James Clavell's
SHOGUN
The gale tore at him and he felt its bite deep within and he knew that if they did not make
landfall in three days they would all be dead. Too many deaths on this voyage, he thought, I'm
Pilot-Major of a dead fleet. One ship left out of five-eight and twenty men from a crew of one
hundred and seven and now only ten can walk and the rest near death and our Captain-General
one of them. No food, almost no water and what there is, brackish and foul.
His name was John Blackthorne and he was alone on deck but for the bowsprit lookout-
Salamon the mute-who huddled in the lee, searching the sea ahead.
The ship heeled in a sudden squall and Blackthorne held on to the arm of the seachair that was
lashed near the wheel on the quarterdeck until she righted, timbers squealing. She was the
Erasmus, two hundred and sixty tons, a three-masted trader-warship out of Rotterdam, armed
with twenty cannon and sole survivor of the first expeditionary force sent from the Netherlands
to ravage the enemy in the New World. The first Dutch ships ever to breach the secrets of the
Strait of Magellan. Four hundred and ninety-six men, all volunteers. All Dutch except for three
Englishmen-two pilots, one officer. Their orders: to plunder Spanish and Portuguese
possessions in the New World and put them to the torch; to open up permanent trading
concessions; to discover new islands in the Pacific Ocean that could serve as permanent bases
and to claim the territory for the Netherlands; and, within three years, to come home again.
Protestant Netherlands had been at war with Catholic Spain for more than four decades,
struggling to throw off the yoke of their hated Spanish masters. The Netherlands, sometimes
called Holland, Dutchland, or the Low Countries, were still legally part of the Spanish Empire.
England, their only allies, the first country in Christendom to break with the Papal Court at Rome
and become Protestant some seventy-odd years ago, had also been warring on Spain for the last
twenty years, and openly allied with the Dutch for a decade.
The wind freshened even more and the ship lurched. She was riding under bare poles but for
storm tops'ls. Even so the tide and the storm bore her strongly toward the darkening horizon.
There's more storm there, Blackthorne told himself, and more reefs and more shoals. And
unknown sea. Good. I've set myself against the sea all my life and I've always won. I always
will.
First English pilot ever to get through Magellan's Pass. Yes, the first-and first pilot ever to
sail these Asian waters, apart from a few bastard Portuguese or motherless Spaniards who still
think they own the world. First Englishman in these seas. . . .
