Pepper (26 page)

The American pepper trade in Sumatra also declined because of the industrialization of New England and the opening of the western United States for settlement. Pepper was still bought and sold after the debut of the clipper ships, but the spice increasingly came from the island's east coast, where Dutch warships could guard the cargo. Indeed, American ships could now pick up their cargo in Singapore, Penang (off the west coast of the Malay Peninsula), or Batavia, and forgo the treacherous reefs and the worry about pirates.

The last U.S. pepper ship put in at New York in 1867, and the last U.S. ship in the nineteenth century to bring coffee back from Sumatra was in 1873, a fateful year in Sumatran history. In the following years, the people of Sumatra abandoned their pepper gardens along the northwestern coast, fleeing in the wake of the Dutch invasion. Qualah Battoo was the last pepper port to bow to the Dutch, and it fell in 1881. The vines along the pepper coast had already suffered from years of neglect and never again produced pepper.

 

Eight

An Infinite Number of Seals

HUNGRY MEN ABOARD PEPPER SHIPS BOUND FOR ASIA CRAVED FRESH FOOD. THE BIRDS ON THE MASCARENE ISLANDS IN THE INDIAN OCEAN, MAURITIUS, RÉUNION, AND RODRIGUES, WERE ESPECIALLY VULNERABLE, AND THE DODO QUICKLY BECAME EXTINCT. SHIPWRECKED FRENCH SEAMAN FRANÇOIS LEGUAT DESCRIBED RODRIGUES AS AN ISLAND FILLED WITH GIANT TORTOISES AND THE MARVELOUS SOLITAIRE, A BIRD.

… birds that are the size of ducks and do not fly because they have no feathers on their wings … and we killed them in any number we wished, and they brayed like donkeys.

—
A
N ANONYMOUS SAILOR IN
V
ASCO DA
G
AMA'S SMALL FLEET ALONG THE COAST OF SOUTHERN
A
FRICA

On the third of August the general went in his pinnace, and other boats with him, to kill whales, for all the bay is full of them.

—
A
DESCRIPTION OF WATERS AROUND
R
OBBEN
I
SLAND,
S
OUTH
A
FRICA, DURING THE 1604 VOYAGE OF
H
ENRY
M
IDDLETON FOR THE
E
NGLISH
E
AST
I
NDIA
C
OMPANY

European ships destined for Asia during the age of discovery faced many obstacles, but perhaps the most overwhelming one was supplying food. How do you ensure that hundreds of men receive an adequate diet during voyages that could last up to nine months and were entirely dependent on the winds? In other words, how do you stretch a supply line thousands of miles without the benefit of modern technology?

Although the pepper ships left the English Downs and the Dutch Texel Roads with fresh provisions, the food soon ran out, especially in the early days of ocean travel. Thus the search for pepper was invariably accompanied by the search for fresh meat. Luckily, the pristine lands and waters that the Europeans encountered on the way to India and the East Indies provided a genuine feast.

Few animals escaped the notice of the hungry men bound for Asia. Penguins and whales, seals and tortoises, fish and birds, whatever waddled, swam, crawled, or flew, were slaughtered for their meat. At times, some of the animals, who were totally unaccustomed to humans, were taken by hand. On the island of Mauritius, a man named Pieter Willem Verhoeven (not the admiral of the same name who was killed in 1609) observed in 1611 that birds “similar in size to swans” were found “in large numbers though the Dutch have been catching them and eating them daily, and not only these birds, but many other kinds, such as wild pigeons and parrots, which they beat with sticks and catch…” The large birds Verhoeven described probably were dodos, which quickly became extinct as a result of European incursions onto their island habitat.

On Ascension, an isolated island near St. Helena, the Cornish diarist and traveler Peter Mundy described killing a hundred birds “with sticks and hands.” The men on his voyage also caught 130 to 140 goats, hogs, “hidds,” and pigs. European pepper ships often stopped to obtain fresh water and food on this island in the vast southern Atlantic Ocean. “It [Ascension] is uninhabited, and perfectly sterile, being almost nothing but a bare rock,” wrote VOC Captain J. S. Stavorinus in 1771. “It, however, affords fresh water, though the watering-place is difficult to access,” he noted. “The beach abounds in turtles, who lay their eggs in the sand, in order to be hatched by the heat of the sun. The Danes frequently visit this island, for the sake of procuring a supply of turtles.”

The nearly limitless supply of animals was intoxicating. A sort of exuberance underlies the descriptions of wanton killing along the pepper route. After da Gama's fleet made landfall in southern Africa in November 1497, the sailors found a colony of three thousand seals and fired on them with cannon, killing penguins, too, “as many as was our will,” according to an anonymous account. More than one hundred years later, Peter Mundy described the taste of penguins as “somewhat fishey.” The “fowle,” he noted, “are easily taken, not being able to flye nor runne, only bite a little to noe purpose…”

European lands and waters had been steadily stripped of animal life over hundreds of years. By the sixteenth century, fishing stocks had declined sharply off the coast of England. But in the age of discovery, ships sailed in waters teeming with life. The rich menagerie impressed the merchants and captains of the pepper ships, who recorded their observations in their journals. An especially detailed account is given in the second voyage of the East India Company, which set off from the Downs in southeastern England on April 2, 1604, with a fair wind and full crew under the command of Henry Middleton. He had been the
Susan
's captain on the Company's first voyage, led by Lancaster.

Although the market for pepper was glutted and plague had struck London, the small fleet of four ships—the same vessels engaged in Lancaster's voyage—set out for the East Indies. Less than a year had passed since the last of Lancaster's fleet had arrived in London, but he had left a group of merchants in Bantam with goods and money, including some three thousand bags of pepper. There was just too much at stake for the Company's investors to forego a second voyage.

The Company sent orders for Middleton to load two of his ships with goods in Bantam and send them back to London, while he would take the remaining two ships to Amboyna and the Banda Islands to buy cloves and nutmegs, the first expedition by the Company to the far eastern islands. The money sent out with the fleet was not to be used to buy pepper with which “theis partes of Christendome were already glutted,” but was to be invested in Chinese raw silk, or “suchlike commodities.”

Middleton was told by the Company not to stop in Table Bay, the tip of South Africa, because of the “danger of that place,” but if necessary to seek refreshment on his return along the coast of Madagascar. However, after only a few months on the high seas, scurvy had already struck Middleton's crew. They beseeched him to save their lives by putting in at Table Bay. Outside his own cabin door, Middleton saw a “swarme of lame and weake, diseased cripples,” and beholding this “lamentable sight” he decided to grant their request, according to a factor on one of the ships who kept a journal of the voyage.

Due to strong winds, the ships waited four days to make anchor at Table Bay. On July 18, 1604, Middleton finally went ashore with some of his crew to set up tents, where they met people who owned a large number of oxen and sheep. The Englishmen traded their small pieces of iron for twelve sheep, but trading stopped abruptly when the natives saw that the foreigners intended to set up tents. Although the Englishmen tried “all means possible” to buy more animals, the natives quickly pulled down their own tents and immediately left with their cattle. Some of his men urged Middleton to overtake the retreating natives and grab their animals, which could be easily done, but he refrained, believing that “they would returne againe, seeing we offered them no wrong.”

The next day, the sick men were put ashore to rest. On July 20, the boats were sent to Penguin Island (modern-day Robben Island, the site of an infamous prison where Nelson Mandela spent eighteen of his twenty-seven years in jail) “where wee found such infinite number of seals that was admirable to behold.” It is here that the anonymous merchant records his awe at the abundance of seals and other wildlife. “All of the seashore lyes overspread with them [seals], some sleeping, some traveling into the island and some to the seaward; besides all the rockes, which lie a prettie distance off, so full as they can hold; thousands at a time going and as many comming out. There bee many of them as bigge as any beare, and as terrible to behold. And up towards the middle of the island there be infinite numbers of fowles called pengwines, pelicans, and cormerants.” The theme of “infinite numbers” echoes throughout the early days of the spice race. In this instance, it appears that the men simply observed the animals and did not kill them.

A few days later, Middleton and his men went out in several boats to “kill whales; for all the bay is full of them.” Here they plunged their harping irons into a young whale, and eventually hauled her closer to wound her with spears. The young whale's mother, however, “would not depart from the little one, although it had received many wounds.” The mother remained by her wounded calf and fought all of the boats, striking them with her powerful tail and swimming underneath to overturn them. Middleton's boat had to be abandoned because the whale split all of its timbers and boards. It took three days for the ship's carpenters to repair the damage. “It was verie good sport to stand and looke on, but verie dangerous to them in the boats,” wrote the anonymous merchant on the voyage.

It took all day to kill the young whale, and the mother whale never left until she was sure her calf was dead. The men had killed the whale for oil, “for in all the shipps we had great lacke.” But the young whale scarcely yielded four gallons because it was so “young and leane.”

*   *   *

By the latter part of the eighteenth century, European ships had better provisions, but the crew still craved fresh food. When VOC Captain J. S. Stavorinus embarked for Batavia on June 10, 1768, his ship was provisioned for a nine-month journey. On board were 147 seamen, twenty-seven soldiers, and a passenger who was a mechanic. Due to changing winds, however, the ship didn't actually clear the English Channel until the beginning of August. After sighting Madeira, Stavorinus reports that “we began to see many flying fish [
Exocoetus volitans
] and we frequently made a good breakfast, upon such as had fallen upon the ship, during the night, as they frequently do…” As the ship approached the equator, “the more fish we had about the ship, of which we caught large quantities; dorados, albacores, and likewise bonitos, sharks, and others; which afforded a most welcome and agreeable refreshment to the seamen.” Stavorinus particularly liked dorado, or “john-doree,” describing it as “the most delicious seafish that is caught. It is long and flat, and covered with very small scales. It is from four to eight feet in length; but I seldom saw any caught that exceeded six feet, and ten or twelve pounds in weight.… Although the dorado is the finest fish that is caught at sea, it is yet somewhat dry eating. The tail roasted is very good, and tastes much like a roasted cod's-tail.”

When the weather was calm, the men also went after shark, which they pursued more for sport than for eating, although the tail “sometimes affords a meal to the sailor; but it must always be first trodden upon, or otherwise bruised, till a light foam exudes from it.” Sharks were commonly caught by a large hook, fastened to a double or triple brasswire of four or five feet attached to a long and strong cord. A slab of pork or beef served as bait. The animals had to be hauled on board and killed by repeated blows on the head with handspikes or iron “crows.” Stavorinus reported that the men managed to kill a pilotfish (
Gasterosteus doctor
) that accompanies sharks, and found that it was “very nice eating, and not so dry as other seafish.”

Occasionally, the men went ashore, where they hunted land animals for sport. During a layover in Bengal in northeast India, Stavorinus and two friends took a boat up the Ganges to tour the country and go hunting. They sailed a fair way up the river and found a small village surrounded by thick woods, crowded with monkeys. “These animals were about the size of a spaniel, with long tails, which, when they ran, they turned upwards. The body was covered with hair, of a grey colour, and the fore part of the head was black,” Stavorinus related. “As soon as we had fired one shot, they all ran up the high trees, and some of them threw their young ones, which they held between their fore paws, into the bushes below; and whatever pains we bestowed in looking for them, we could not find them. The large ones sprang with an inconceivable quickness, from branch to branch, and from tree to tree. We shot some of them, and when the others saw these fall, they set up a most horrid cry.”

Stavorinus may have suspected that this exhibition would upset the Bengalese, who asked the Dutchmen to stop killing the animals. “… for their superstitious belief in the transmigration of souls after death, makes them think that these creatures, in particular, are the receptacles of human souls.” Before leaving Bengal, the Dutchmen met a man in the ruins of a stone building. Venerated as a saint, he was naked and his long tangled hair was strewn with ashes and dirt. Stavorinus observed that he wore a brass ring about the thickness of a quill and three inches in diameter, “which was passed through the substance of the glans of the penis, though in such a manner, that the urethra remained unhurt.” While the Dutchmen were with him, a woman hoping to become pregnant came by “to kiss this disgusting mortal, on the part which was supposed to possess the prolific virtue required.” Linked to the brass ring were three iron rings, which Stavorinus guessed weighed about two and a half pounds. “When he walked, he let the whole hang loose, without seeming to be in the least incommoded.” Stavorinus noted that there were many of these “sanctified beggars” wandering about the country, who torture their “bodies so unmercifully, for the love of religion…”