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Today I went on a voyage of discovery
among exotic isles in emerald seas.
With Harvard Classics. Volume 33 in one hand and The Times Atlas of the World in the other, I
was led by a Gentleman at Arms of Shakespeare’s era to places on
our planet I had never heard of. Until this reading I had been under
the impression I was aware of most places on the global map – but I
have now discovered a thousand islands I hardly knew existed.
The Gentleman at Arms was Francis
Pretty, who accompanied Sir Francis Drake and chronicled his famous
voyage around the world, from Portsmouth “into the South Sea,
and therehence about the whole Globe of the Earth, begun in the year
of our Lord 1577”.
In only a few pages Mr Pretty conducts
you to a few of the tens of hundreds of islands of Moluca (the
Moluccas of today); to the Celebes (now named the Saluwesi) and the
Lesser Sunda group now governed by Indonesia. Mr Pretty introduces
you to the king and statesmen, (60 grave personages . . . of
good age and gravity) on the isle of Ternate from which they rule
70 larger islands. Our Gentleman describes the king’s great
three-tiered barge (canoa) his cloth of gold, his sandals of
Cordovan skin; the bands of gold on his head; the chains of gold on
his neck, and on his fingers six very fair jewels. Mr
Pretty found the ‘Moorish’ king to be as courteous, hospitable
and honest as the General himself (‘the General’ being Admiral
Sir Francis Drake).
Sailing on to the Celebes, the fleet
was forced off course and onto rocks by gales, but on Feb 8, 1580
“we fell with the fruitful island of Barateve, having in the
mean time suffered many dangers by winds and shoals. The people of
this island are comely in body and stature, and of a civil behaviour,
just in dealing, and courteous to strangers...”
Names have changed so much over the
past 400 years – but especially in the last 40 – that the nearest
possible equivalent island name I could trace was Batuati in the
Flores Sea, a few hundred miles east of Bali.
Drake sets course for Java Major,
where arriving, we found great courtesy, and honourable
entertainment. This island is governed by five kings whom they call
Rajah. . . who live as having one spirit and one mind.
From Jawa, they sail directly for the
Cape of Good Hope – and in this passage I discover the context and
precise words of the Drake expedition’s description of it:
“. . . notwithstanding we ran hard
aboard the cape, finding the report of the Portugals to be most
false, who affirm that it is the most dangerous cape in the world,
never without intolerable storms and present danger to travellers
which come near the same. This cape is a most stately thing, and the
fairest cape we saw in the whole circumference of the earth. . .”
It is worth noting that Drake rounded
the Cape in mid-winter, on 18th of June, 1580 – one of
our fine winter’s days, obviously - and that the famous
description of it was by none other than Mr Pretty. |
