The capture of the Portuguese carrack off Atjeh of 3 October 1602 — the joint Anglo-Dutch naval operation in which Sir James Lancaster’s four English ships and Joris van Spilbergen’s two Dutch ships, having sailed from Atjeh on 21 September 1602 and spread themselves across the Strait of Malaka, intercepted, attacked and captured the annual Portuguese carrack from the Koromandel coast bound for Malaka, taking 950 bales of calicoes and pintados plus rice and other merchandise — is the first major Anglo-Dutch joint naval prize in the East Indies and the closing episode of the early Dutch-English-Portuguese triangular contest at Atjeh. The capture is the culminating event of the early-Atjeh chapter of Johan van der Woude’s Van der Woude (1948).
Background: Lancaster’s plan
When James Lancaster arrived off Atjeh on 5 June 1602 with the first English East India Company fleet, he found the pepper prices higher than his pilot John Davis had led him to expect and his own capital insufficient for a full cargo. He sent one of his ships to Priaman on the west coast of Sumatra to make up the deficit, and conceived the plan of intercepting the annual Portuguese carrack that came at this season from the Koromandel coast to Malaka — a prize that would repay the voyage and inflict commercial damage on the common enemy. Lancaster, who had practised such buitvaart in earlier voyages, displayed “veel beleid” in inducing the sultan of Atjeh to prevent news of his arrival from reaching Malaka by way of the Portuguese or their agents.
The Anglo-Dutch squadron
The Dutch yacht *‘t Lam under Cornelis Spex — separated from the Spilbergh fleet near the Comoros and too damaged to continue — had arrived off Atjeh in early September 1602 and placed itself under Lancaster’s command. A few days later Joris van Spilbergen himself arrived with the other two ships of his fleet, having called at Ceylon on the way. When Spilbergh heard of Lancaster’s plan, he offered to join with one of his ships for an eighth of the prize. The offer was accepted; on 21 September 1602 the combined squadron — four English ships and two Dutch, plus the yacht *‘t Lam — sailed from Atjeh and spread themselves across the Strait of Malaka, “al spread our selues a mile and a halfe one from another”.
The capture and the division
On 3 October 1602 a sail was sighted: the expected Portuguese carrack from the Koromandel coast. She was quickly taken. The captors set about transshipping her cargo, “Within fiue of sixe daies we had unladen her of nine hundred and fiftie packes of calicoes and pintados, besides many packets of merchandize: she had in her much rice and other goods, whereof we made full account”. Spilbergh received 120 bales and his share of the chests for his eighth. The 600 Portuguese crew were allowed to depart unhindered for Malaka in the empty carrack.
Significance
The capture of the Portuguese carrack off Atjeh is, in Van der Woude’s narrative, the high-water mark of the early Anglo-Dutch partnership in the East Indies, and the principal instance of the buitvaart — prize-taking as a legitimate commercial instrument of the pre-monopoly Dutch companies. The capture also shows the sultan of Atjeh as the diplomatic facilitator of the joint operation: his willingness to keep Lancaster’s arrival secret from the Portuguese at Malaka, his consent to the operation, and his hosting of the English and Dutch squadrons at his court together made the capture possible. The capture closed the first phase of the European presence at Atjeh — the phase of free competition among the northern European nations against the Portuguese — and inaugurated the second phase, in which the VOC and the English East India Company would increasingly become rivals rather than partners. The next time English and Dutch squadrons met in the Strait of Malaka, in the 1610s, they would be manoeuvring against each other. The capture also sealed the diplomatic rapprochement between the Dutch and the sultan that the Zeeland Company’s mission of 1601 had established, and laid the groundwork for the long Dutch-Achehnese commercial relationship of the seventeenth century.
See Also
- James Lancaster
- Joris Spilbergh
- Cornelis Spex
- James Lancaster’s Atjeh visit (1602)
- Joris Spilbergh’s Atjeh visit (1602)
- Sultan of Atjeh (1589-1604)
- John Davis
- Koromandel kust
- Strait of Malaka
- Malaka
- Acheh
- 1602
Source
Coen, Koopman van Heeren Zeventien. Geschiedenis van den Hollandshen Handel in Indië (1598-1614), by Johan van der Woude (Amsterdam: C.V. Uitgeverij v/h C. De Boer Jr., 1948), Hoofdstuk V “Voorgangers, Hollanders en mededingers tot 1614. Atjeh. Djohor. Malaka.” (p. 118).
The Voyage of Sir James Lancaster, Kt, to the East Indies, ed. Clements R. Markham, Hakluyt Society (London, 1877), pp. 76-80.
Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes, by Samuel Purchas, Vol. II (Glasgow, 1905), pp. 530-535.