The Covenant

  As early as 1511 one of the greatest Portuguese adventurers, Afonso de Albuquerque, ventured out of the Indian Ocean, establishing at Malacca a great fort that would serve as the keystone to Portuguese holdings. Whoever controlled Malacca had access to those magical islands that lay east of Java like a chain of jewels; these were the fabled Spice Islands, and their riches lay in fee to Portugal.

  During the entire sixteenth century this small seafaring nation transported untold wealth from the area, making irrelevant the fact that Muslims controlled Constantinople. Profit was now made not from tedious overland camel routes but from seaborne traffic. However, it was not this explosive wealth which led to the miracle.

  In the opening years of the seventeeth century two other very small European nations decided to seize by force their share of the Portuguese monopoly. In 1600 England chartered its East India Company, known in history as John Company, which quickly gained a solid foothold in India. Two years later the Dutch launched their counterpart, Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (United East India Company), to be known as Jan Compagnie, which operated with stubborn troops and very stubborn traders.

  The eastern seas became a vast battleground, with every Catholic priest a forward agent of Portugal, every Protestant predikant a defender of Dutch interests. Nor was it merely a commercial-religious rivalry; real warfare was involved. Three hideous times—1604, 1607, 1608—mammoth Dutch fleets strove to capture the dominating Portuguese fortress on Moçambique Island, and the sieges should have ended in easy victory, because the island was small, 3,200 yards long, 320 yards wide, and defended by as few as sixty Portuguese soldiers against whom the Dutch could land nearly two thousand.

  But the defenders were Portuguese, some of the toughest human beings on earth. Once when there was little hope that the few could resist the many, the Portuguese mounted a sortie, swept out of their fortress walls and slew the attackers. The Portuguese commander taunted: ‘The company defending this fort is a cat that cannot be handled without gloves.’ During one of the sieges, when all seemed lost, the Portuguese proposed that the affair be settled by fifty Dutch soldiers fighting a pitched battle against twenty-five Portuguese, ‘a balance honoring the character of the contesting armies.’

  The Dutch tried fire, trenching, towers, secret assaults and overpowering numbers, but never did they penetrate those fortress walls. How different the history of South Africa might have been had the Portuguese defenders been one shade less valiant. If in 1605 the sixty had surrendered to the two thousand, by 1985 the strategic ports of Moçambique would probably rest in the hands of the descendants of the Dutch; all lands south of the Zambezi River could have been under their rule, and in the ensuing history South Africa would have been the focus, not Java. But never could the Dutch mount that final push which would have carried them to great victory in Africa.

  In these years, when a Portuguese soldier disembarked from one of his nation’s ships to take up duty within a fort at Moçambique or at Malacca, on the straits near Java, he could expect during his tour of duty three sieges in which he would eat grass and drink urine. Some of the most courageous resistances in world history were contributed by these Portuguese defenders.

  One salient fact differentiated the colonizing efforts of the three European nations: the manner in which the effort related to the central government. The Portuguese operation was a confused amalgam of patriotism, Catholicism and profit; the government at Lisbon decided what should be done, the church ruled the minds of those who did it. When the English chartered their East India Company they intended it to be free of governmental interference, but quickly saw that this was impossible, because unless John Company behaved in a generally moral way, the good name of the nation was impugned; thus there was constant vacillation between commercial freedom and moral control. The Dutch had no such scruples. Their charter was handed to businessmen whose stated purpose was the making of profit on their investment, preferably forty percent a year, and neither the government nor the church had the right to intrude on their conduct. Any predikant who sailed in a ship belonging to Jan Compagnie was promptly informed that the Compagnie would determine what his religious duties were and how they would be discharged.

  It was soon apparent that three such radically different approaches would have to collide, and soon the English were battling the Dutch for control of Java, while the Dutch stabbed at Portugal for control of Malacca, and all three fought Spain for control of the Spice Islands. Yet ships of these battling nations constantly passed the Cape of Good Hope, often resting there for weeks at a time, with little effective effort to occupy this crucial spot or arm it as a base from which to raid enemy commerce. It is inconceivable that these maritime nations should have rounded the Cape on their way to war and passed it again on their return without ever halting to establish a base. It is even more difficult to believe that hundreds of merchant ships bearing millions of guilders’ and cruzados’ worth of spices should have been allowed to navigate these difficult waters without confrontation of some kind. But that was the case. In two hundred years of the most concentrated commercial rivalry in Asia and war in Europe, there was only one instance in which a ship was sunk at the Cape by enemy action.

  The explanation, as in the case of many an apparent inconsistency, rested in geography. A Portuguese ship setting out from Lisbon made a long run southwest to the Cape Verde Islands, replenished there and sailed almost to the coast of Brazil before steering southeast to round the Cape for the welcoming anchorage at Moçambique Island, from which it headed east to Goa and Malacca. Dutch and English ships also passed the Cape Verdes, but realizing that the Portuguese would not welcome them, continued south to the crucial island of St. Helena, which they jointly commanded, and once they cleared that haven, it was a brisk run to India. From there the English could head for entrepôts in the Spice Islands while the Dutch could anchor at their tenuous foothold in Java. There was really no reason why anyone need interrupt his journey at the Cape.

  So from 1488, when Dias ‘discovered’ it, to 1652—a period of one hundred and sixty-four years climactic in world history—this marvelous headland, dominating the trade routes and capable of supplying all the fresh food and water required by shipping, lay neglected. Any seafaring nation in the world could have claimed it; none did, because it was not seen as vital to their purposes.

  Although it was unclaimed, it was not untouched. In this empty period one hundred and fifty-three expeditions actually landed at the Cape, and since many consisted of multiple ships, sometimes ten or twelve, it can be said with certainty that on the average at least one major ship a year stopped, often staying for extended periods. In 1580 Sir Francis Drake, heading home at the end of his circumnavigation with a fortune in cloves, caused to be written in his log:

  From Java we sailed for the Cape of Good Hope. We ranne hard aboard the Cape, finding the report of the Portugals to be most false, who affirme that it is the most dangerous Cape of the world, never without intolerable storms and present dangers to travallers, which come neare the same. This Cape is a most stately thing, and the fairest we saw in the whole circumference of the earth.

  In 1601 when Sir James Lancaster arrived with a small fleet—an appalling two hundred and nine days out of London—one hundred and five men were dead of scurvy, with the rest too weak to man the sails. There was one exception; in General Lancaster’s own ship the men were in good shape:

  And the reason why the Generals men stood better in health than the men of other ships was this; he brought to sea with him certaine bottles of the Juice of Limons, which hee gave to each one, as long as it would last, three spoonfuls every day …

  Lancaster kept his men ashore forty-six days, plus five more at anchor in the roads, and during this time he was astonished at the level of society he encountered among the little brown men who occupied the land:

  We bought of them a thousand Sheepe and two and fortie Oxen; and might have bought more if we would. These Oxen are full as bigge a
s ours and the sheepe many of them much bigger, fat and sweet and (to our thinking) much better than our sheepe in England … Their speech they clocke with their tongues in such sort, that in seven weeks which wee remained heere in this place, the sharpest wit among us could not learne one word of their language; and yet the people would soone understand any signe wee made to them … While that wee stayed heere in this baye we had so royall refreshing that all our men recovered their health and strength, onely foure or five excepted.

  Year after year the ships stopped by, the sailors lived ashore, and the clerks wrote accounts of what transpired, so that there exists a rather better record of the unoccupied Cape than of other areas that were settled by unlettered troops. The character of the little brown people with their clicking tongue is especially well laid out—‘they speak from the throat and seem to sob and sigh’—so that scholars throughout Europe had ample knowledge of the Cape long before substantial interest was shown by their governments. Indeed, one enterprising London editor compiled a four-volume book dealing largely with travels past the Cape, Purchas his Pilgrimes, and entered unknowingly into literary history as the principal source for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

  Two engaging traditions endeared the Cape to sailors. It became the custom that whenever the navigator sensed that he was nearing the Cape, he would alert the crew, whereupon all ordinary seamen would strain to see who could first cry out: ‘Table Mountain!’ After his sighting was verified, the captain ceremoniously handed him a silver coin, and all hands, officers and men alike, stood at the railing to see once more this extraordinary mountain.

  It was not a peak; as if some giant carpenter had planed it down, its top seemed as flat as a palace floor, and not a small floor, either, but a vast one. Its sides were steep and it possessed a peculiarity that never ceased to amaze: at frequent intervals, on a cloudless day when the tabletop showed clear, a sudden wind sweeping north from the Antarctic would throw a cloud of dense fog, and even as one watched, this fog would spread out, obliterating Table Mountain. ‘The devil throwing his tablecloth,’ men would say later, and the mountain would be hidden, with the hem of the cloth tumbling down the sides.

  The second tradition was that of the post-office stone. As early as 1501 the captain of a Portuguese vessel passing the Cape came ashore with a letter of instructions to aid future travelers, and after wrapping it in pitched canvas, he placed it under a prominent rock on whose surface he scratched a notice that something of importance lay beneath. Thus the tradition started, and in all succeeding years captains would stop at the Cape, search for post-office stones, pick up letters which might have been left a decade earlier, and deliver them either to Europe or to Java. In 1615 Captain Walter Peyton, in the Expedition at the head of a small fleet, found post-office stones with letters deposited by different ships: James, Globe, Advice, Attendant. Each told of dangers passed, of hopes ahead.

  There are few reports of letters ever having been destroyed by enemies. A ship would plow through the Indian Ocean for a year, fighting at port after port, but when it passed the Cape and posted its letters beneath some rock, they became inviolate, and the very soldiers who had fought this ship would, if they landed for refreshing, lift those letters reverently and carry them toward their destination, often dispatching them on a route that would take them through two or three intervening countries.

  What was the miracle of the Cape? That no seafaring nation wanted it.

  On New Year’s Day 1637 a grizzled mariner of Plymouth, England, reached a major decision. Captain Nicholas Saltwood, aged forty-four and a veteran of the northern seas, told his wife, ‘Henrietta, I’ve decided to risk our savings and buy the Acorn.’ Forthwith he led her to The Hoe, the town’s waterfront, and resting there in the exact spot occupied by Sir Francis Drake’s ship in July of 1588, when he waited for the Spanish Armada to come up the Channel, stood a small two-masted ship of one hundred and eighty-three tons.

  ‘It will be dangerous,’ he confided. ‘Four years absent in the Spice Islands and God knows where. But if we don’t venture now …’

  ‘If you buy the ship, how will you acquire your trade goods?’

  ‘On our character,’ Saltwood said, and once the Acorn was his, he and his wife circulated among the merchants of Plymouth, offering them shares in his bold adventure. From them he wanted no money, only the goods on which he proposed to make his fortune and theirs. On February 3, the day he had hoped to sail, he had a ship well laden.

  ‘And if the sheriff abides his word,’ he told his wife, ‘we’ll take even more,’ and they went together to the ironmonger’s, and as before, their surety was their appearance and their reputation. They were sturdy people and honest: ‘Matthew, I want you lad to keep watch on my foremast. If I raise a blue flag, rush me these nineteen boxes. I’ll pay silver for seven. You contribute the dozen, and if the voyage fails, you’ve lost all. But it will not fail.’

  At the door of the mongery he kissed his wife farewell: ‘It would not be proper for you to deal with the sheriff. I believe he’ll come. You watch for the blue flag, too.’ And he was gone.

  Three bells had sounded when a cart from Plymouth prison hove into sight, bearing ten manacled men guarded by four marching soldiers and a very stout sheriff, who, when he reached the wharf, called out, ‘Captain Saltwood, be you prepared?’

  When Saltwood came to the railing the sheriff produced a legal paper, which he passed along for one of his soldiers to read, since he could not: ‘Ship Acorn, Captain Saltwood. Do you agree to carry these men condemned to death to some proper spot in the southern seas where they are to be thrown ashore to establish a colony to the honor of King Charles of England?’

  ‘I do,’ Saltwood replied. ‘And now may I ask you, has the passage money been voted?’

  ‘It has,’ the fat sheriff said, and as he stepped aboard the Acorn he counted out the five pieces of silver for each of the condemned men. ‘Now the delivery. Captain Saltwood, I want you to appreciate the rogues you’re getting.’ And as the manacled prisoners came awkwardly aboard, chains dangling, the soldier read out their crimes: ‘He stole a horse. A cutpurse. He committed murder, twice. He robbed a church. He ate another man’s apples. He stole a cloak …’ Each man had been sentenced to death, but at the solicitation of Captain Saltwood, who needed their passage money, execution had been stayed.

  ‘Have you granted them equipment to found their colony?’ Saltwood asked.

  ‘Throw them ashore,’ the sheriff said. ‘If they survive, it’s to the honor of the king. If they perish, what’s lost?’ With that the four soldiers climbed into the cart and pulled the wheezing sheriff in behind them.

  ‘Run up the blue pennant,’ Saltwood told his mate, and when it fluttered in the breeze the ironmonger hurried down to the ship with his nineteen crates of tools badly needed in the distant islands.

  As soon as the Acorn stood out from harbor, Saltwood ordered his carpenter to strike off the manacles, and when the convicts were freed he assembled them before the mast: ‘During this trip I hold the power of life and death. If you work, you eat and are assured of justice. If you plot against this ship, you feed the sharks.’ But as he was about to dismiss the unfortunates, he realized that they must be bewildered by what might happen to them, and he said reassuringly, ‘If you conduct yourselves well, I shall seek the most clement coast in all the seas. And when the moment comes to disembark, I shall provide you with such equipment for survival as we can spare.’

  ‘Where?’ one of the men asked.

  ‘Only God knows,’ Saltwood said, and for the next ninety days the Acorn sailed slowly southward through seas it had never traversed before, and the heavens showed stars which none had ever seen. The prisoners worked and partook of such food as the regular crew received, but always Saltwood kept his pistols ready, his defenses against mutiny prepared.

  On the ninety-first day out, the Acorn sighted St. Helena, where the condemned men prayed to be set ashore, but a congenial port like this
was not the intended destination, so the convicts were kept under close guard while the ship was provisioned, and after four restful days the Acorn headed south.

  On May 23, in rough weather, the little ship, barely visible against the massiveness of Africa, stood off the sandy beach north of Table Mountain, for it was here that Captain Saltwood proposed to cast his convicts ashore. But before he did so, he gave them a selection of implements from one of the crates of tools, and his men contributed food and spare clothes for the apprehensive settlers.

  ‘Be of good cheer,’ Saltwood advised the convicts. ‘Select one of your group to serve as leader, that you may subdue the land quickly.’

  ‘Won’t you sail closer to the shore?’ one of the men asked.

  ‘This coast looks dangerous,’ Saltwood said, ‘but you shall have this little boat.’

  As the convicts climbed down into the frail craft he called, ‘Establish a good colony so that your children may prosper under the English flag.’

  ‘Where will we find women?’ the impertinent murderer called.

  ‘Men always find women,’ Captain Saltwood cried, and he watched as the criminals manned the oars and rowed ineffectively toward the shore. When a tall wave came, they could not negotiate it; the boat capsized and all were drowned. Captain Saltwood shook his head: ‘They had their chance.’ And he watched with real regret as his boat shattered on the inhospitable beach.

  But this voyage of the Acorn was not remembered for its loss of the ten convicts, because such accidents were commonplace and barely reported in London. When the stormy seas subsided, men from the ship went ashore at the Cape proper, and one of the first things they did was check the area for post-office stones; they found five, each with its parcel of letters, some intended for Amsterdam, some for Java. The former were rewrapped in canvas and put back under one stone; the latter were taken aboard for delivery in the Far East. Under a special stone engraved with the Acorn’s name, the mate deposited a letter to London detailing the successful passage via St. Helena but ignoring the loss of the ten prisoners.