Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/247

 THOMAS CAVENDISH AND JAMES LANCASTER 193 Invincible Armada came and perished. Even Elizabeth felt that the time for pretences was past. In the fol- lowing year, 1589, as recorded in the State Papers, she received a memorial setting forth the benefits to the realm of a direct trade with India and praying for a royal license for three ships. Leave granted, the capi- tal was raised, and in April, 1591, the first English squadron sailed round the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian seas. One of the three ships, the Merchant Royal, had to be sent back to England from Table Bay, laden with victims of the scurvy. Of the two which sailed on, the Penelope went down in a tempest with the commodore or " General " George Raymond and all hands. But Captain James Lancaster in the Edward Bonaventure passed up the African coast to Zanzibar, crossed over to Cape Comorin, reached the Malay Peninsula, and returned by Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope. Atlantic hurricanes buffeted him about from the West Indies to Newfoundland and back again. While on shore with most of the crew, his sole surviving ship was blown far out to sea with only five men and a boy on board, but she at length reached England. Cap- tain Lancaster, after generous succour from French vessels, himself arrived at Rye in 1594. Of 198 men who had rounded the Cape of Good Hope with him in 1591, barely twenty-five again saw their native land. But they brought back a precious cargo of pepper and rich booty. The only dangerous enemies they had met were the scurvy and the storm. Lancaster's voyage