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54
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[ JANUARY, 1924
194. In 1592 the Portuguese vessel Madre de Dios was, on her return from India, taken off Terceira, and the Santa Cruz forced to run ashore by an English cruising fleet under Sir John Burroughs (Danvers, Port. Records, p. 16).
195. On the 28th July 1594 Francisco Vendramin, Venetian Ambassador in Spain, reported (Cal. State Papers, Venetian) that English corsairs had attacked off the Azores the richest Portuguese ship that had ever sailed from an East Indian port, and having failed in an attempt to board her, had burnt and sunk her with her cargo and all on board. The total amount lost, says Vendramin, was three million ducats, of which three hundred thousand belonged to the King of Spain. This ship was Las Cinque Plagas or the Five Wounds, and the English corsairs were the Royal Exchange (Captain George Cave), the May Flower (Captain William Anthonie), the Sampson (Captain Nicholas Downton) and a pinnace, the Violet or Why not I, all equipped by George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, and his friends. The fight took place on the 13th June, six leagues to the southward of the Sound, between Fayal and Pico. The Portuguese made an obstinate defence, but their ship taking fire, the cargo, largely composed of combustible matter, caught also and made an inextinguishable conflagration. Thereupon the Portuguese leaped into the sea and a small number of them were saved by boats from the English ships. Two of those rescued, Nuno Vello Pereira, Governor in 1582 of Mozambique and Sofala, and Bras Carrero, Captain of a carrack which had been wrecked near Mozambique, were brought to England and ransomed; the rest were set ashore on the Island of Flores (Faria, III, 72; Kerr, VII, 456; Hakluyt, III, 14).
Chinese. 196. In the Malay Archipelago the Spaniards, from an early date, employed Asiatics as sailors. In 1593 the galley of Governor Gomez Perez, whilst on a voyage to the Moluccae, was seized by the Chinese rowers, who killed the Governor and all the Spaniards on board and carried the treasure chest to Cochin China, where it was seized by the local authorities (de Morga, p. 35). In the Chinese Repository (VII, 298) this accident is related of Gover. nor Marinas of Manila and is said to have occurred on the 25th October 1593.
197. In 1603 a Chinaman named Engean, who had remained in Manila from the time of Limahon (see para. 152 above) and was very rich, organised a conspiracy to drive out the Spaniards. After a serious outbreak, he was captured and hanged (Zuniga, I, 221).
Dutch. 198. In 1596 the Dutch made their first appearance in the East (Crawford, II, 508) and met with a very hostile reception in Sumatra. This they ascribed to the Portuguese, who informed the natives that they were "the English pirates who were feared and hated in all that part of the world for the excesses they had committed three years earlier " (Recueil des Voyages, p. 385). This is probably a reference to Lancaster, but of any exoesses committed by him, which could possibly be compared with those of the Portuguese themselves, we have no record. Will Adams (pilot in a Dutch ship), who landed in Japan in February 1600, says that the Spanish and Portuguese represented to the Emperor of Japan that the English and Dutch were " pirates and robbers of all nations, and that if they were spared no nation should come there [i.e., to Japan), without robbing (Memorials of Japan, Hak. Soc., p. 25). This evil reputation of the English persisted, according to Sir Ernest Satow, up to 1851 (A Diplomat in Japan, p. 384).
199. In October 1600 two Dutch ships, the Maurice (Captain Oliver de Noort) and the. Concordia or Eendracht (Captain Lambert Viesman, or Biesman, of Rotterdam) arrived at Manila. On the 14th December they were attacked by the Spaniards and the Concordia captured after a desperate fight. Viesman and eighteen others were taken prisoners. Six of these, being mere boys, were spared and distributed amongst the convents. All the rest were put to death by the garotte as pirates, but twelve of them having been converted they
