ‘Button’, where the king threw a series of memorable parties, Middleton found a Javanese vessel laden with cloves which her skipper readily sold to the English. Evidently such local craft stood a much better chance of sneaking spices past the Dutch than did an English vessel. Moreover, with Sulawesi dominated by Malays and Bugis, the most formidable seafarers and warriors in the whole archipelago, there was no danger of the Dutch coming in hot pursuit. Here then was a weak spot at which the Dutch monopoly might be dented without inviting hostilities. Middleton resolved to return to Butung, and the Company would soon be posting a factor to Macassar.

On 2 May 1608, with a three-gun salute to the jolly king of ‘Button’, the Consent, now fully laden, sailed for Bantam and home. She reached England in six months, another notably fast voyage, and her cargo of cloves, purchased for less than £3000, sold for £36,000. Three months later, in command of the much larger Expedition, David Middleton was again sailing for Butung.

Off Bantam he narrowly missed making the acquaintance of Captain Keeling, commander of the Third Voyage. This was the dilatory fleet, now at last homeward bound, with which David Middleton was supposed to have sailed on the previous voyage. ‘He passed us in the night,’ reported Keeling who must by now have been having serious doubts about the chimerical Middleton, ‘else we should surely have seene him.’

As usual Middleton was crowding on the sail. He spent just ten days at Bantam and by the New Year of 1610 was again bearing down on Butung. Its king had promised to lay in stocks of cloves, nutmegs and mace, and he had been as good as his word. But as he now explained amidst convulsions of grief, the whole lot had just been burnt along with his palace and ‘sundry of his wives and women’. The jolly king was anything but jolly and was now committed to a war with one of his neighbours. There could be no guarantee of a cargo here; Middleton therefore determined to try his luck elsewhere.

From the Bandas the news was not good. Keeling had been there and had left word of his reception with the factors at Bantam who had duly informed Middleton. Evidently the Dutch were losing patience with both the Bandanese and the English. One of their fleets numbering no less than thirteen ships had anchored off Neira and proceeded to land troops, erect forts, and cajole the bemused Bandanese into signing away the bulk of their produce exclusively to the V.O.C. Keeling in high dudgeon had been forced to withdraw to the outermost islands of Ai and Run. ‘Sixtie-two men against a thousand or more could not perform much’, he explained. He had defiantly left representatives on Ai and Run, but basically the English were relegated to their usual role of spectators as the Dutch doggedly pursued their monopolistic ambitions.

On the whole Middleton preferred not to try the Bandas. But in the event he had no choice; the usual alternative of a foray to Tidore for cloves was precluded by adverse winds. He therefore resolved on one last bid to establish the Company’s right to a share of the nutmeg market. Feigning that sublime confidence that was his hallmark, he approached the Dutch shipping at Neira ‘with flagge and ensigne [flying] and at each yard arm a pennant in as comely a manner as we could devise’. The Dutch were unmoved. There was no trade here but for ships of the V.O.C. They rejected his argument that ‘it were not good’ for nations that were friends in Europe to be ‘enemies among the heathen people’, they refused his offer of a bribe, and they were unimpressed by a sight of his royal commission. More words were exchanged, ‘some sharpe, some sweete’ according to Middleton, yet all to no avail. He was ordered back to sea. Complying in all but spirit, he gave the fortress at Ambon a wide berth and set up base a day’s sailing from the Bandas on the little-frequented island of Ceram.

For if the Dutch were anxious to see him off, the Bandanese were no less anxious to have him trade with them. In particular the outlying islands of Run and Ai were still resisting the ‘frothy’ Hollanders and saw the English as their natural allies. Middleton, ‘knowing well that in troubled waters it is good fishing’, set about frustrating the Dutch blockade by improvising a bizarre fleet to ply back and forth between the Bandas and the Expedition in her safe haven on Ceram. There was the Hopewell, his pinnace, which alone made nine trips, and the Middleton, a chartered junk which jauntily sailed amongst the Dutchmen. Then there was the Diligence, a resurrected barque which did her best, and finally a six-oared skiff which came to grief in a typhoon off the coast of Ceram.

Amongst the skiff’s castaways was Middleton himself. Washed ashore, he managed to evade Ceram’s supposed cannibals as he made his way back to base. He must have been almost there when, attempting to swim an alligator-infested river, he was swept out to sea and battered on the rocks ‘till neere hand drowned’; for ‘every suffe washed mee into the sea againe’. He was eventually hauled to safety clinging to a long pole. ‘After resting a reasonable space’, he declared himself fit ‘to the amazement of all my company.’