Nathaniel Courthope,

They had come in an Indian ship and with only sufficient goods ‘to make tryall of the trade’

such local craft stood a much better chance of sneaking spices past the Dutch than did an English vessel.

Entrusted with vast stocks, surrounded by tempting opportunities, and a world away from the day of reckoning, the Company’s overseas factors followed their entrepreneurial instincts to the full.

commercial activity in the East had long since spawned a vast and sophisticated network in which the export of spices to Europe was still a marginal sideline.

having nothing to eate but durtie rice and stinking raine water’. ‘But God will provide for his servants’, declared Kellum Throgmorton, another prisoner, ‘though He give these Horse-turds leave to domineere a while.’

this speedy turnaround proved too slow for most of the sick, the Hector losing its captain, its master and its master’s mate not to mention ‘common men’.

The Company’s flagship had in fact become a grounded and gutted hulk; her commander was dead, her crew decimated, and her hull was

bid for a commercial role in the Far East had proved to be an historical cul-de-sac.