CHAPTER III
THE TRAGEDY OF SPITZBERGEN
Before I tell you the story of the first voyage to India I want to give a short account of another Dutch expedition in the Arctic Sea which ended even more sadly than that of Heemskerk and Barendsz.
On their voyage to Nova Zembla the two mariners had discovered a group of islands which on account of their high mountains they had called the "Islands of the Steep Peaks," or Spitzbergen in the Dutch language. These islands provided an excellent center for the whaling fisheries. During the first half of the seventeenth century a large Dutch fleet went northward every spring to catch whales. The dead animals were brought to Spitzbergen, where the blubber was turned into whale-oil, and the rest of the huge animal was got ready for a market that wa s not as finicky in its taste as in our own time.
Soon a small city was built around the large furnaces and the rooming-houses for the workmen. This town was appropriately called "Greaseville" (in Dutch, Smeerenburg). It consisted of the usual gathering of saloons, eating-places, and small stores, that you might find in a Western American town during a mining boom. When the autumn came, the inhabitants moved back to Holland and left the city to the tender mercies of the bears and foxes. Unfortunately, the owners of this curious and somewhat motley settlement were not always the first to arrive upon the scene in the summer. Other sailors, Scotch or Norwegian, had often visited Greaseville before they arrived and either appropriated what they wanted or destroyed what they could not carry away. As early as 1626 a plan was discussed of leaving a guard on the island during the winter. The men could live comfortably in one of the houses and they could support themselves by hunting and fishing. It was not a bad idea, but Nova Zembla still spooked in people's heads, and nobody wanted to try a winter of darkness and cold such as had been just described by De Veer. But in the year 1630 eight English sailors were accidentally left behind from a ship, and next spring the y were found little the worse for wear. As a result the experiment was at last made in the winter of the year 1633. Seven men were left on Spitzbergen and seven others on the Jan Mayen, an island somewhat to the west and farther away from the pole. The seven on Jan Mayen all died of scurvy. When next spring a fleet came to relieve them they were found frozen dead in their bunks. On Spitzbergen, however, all the men had passed a comfortable winter. They had suffered a good deal from the cold, but they had managed to keep out in the open, take a lot of exercise, and pass the long winter as cheerfully as the heavy blizzards and storms allowed. It was decided to leave a small guard upon the island every year. When in September of 1634 the fleet of whalers sailed back for Holland, seven new men, under the leadership of Adriaen Janzzoon, who came from Delft, had agreed to remain behind and keep watch over the little settlement of Smeerenburg. They were well provided with supplies, but all perished before the sprin g of the next year. They left a diary, and from this we copy a few items to show the quiet and resigned courage with which they went to their death.
"On the eleventh of September of the year of our Lord 1634 the whaling ships sailed for home. We wished them a happy voyage. We saw several whales and often tried to get one, but we did not succeed. We looked for fresh vegetables, foxes, and bears with great industry, but we did not find any.
"Between the twentieth and the twenty-first of October the sun left us. On the twenty-fourth of November we began to suffer from scurvy. Therefore we looked for fresh vegetables, foxes, and bears with great industry, but we did not succeed, to our great grief. Therefore we consoled each other that the good Lord would provide. On the second of December Klaes Florisz took a remedy against scurvy, and we set traps to catch foxes.
"On the eleventh of December Jeroen Caroen also took a remedy against scurvy, and we all began to eat separately from each other because some suffered more from scurvy and others less. We looked every day, trying to find fresh vegetables, but we found nothing. So we recommended our souls into the hands of God.
"On the twelfth of December Cornelis Thysz took a remedy for scurvy. On the twenty-third of December we saw our first bear. Just as the cook was pouring out hot water from his kitchen the bear stood outside the window, but when he heard a noise he hastily fled. On the twenty-fourth we again heard a bear, and we at once ran for him with three men, whereupon he stood upright on his hind legs and looked quite horrible; but we shot a musket-ball through his belly, and he began to groan and bleed quite badly, and with his teeth he bit one of our halberds to pieces and then fled. We followed him with two lanterns, but we could not get him, although we needed him sorely on account of the sick people as well as of those who were still well, for nobody was quite without pain. If things do not improve before long we shall all be dead before the ships come ba ck; but God knows what is best for us. On the twenty-fifth of December Cornelis Thysz took a remedy for scurvy for the second time, for things were going badly with him. On the fourteenth of January Adriaen Janszoon died, being the first of the seven of us to go; but we are now all very ill and have much pain.
"On the fifteenth Fetje Otjes died.
"On the seventeenth Cornelis Thysz died. Next to God we had put our hope upon him. We who were still alive made coffins for the three dead ones, and we laid them into their coffins, although we were hardly strong enough to do this, and every day we are getting worse.
"On the twenty-eighth we saw the first fox, but we could not get him. On the twenty-ninth we killed our red dog, and we ate him in the evening. On the s eventh of February we caught our first fox, and we were all very happy; but it did not do us much good, for we are all too far gone by now. We saw many bears, yes, sometimes we saw as many as three, four, five, six, ten, twelve at the same time; but we di d not have strength enough to fire a gun, and even if we had hit a bear, we could not have walked out to get him, for we are all so weak that we can not put one foot before the other. We can not even eat our bread; we have terrible pains all over our bodies; and the worse the weather is the more pain we have. Many of us are losing blood. Jeroan Caroen is the strongest, and he went out and got some coals to make a fire.
"On the twenty-third we laid flat on our backs almost all the time. The end has come, and we commend our souls into the hands of God.
"On the twenty-fourth we saw the sun again, for which we praised God, for we had not seen the sun since the twentieth or twenty-first of October of last year.
"On the sixth of February the four of us who are still alive are lying in our bunks. We would eat something if only one of us were strong enough to get up and make a fire; we can not move from the pain we suffer. With folded hands we pray to God to deliver us from this sorrowful world. If it pleases Him we are ready; for we would prefer not to stand this suffering much longer without food and without a fire, and yet we cannot help each other, and each one must bear his own fate as well as he can."
When the ships came to Spitzbergen in the spring of 1635 they found the cabin locked. A sailor climbed into the house through the attic window. The first things he found were pieces of the red dog hanging from the rafters, where they had been put to dry. In front of the stairs he stumbled over the frozen body of the other dog. Inside the cabin the seven sailors rested together. Three were lying in open coffins, two in one bunk, two others on a piece of sail on the floor, all of them frozen, with their knees pulled up to their chins.
That was the last time an attempt was made to have anybody pass the winter on the island.
CHAPTER IV
THE FIRST VOYAGE TO INDIA—FAILURE
It was no mean expedition which set sail for the Indies on the second of April of the year 1595 with four ships, 284 men, and an investment of more than three hundred thousand guilders. Amsterdam merchants had provided the capital and the ships. The Estates of Holland and a number of cities in the same province had sent cannon. With large cannon and small harquebus, sixty-four in number, they were a fair match for any Spaniard or Portuguese who might wish to defend his ancient rights upon this royal Indian route, which ran down the Atlantic, doubled t
he Cape of Good Hope, and then made a straight line from the southernmost tip of Africa to Cape Comorin on the Indian peninsula in Asia.
A few words should be said about the ships, for each was to experience adventures before reaching the safe harbor of home or disappearing silently in a lonely sea. There were the Hollandia, proudly called after the newly created sovereign republic of the seven united Netherlands; the Mauritius, bearing the name of the eminent general whose scientific strategy was forcing the Spanish intruder from one province after the other; the Amsterdam, the representative of a city which in herself was a mighty commonwealth; and lastly a small and fast ship called the Pigeon.
Also, since there were four ships, there were four captains, and thereby hangs a tale. This new Dutch Republic was a democracy of an unusually jealous variety, which is saying a great deal. Its form of government was organized disorder. The principle of divided power and governmental wheels within wheels at home was maintained in a foreign expedition where a single autocratic head was a most imperative necessity. What happened during the voyage was this: the four captains mutually distrustful, each followed his own obstinate will. They quarreled among themselves, they quarreled with the four civil directors who repr esented the owners and the capitalists in Holland, and who together with the captains were supposed to form a legislative and executive council for all the daily affairs of the long voyage. Finally they quarreled with the chief representative of the commercial interests, Cornelis de Houtman, a cunning trader and commercial diplomatist who had spent four years in Lisbon trying to discover the secrets of Indian navigation. Indeed, so great had been his zeal to get hold of the information hidden in the heads of Portuguese pilots and the cabalistic meaning of Portuguese charts, that the authorities, distrustful of this too generous foreigner, with his ever-ready purse, had at last clapped him into jail.
Then there had been a busy correspondence with the distant employers of this distinguished foreign gentleman. Amsterdam needed Houtman and his knowledge of the Indian route. The money which in the rotten state of Portugal could open the doors of palaces as well as those of prisons brought the indiscreet pioneer s afely back to his fatherland. Now, after another year, he was appointed to be the leading spirit of a powerful small fleet and the honorable chairman of a complicated and unruly council of captains and civilian directors. That is to say, he might have been their real leader if he had possessed the necessary ability; but the task was too much for him. For not only was he obliged to keep the peace between his many subordinate commanders, but he was also obliged to control the collection of most undesirable elements who made up the crews of this memorable expedition. I am sorry that I have to say this, but in the year 1595 people did not venture upon a phantastical voyage to an unknown land along a highly perilous route unless there was some good reason why the y should leave their comfortable native shores. The commanders of the ships and their chief officers were first class sailors. The lower grades, too, were filled with a fairly sober crowd of men, but the common sailor almost without exception belonged to a class of worthless youngsters who left their country for their country's good and for the lasting benefit of their family's reputation. There was, however, a saving grace, and we must give the devil his due. Many of these men were desperately brave. When they were well commanded they made admirable sailors and excellent soldiers, but the moment discipline was relaxed, they ran amuck, killed their officers or left them behind on uninhabited islands and lived upon the fat of the commissary department until the last bottle of gin was emptied and the last ham was eaten. In most cases their ship then ran on a hidden cliff, whereupon the democratic sea settled all further troubles with the help of the ever-industrious shark.
When we realize that the Dutch colonial empire was conquered with and by such men we gain a mighty respect for the leaders whose power of will turned these wild bands of adventurers into valiant soldiers. And when we study the history of our early colonial system we no longer wonder that it w as so bad. We are gratefully astonished that it was not vastly worse.
On the tenth of March of the year 1595 the crews had been mustered, the last provisions had been taken on board. Everything was ready for the departure. The riot act was read to the men, for discipline was maintained by means of the gallows and the flogging-pole, and after a great deal of gunpowder had been wasted upon salutes the ships sailed to the Texel. Here they waited in the roads for two weeks, and then with a favorable wind from the north set sail for the English Channel. All this and the rest of the story which is to follow we have copied from the diary of Frank van der Does, who was on board the Hollandia and who was one of the few officers who got safely home.
During the first three weeks it was plain sailing. On the twenty-sixth of April the fleet reached one of the Cape Verde Islands. Some of the wild goats of the islands that had so greatly impressed Linschoten were caught and divided among the sailors, making a very welcome change in their eternal diet of salted meat. Another week went by, and two Portuguese freighters, loaded to the gunwales, appeared upon the horizon. Kindly remember that this was only a few years after the desperate struggle with Spain and while yet any ship that might be considered popish was a welcome prize. Therefore the instinct of all the Hollanders on board demanded that this easy booty be captured. These ships, so the men reasoned, would provide more profit than an endless, dreary trip to an unknown Indian sea; but for once discipline prevailed. The commanders were under strict order not to do any freebooting on their own account. On the contrary, they must make friends wherever they could. Accordingly, the Dutch admiral gave the Portuguese a couple of hams, and the Portuguese returned the favor with a few jars of preserved fruit. Then the two squadrons separated, and the Dutch fleet went southward.
In the end of June the ships passed the equator, and scurvy made its customary appearance among the men. The suspicion that scurvy might have something to do with the lack of certain elements in the daily food had begun to dawn upon the sailors of that time. Of course it was quite impossible for them to carry fresh solid food in their little and ill-ventil ated ships, but they could take fluids. Water was never drunk by sailors of that day. It spoiled too easily in the primitive tanks. Beer was the customary beverage. This time, however, a large supply of wine had been taken along, and when they reached the tropics each of the sailors got a pint of wine per day as a remedy or, rather, a preventive of the dreaded disease. But it increased rapidly, and with a feeling of deep relief the sailors welcomed the appearance of wild birds, which indicated that the Cape of Good Hope must be near. Early in August they sailed past the southern point of the African continent, and dropped anchor in a small bay near the spot where now the town of Port Elizabeth is situated. Here our friend Van der Does was sent on shore with two boats to find fresh water. His first attempt at a landing did not succeed. The boats got into a very heavy surf. They were attacked by a couple of playful whales, and on the shore excited natives, reputed to be cannibals, danced about in gleeful antic ipation. A storm broke loose, and for almost an entire day the men floated helplessly on the angry waves. When at last they returned to the ship the other sailors had already given them up as lost.
The next day the weather was more favorable, and they managed to reach the shore, where they made friends with the natives. According to the description, these must have been Hottentots. They made a very bad impression. The Hottentot, then as now, was smallish and very ugly, with a lot of black hair that looked as if it had been singed. In short, in the language of the sixteenth century they looked like people who had been hanging on the gallows for a long time and had shriveled into the leathern caricature of a man. A dirty piece of skin served them as clothing, and their language sounded to the Dutch sailors like the cackling of a herd of angry turkeys. As for their manners, they were beastly. When they killed an animal, they ate it raw, both insides and outsides. Perhaps they stopped long enough to scrape some of the dirt off with their fingers, but usually they did not take the trouble to cook their foo
d. Furthermore—this, however, so far was only a suspicion—they were said to be cannibals and ate their own kind.
The happy Hottentot still lived in the Stone Age, and these first European traders were a veritable godsend to a people obliged to hunt with stone arrows. The expedition did not fail to discover this, and for a few knives and a few simple iron objects they received all the cows and sheep they wanted. And, to our great joy, we get our first glimpse of that most amusing and clownish of all living creatures, the penguin. The penguin has risen in the social scale of wild birds since he has become one of the chief attractions of the moving-pictures. In the year 1595 he was every bit as silly and absurd an animal as he is now, when he wanders forth to make friends with the sailors of our South Polar expeditions. Van der Does hardly knew what to make of this strange creature which has wings, yet cannot fly, and whose feathers look like the smooth skin of a seal. Strangest of all, this wild animal was found to be so tame that the sailors had to box their ears before they could force a narrow path through the dense crowds of excited birds.
The Golden Book of the Dutch Navigators Page 5