WESTWARD HO ! 



to check the steady development of the Company. When Charles II 

 received the town of Bombay as part of his wife's dowry it gave us an 

 ideal base in Eastern waters and had a considerable effect on our 

 operations. The Company established a dockyard there which per- 

 mitted them to keep their ships seaworthy and greatly reduced the 

 marine risk and finally, although not for a long time, they commenced 

 to build ships there. Also they began to found their own local navy. 

 At first it was for the protection of their ships from the pirates who 

 operated from the Red Sea and East African coast, then against the 

 French, and finally to take such offensive action as might be necessary 

 in the Company's, and occasionally in Britain's, interests. 



The Position Consolidated. 



By the time the Treaty of Ryswick was signed the position of British 

 trade in the East was tolerably secure. It had fought hard for the 

 recognition of its status at home and had won. The unhappy rivalries 

 between the old and the new companies were not yet adjusted, although 

 they were on the way to an agreement, but perhaps the rivalry did more 

 good than harm in the end. Founded on the firm basis of trade, the 

 British Empire in the East was beginning to develop and the country 

 was profiting greatly by the enterprise of her merchant adventurers. 



CHAPTER XIV— WESTWARD HO ! 



Before Columbus. 



Only a few months ago evidence was found that suggested that a 

 combined Danish and Portuguese Expedition discovered the Continent 

 of America some quarter of a century before Columbus. It appears 

 that Erik of Pomerania, brother-in-law to the famous Prince Henry 

 the Navigator, assisted certain Portuguese navigators who were anxious 

 to discover what was afterwards known as the North-West passage and 

 that through his interest a joint expedition of Danish and Portuguese 

 ships commanded by Admirals Pining and Pothurst sailed from Den- 

 mark in the reign of King Christjern I (1426-1481). The principal 

 evidence of this expedition is dated 1551, seventy-five years after it 

 sailed, and was written by the Biirgermeister of Kiel to King Christian 

 III. He speaks as though it were quite well known that Pining and 

 Pothurst reached Greenland and fought Eskimos from the American 

 Continent. One Johannes Scolus, apparently belonging to this expedi- 

 tion, is supposed to have sailed along the coast of Labrador in 1476 and 

 soon after the Portuguese are calling Labrador " Joao Vaz Land." 

 One of the early Portuguese navigators of the Azores was named Joao 

 Vaz Corte Real and tradition has it that he was given his post as a 

 reward for Polar discoveries, which points in the same direction. Hints 

 of this expedition have long been known in the archives at Venice but 

 the recent discovery of evidence at Copenhagen was the first that per- 

 mitted it to be definitely described, and even so there are many details 

 unhappily missing. 



245 



