THE OPENING OF THE EAST 

 James Lancaster. 



The information that was brought home by Cavendish and Drake 

 soon set seamen's thoughts to the East as well as to the West, and in 

 1591 James Lancaster sailed from Plymouth with the Penelope, 

 Marchant Royall and Edward Bonaventure. They did not consider it 

 beneath them to capture a valuable Portuguese ship near the Equator 

 and to refresh their ships from her. They revictualled at the Cape, but 

 by that time they had so many men down with scurvy that they sent 

 home the Marchant Royall full of invalids. The Edward Bonaventure 

 was struck by lightning, but still they held on where most others would 

 have been deterred. Wherever they landed they found that the 

 natives had been told terrible stories of the cruelties of the English by 

 the Portuguese, which gave them the greatest difficulty in getting their 

 stores. Nothing had been heard of the Penelope since the Cape, and 

 her fate is a mystery. At Zanzibar Lancaster contrived to do consider- 

 able trade with the Arabs, who surprised him with their skill in naviga- 

 tion. Heading East they missed the Nicobar Islands and made 

 a landfall at Sumatra but pushed straight on for the Pulo Pinaou 

 Islands, where they wintered and recruited their men who were now 

 very sickly and dying fast. By this time the crew had been reduced to 

 twenty-two active men, mostly landsmen, but they were game enough 

 to tackle and capture two ships laden with pepper while they were wait- 

 ing for the rich prizes they were expecting from the Orient. Finally 

 they captured a big Portuguese rice ship and spared a prize crew of 

 seven men for her navigation, but this made it impossible to navigate 

 the Bonaventure and accordingly she was released with the majority of 

 her crew. When they had taken a still bigger ship Lancaster's men 

 broke into open mutiny and decided to make for home as soon as 

 possible. He tried to persuade his men to wait for just another prize or 

 two — he does not seem ever to have had the least doubt of his ability to 

 take them — but they would not hear of it and he had a lot more trouble 

 with them before he was well on the way home by way of the West 

 Indies and Newfoundland. Finally a small party stole the ship while 

 he and others were ashore in P^rto Rico. Lancaster and most of his 

 friends were rescued by a French ship and eventually reached home, 

 but the Bonaventure and the deserters were never heard of again. 

 The Foundation of the East India Company. 



The policy of the Tudors had always been to encourage overseas 

 trade by the granting of facilities and privileges to chartered companies 

 which had the monopoly of trading in certain waters. By Elizaoeth's 

 day there was the Hamburg Company which has already been men- 

 tioned, the Russian Company, the Levant Company which lost so heavily 

 when the Spaniards captured its convoy after the Armada, and many 

 others. This Levant Company had a charter to trade with India by the 

 Overland Route through Asia Minor and was colossally wealthy in 

 consequence. When the sea route by way of the Cape had proved 

 itself practicable certain members of the Levant Company — it must be 



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