Liefde

The Liefde was a ship Dutch of the Rotterdamse Compagnie (a voorcompagnie former to the creation of the Compagnie Dutchwoman of the Eastern Indies, which explain the presence of the Liefde on the registers of the latter), forming part with the ships Hoop , Geloof , Trouw and Blijde Boodschop of a fleet of five ships sent since the Texel towards the the Far East in 1598, and the only one of these ships to reach the Japan later two years, where it ran shortly after.

History

Forwarding

The forwarding, ordered by the captain Jacques Mahu and assembled in secrecy by Pieter van den Hagen and Johan van der Veken with Rotterdam, has the role of taking along a fleet to seek spices and gold in the “islands with spices” located in the the Eastern Indies. If its acknowledged goal is the trade, the rumors circulating then in Rotterdam affirm that it is acted in fact of plundering the Spanish colonies of South America like already did it Francis Drake, rumors being based in particular on the fact that the ships of forwarding “are roughcast guns” and on the road chosen, which is that busy by the Magellan Strait.

After the purchase of five ships and enrôlement of prisoners and men attracted by the promise of the second in command Simon de Cordes whom they “would be equipped with all the provisions necessary”, it misses only one pilot experienced to guide the ships through the oceans Atlantique and Pacifique. It will be English William Adams, who, having heard of forwarding, unloads in Rotterdam in spring 1598 in company of twelve other English, of which his/her brother and Timothy Shotten, which already carried out a circumnavigation of the sphere in 1586 with Thomas Cavendish.

The voyage

---- For a detailed account of the voyage, to see the article William Adams. ---- The Liefde , ordered initially by the vice-commander of the fleet Simon de Cordes, then by the captain Gerrit van Beuningen, leaves Rotterdam in the morning of the June 24th 1598 in company of the remainder of the fleet, which embarks in all 494 men. With the beginning of the voyage, Cords holds the word which it gave to the sailors, so that less than two months after the departure, the coasts of the Africa in sight, and in spite of a policy of restriction applied at the end of a few weeks, the provisions remaining in the hold became very insufficient.

Adams, meanwhile last on the Liefde (named at the origin Erasmus because of its Figurehead representative Erasmus de Formiae), wants to stop some share with the length of the African coasts in order to get water, the fruits and salt necessary to the remainder of the voyage, but the forts held by the Portuguese make the operation very dangerous.

After an unfruitful attempt at attack of the island of Praia, in the Cape Verde, on the initiative of Van Beuningen, then an attempt at negotiations for food, which does not lead to nothing, between Sebald de Weert, captain of the Geloof and an indigenous chief, many sailors die of fever or dysentery, of which the commander Jacques Mahu, on September 22nd. It is replaced by its second, Simon de Cordes, itself replaced as a vice-commander by Gerrit van Beuningen.

The January 2nd 1599, the fleet sets out again, but a strong strong gale breaks into three large the Mât of the Geloof , which is taken in trailer by the Liefde time that a new mast is manufactured by the carpenters. Unfortunately, at this time the fleet arrives in the pot at the black, this zone or it there not a breath of wind, and must still restrict the rations. When the wind begins again, the ships reach the Atlantique southern, where the winter cold causes some additional deaths.

The crossing of the Magellan Strait makes it possible to the famished sailors to be nourished, by killing some 1400 penguins, but this unhoped-for basket is exhausted before the end of the crossing of the strait, which lasts from March to September, because of the ices imprisoning the ships. The hunger and the fight against the Patagons kill the major part of the crew. At the exit of the strait, a storm separates the ships, the Blijde Boodschop has the Beaupré and the Foremast broken by the storm and derives during weeks, finally falling to the hands from the Spanish , which throw the surviving members of the crew in prison to have sailed in water belonging to Spain. Same manner, the men of the Trouw , which leaves towards the west, arrives finally at Tidore, in Indonesia, where the crew will be massacred or thrown to irons by the Portuguese in January 1601. Only some members of these two crews will manage to return on their premises after several years of captivity.

The Geloof chooses when with him to turn back through the strait and arrives at Rotterdam in July 1600, with 36 survivors only, on 110 men at the beginning.

The Liefde is involved very far from its road by the storm and spends three weeks to take again this one. It arrives however the first at the point of appointment with the other ships, the island of Santa-Maria, along the coasts of the Peru. In a bay sheltered near, Indians provide them some vivres. The following day, when van Beuningen goes to ground with 23 infantrymen (among whom Thomas Adams, brother of William) to seek the additional vivres promised by the natives, they are taken in a ambush and massacred.

The ship turns over to Santa-Maria, where it meets the Hoop , which also lost its general like 29 men to him on the island Mocha. The adventurers can finally restock themselves, after having taken as an hostage the Spanish coastguards come to inspect the Liefde , slackening them only against vivres in quantity. Van Beuningen having died, Of Cords names in its place Jacob Quackernaek as a captain of the Liefde . The cargo consisting mainly of wool fabrics, it is decided that rather to go to the “islands to spices” as envisaged to the origin, the two ships would go to Japan, because “the wool fabrics were held in great regard on this island” (William Adams).

The ships set out again in direction of Japan in November 1599, but the Hoop will never reach it. It disappears indeed body and goods in a typhoon occurring shortly after to have exceeded a group of islands, where eight men desert while stealing a Chaloupe. This group of islands east probably Hawaii. Indeed, when the missionary English William Ellis visit this island in 1822, the natives says to him that a group of sailors settled there and married of Hawaiiennes well before the arrival of James Cook in 1778.

When that the April 12th 1600 the ship arrives finally for the island of Kyūshū, with the Japan, none of the 24 surviving sailors is able to launch a launch.

Arrival in Japan

When Liefde accosts the April 19th 1600 with broad of Bungo (today Usuki, in the Préfecture of Ōita, only nine of the 24 remaining members of the crew are in a position to rise. The priests Jesuits Portuguese present at Japan claim whereas the Liefde is a pirate vessel, and that the crew must for this reason be crucifié. The ship is seized, and the sick crew is imprisoned with the Château of Osaka on order of Ieyasu Tokugawa, Daimyō of Mikawa which will become Shogun in 1603.

Willam Adams meets Ieyasu with Osaka three times between May and June 1600. He is questioned by Ieyasu, become protective of the young person wire of the Taiko Hideyoshi Toyotomi, which then has just died. The knowledge of Adams in the ships and naval construction, and its nautical notion of mathematics like Ieyasu, which however imprisons Adams and the other sailors, its suspicions not being alleviated. Ieyasu ends up releasing it, and it finds his companions on the Liefde which had been led meanwhile on the coasts of Osaka. It also made restore the goods stolen on the ship and the equivalent of 50 000 réaux as compensation. It however prohibits to them to leave Japan, and a month later, the enjoint to join the capital Edo, where Adams uses the major part of the money which was given to them in unfruitful attempts at corruption of the close relations of Ieyasu with an aim of obtaining the authorization to leave Japan, but this one very occupied by the confrontation which prepares with the other members of the council of regency, is then carried out by Mitsunari Ishida. It requisitions the 18 guns of the Liefde , whose balls, according to a Spanish observer, do not cease falling on the enemy rows at the time of the Bataille of Sekigahara.

End of the boat

During this time on board the Liefde , Adams and the Quackernaek captain must face a mutiny initiated by four or five men, quickly joined by the remainder of the crew, who wanted to go down to try their chance with ground. It was finally decided that “each one would do what it thought for best” and money distributed between the men according to their station. Ieyasu, charmed to learn that the sailors had given up leaving the country, made give to each man two pounds rice per day.

A little later the Liefde broke and ran by the bottom, the only thing which the sailors kept being the figurehead to the effigy of Érasme that a sailor had recovered not very front. The blow was terrible for the adventurers who saw there disappearing their only hope to leave Japan, but also for Ieyasu, which decides to charge the crew with making a counterpart of 80 barrels, from which he entrusts construction to William Adams, probably assisted of Pieter Janszoon, to cut down it Liefde , then another of 120 barrels, intended for the oceanic navigation, which will be lent later to a Spanish crew which will rename it San Buena Ventura .

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