The Story of Nations - Holland/Chapter 19

Holland, and especially Amsterdam, had become the entrepôt of the trade of North-western Europe. Excellent as was the agriculture of Holland, it did not supply food for its inhabitants, for the skill of its agriculturists was almost entirely cattle raising and market gardening. It is true that the development of these industries was hereafter, as we shall see, to have a world-wide effect. But Holland did not grow wheat enough to find bread for a tenth of its inhabitants. But the markets of the country were abundantly supplied. The ancient forests were gone, but Holland was the principal timber mart of the world. Its towns were built on peat marshes where not a pebble could be found on the surface. But its quays held the produce of vast marble granite and stone quarries. It distributed the products of the West and East, of America and Asia. It throve on the decay of the obedient provinces. It absorbed what had been the trade of Antwerp, what had been the manufactures of Ghent and Bruges, and it added to them of its own.

Commerce was as necessary to Holland as were political and religious freedom, and it carried on its commerce, not only friendly nations, but even with its bitterest enemies, and to the last, it stood out resolutely and successfully for the freedom of its trade. It did not, and it could hardly be expected to do so, recognize the same rights of freedom of trade for other nations, and we shall see hereafter that the decline of Dutch commerce was due to the restrictions which it strove to put on the commercial liberty of others, as soon as it obtained the mastery in the Indian seas, and the one-sided commercial treaties which it negotiated with nations whom it had not the power or the inclination to subdue. But in those days the interest of nations overbore the passions of princes. Piracy and buccaneering was practised between the subjects of sovereigns who were nominally at peace with one another, and trade was carried on between the subjects of princes who were at war with each other. In no case was this a more marked and obvious fact than in the trade of the Dutch cities with the Spanish ports.

After the union of the kingdom of Portugal to that of Spain, Philip, or his advisers, began to see that they could cripple the Dutch by interfering with their trade at the Spanish and Portuguese ports, and efforts were made to stop it. But these were incomplete and interrupted. There were no manufactures in Spain from which Spanish navies could be equipped, and Spanish factors could not buy materials at Amsterdam unless the Government winked at Dutch trade in Cadiz and Lisbon. Besides the Spaniards wished to sell, and the only factors whom they could employ in North-western Europe were the Dutch. Hence for a long time after the Atlantic had been a Spanish lake, and Holland had been at war with Philip for more than a generation, the Dutch, though hardy and enterprising sailors, had not ventured on the Cape Passage, or even across the Atlantic, but had taken up the trade of the East and West where Spain had found it convenient or safe to fix its locality for Europe, and permit the distribution of its products. The English, it is true, had sailed round the world, though no steady trade had been the result of this venture. It is not till the end of, the century that charters were given to traders in the Levant, and the English East India Company was chartered, after the monopolies of Alexander the Sixth had endured for a full century.

The first stimulus given to maritime enterprise and discovery in Holland was the publication of Linschoten's work on the East. This man was the son of a Frieslander, who had that passion for travel and foreign experience which, when wisely directed, has bestowed such benefits on mankind. Linschoten lived for two years at Lisbon, and then, getting employed among the attendants of the Archbishop of Goa, thirteen years in Bombay. Here he patiently collected all the information he could amass as to the country in which he lived, as well as the character of the voyage to the East, its trade winds, harbours, islands, and other matters of knowledge to the sailor, accompanying his work with maps and charts. This was the first information given to the Dutch, and indeed to the world, for the Spaniards and Portuguese kept their knowledge of the navigation in these regions a profound secret. Linschoten's voyages was published in English in 1598, and his map of the Indies is alluded to by Shakespeare in his play of “Twelfth Night.” In Holland it excited an intense and lasting interest.

Now, for a very long time, indeed up to very recent times, it was believed that a passage could be found by the northern seas to China and India, and should such a discovery be successfully made and carried forwards, that a journey of several thousand miles would be saved. There was an ancient belief too, as old as the time of Herodotus, that if one could once get through the barrier of ice and snow, the navigator could sail into a new region of perpetual spring, sunshine, and calm. The age was still uncritical, or at least unscientific, and the fable of Hyperborean felicity of a race which lived free from the vicissitudes of climate was still gravely believed. Linschoten, Plancius the preacher, and Maalzoon, were eager to attempt the North-east Passage, and Barneveldt lent them his powerful patronage. There were indeed no maps of the regions lying beyond the White Sea and the port of Archangel which had been sought for disastrously by Sir Hugh Willoughby, fifty years before; but there were strong beliefs, which were accepted as certainties by these enthusiastic Dutchmen, that the voyage would be easy and successful, and would enable Holland at little risk to herself to take her Spanish and Portuguese rivals in the rear.

In those days the appliances of navigation were far behind those of modern experience and science. The vessels were clumsy and ill-built, the nautical instruments were rude and few, and the victualling of ships was so imperfect, that a prolonged voyage turned the best-appointed ship into an hospital within a few weeks. Men had no experience of an Arctic winter and no expedients by which to meet or mitigate its rigour and severity. The weapons with which they might defend themselves from wild animals and fierce enemies were to be sure the best then known, but awkward to handle, and slow to use.

On June 5, 1594, the first expedition to the Polar seas was begun. The voyagers started in three vessels and a fishing yacht, the vessels being supplied by the cities of Amsterdam and Enkhuizen, and the province of Zeland. Barendz was captain of the Amsterdam vessel, Linschoten of the other two. The former of these visited the islands of Nova Zembla, and accurately mapped them. Linschoten passed through the Straits of Waigatz, between these islands and the mainland, and made for the open sea which he was informed would be found there. After sailing for a hundred and fifty miles, he was met by violent storms and huge ice-drifts, and saw that it was impossible, at least on that occasion, to achieve the object of his expedition. On August 15th he discovered Barendz's ship, and the little fleet reached Amsterdam by the middle of September. They had strange stories to tell of the Polar bears, and the seals, and of a new and terrible kind of animal, the walrus; which half in sport, half in rage tried to sink their boats with its long protruding tusks.

Linschoten was convinced that they should reach China by the North-east and next year Barneveldt and Maurice, as well as many of the States-General, shared his belief. They resolved to send seven ships in 1595, and to load them with broadcloths, linen and tapestries for the trade which they were to open up with China. So long a time did they take in these mercantile arrangements that the summer was half over before the fleet started. Barendz, Linschoten, and Jacob Heemskerk were at the head of the expedition. They sailed as before through the Straits of Waigatz, and landed on Staten Island on September 2nd. Here they were attacked by a white bear, and two of their number were slain and half-eaten by the beast before they could dispatch him. They soon were forced to return with the bear's skin and a supply of what they took to be diamonds, and were picking up when the bear attacked them. They got back to Amsterdam on November i8th, and the States-General, greatly disappointed, refused to have anything more to do directly with Arctic navigation, though they offered a prize of 25,000 florins to any navigator who should discover the passage, and a proportionate sum to any one who might fail of success, but might make a praiseworthy venture.

Barendz and others with him determined if possible to assay the North-east Passage again. They got two ships from Amsterdam, and started on May 18, 1596. On June 19th they reached a latitude, which was within ten degrees of the pole. To the land which they found here, they. gave the name of Spitzbergen. But in July the ice began to close about them, and they resolved if they could to avoid it. They got back to Nova Zembla, and after various experiences with ice and Polar bears, reached the extreme north-eastern part of the island. Here they found open water, and were full of hope that the end of their voyage was achieved. But they were soon undeceived, and the growing masses of ice drove them anew into the harbour. On September 1st the ship was frozen fast into the bergs, and it was clear that they would have to pass through an Arctic winter. Fortunately for them the shores of the island were covered with drift-wood, borne by ocean currents from far distant places. They built themselves a hut, and gathered stores of fuel for the long winter that was coming. Part of their provisions was bears' flesh, and indeed the bears would have eaten them, if they had not been on the alert, and retaliated. On October 2nd they finished their house, sixteen men being left of the expedition. On November 4th the sun rose no more.

It was now too cold for the bears. They disappeared, and white foxes took their place. The Dutchmen caught them, ate them, and clothed themselves in their skins. It was time, for their European clothing was frozen stiff. They nearly in December stifled themselves by lighting a coal fire and stopping up all the crevices in their hut. Fortunately, and before it was too late, one of them forced open the door. As often as they could, they constantly made their nautical and astronomical observations. On January 24th the sun just reappeared, and on the 27th the whole disk was seen. Soon afterwards the foxes disappeared, and the bears came back as hungry and ferocious as ever.

On April 17th they saw open sea in the distance. In May they determined to start back home. But there was no hope that they could again use their ship, and they had only two open boats to make the voyage in. On June 14th they began to return. On June 20th Barendz, though still full of hope, died of exhaustion. After many adventures, but without further serious danger, they arrived at Amsterdam on November 1st. They had been absent for seventeen months, and for ten of these months they had suffered the extremities of an Arctic winter. The expedition closed all experiments after a North-east Passage and the sea of the Hyperboreans. Heemskerk returned to make a great name for himself elsewhere, and to be as great a terror to Spain as Drake had been.

In 1595, the Dutch reached the East Indies by the Cape Passage, and began the establishment of that great institution, the Dutch East India Company, of which we shall hear shortly. In 1598 another fleet started for the purpose of passing through the Straits of Magellan into the Pacific, at that time supposed to be the only way to the other ocean. Of the fleet which made this voyage one only returned to Holland. The Dutch had simultaneously explored the North and the South Poles.